Diplomacy wars, round 2

[Nephrite]

"I think Nasir would throw his lot in with Hell. When I faced him before he had a contingent of elite Hellish agents with him." Moore says. "Honestly... if it's possible, I hope we can stop Akil. The Sultan would at least come to the table, I think Akil would be happy to see Hell take over the efreet... as long as he saw benefit — and the only person to truly benefit from that would be Asmodeus."

[Anastasia]

Incidentally, if anyone hasn't checked on something like that for Nasir, feel free to make an K:P check.

[Corwin]

Take 10 for 121. I have a +18 aura.

[Anastasia]

Nasir is fairly circumspect in his dealings, but has had dealings with Hell. Most efreet have to be fair so that doesn't mean that much. General rumor is that he's fairly average there, not terribly compromised, but also loyal to the Grand Sultan. A few bits of devilish lore you've examined over the years suggests the same, or perhaps a slight bias towards Hell.

It's enough to suggest he may well have quiet understandings there, or have been approached. He wouldn't be hostile to it. As of now you aren't sure of that, but if something happened recently it's entirely plausible he could've thrown in with them.

[Corwin]

"We can't really outrule any efreet having thrown in with the Hells," Seira muses. "And we don't know if Nasir's working with them, or with Akil. I doubt we'll find out in the span of a few hours, either, and by then it'd be fairly moot. Thus, do we marshal our armies and strike at the slave camps while I work on the intelligence to allow us to hit the City of Brass itself, or do we delay by a day?"

[Anastasia]

Lady Honeydip's quiet, "We aren't attacking the City of Brass meaningfully in a day and..." Here she taps a finger, a little wiggle of her wings spreading pixie dust. "It may be more effective to strike at them after a regime change, to destabilize that new regime, than to hit the one going out."

[Corwin]

"Because there are at least two sides, and if we hit the efreet now then one of those sides will be weakened, and the eventual clash for power resolved more easily?"

[Anastasia]

"...yes." Lady Honeydip says, "Often we preyed on demonic differences and feuds in Androlynne to survive. As much as possible, allow your enemies to defeat themselves."

[Ebiris]

"But we don't know who is going to be on what side until it happens," Alicia points out. "Unless someone comes to us with a separate deal and breaks from the efreet officially we have to treat them as all being on the same side. In any case I don't mind waiting a day to see what happens, I don't particularly trust Nasir but I wasn't prepared to launch a big attack right this instant anyway. We still have a ceasefire with the Dao, don't we?"

[Corwin]

"For five more days, yes. So we can afford to wait before treating with them again four days from now."

[Anastasia]

"Speaking of that," Valar says, "What is to be done about the dao? Do you still wish to peel them away from this war?"

[Corwin]

"I want to draw the war down to only one plane," Seira responds. "Assuming we get a good enough deal from one of the parties, we can focus on the other."

[Ebiris]

"Then we have time to go over intelligence and prepare for attacks on Fire. Either a more amenable leader will take over tomorrow, or simply having to fight the coup will weaken any unified response to our attacks," Alicia suggests. "Of course it's also possible an equally intractable leader will take over and Hell will throw itself in fully to secure it's new protectorate, but we'll have to fight all the same."

[Anastasia]

"Then," Valar goes on, "What are we willing to accept from them? They made demands, including Sylica abandoning the Abyssal Lake." He looks to Alyssa at that, weathered face interested. "Congratulations on that victory."

[Corwin]

"Let's do that, then," Seira agrees. "And if the efreet haven't had a change of heart by tomorrow, I propose we strike at their slave camps then. Our armies have been training, and so has Zaaman Rul. I'll ask Chan to pitch in as well, and if Celestia and Sylica pick their targets we could see how much we could achieve before the time to sit down with the dao is upon us."

At Valar's question, she says, "I'm willing to get half of their slaves and slavery itself being outlawed from the dao. Then I'll act through various means to purchase or otherwise liberate the grandfathered slaves owned by the dao until they are all free."