Teal team, defending:
Scathra yn Thera, the Living Cavern. Monstrous hermit crab fused with a magical palace, 300' long frog tongue, mind like an affectionate little puppy.
1x Lightning Ballista. Semi-portable, max range about a mile and a half, for best results needs an hour of maintenance per 20 shots.
5x baidak, artillery and macroveterinary skillsets already installed
???x volunteers

Red team, attacking:
1x Sorcery-Capturing Orb, preloaded with three castings of Summon Magma Kraken, deployment range about a quarter mile.
1x Whirligig-class Courier. A small magitech cargo ship, unarmed, but swift and sturdy. Can propel itself over dry land for short distances.
5x demjen, trained as combat engineers by the Nine Champion Army's "Melodious Amalgam" division
as many chalcothete infantry as the demjen care to spawn, perhaps two dozen
???x volunteers

Defenders win if more than one kraken is active simultaneously, no wounds are dealt for three consecutive days, or the ship crashes.
Attackers win if Scathra yn Thera surrenders, loses all three prehensile limbs at once (they grow back), or the ballista explodes.

Since this is just a training exercise, the Unquestionable has decreed that there shall be no deliberate killing. Any participant captured, crippled, cursed, or otherwise convinced of their personal defeat will, upon clearly expressing intent to surrender, be removed from the field for debreifing and medical attention. Yes, even the chalcothetes. However, there are still some powerful energy weapons involved, and the Demon Realm has other hazards. Accidents happen. Don't get careless.

Who's interested?

This is an Exalted second edition game, basically a tournament-arc excuse plot for open playtesting on my attempt to finish what the Scroll of Errata started. Several old sticking points in the combat rules have already been reworked, and more changes are planned, but first the basic threat-assessment scale needs recalibration, especially with regard to grappling.

Houserules: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10VAUEYEqWYWcQ9gz4bk9uok8OkAIYl1cy50KEw2y75o/edit

>>1001649
I'd be interested in playing with team teal. Not clear on if I'm just running one of the existing defenders as a character or if I should be volunteering another character.

>>1001655
Baidak are living humanoids with the mentality of automata, created by one of Madelrada's own component souls to fight like chess pieces. They're fearless and reasonably intelligent, but almost completely incapable of creativity or individual initiative beyond the scope of their explicit orders. In this context, they'll follow appropriate suggestions from anybody.

Mermaid-like demjen and their animated-ore minions will also listen to advice from the audience, but have more personality. Roleplaying a specific individual in more detail, or shouting advice at the group as a whole, are both acceptable approaches.

If you've got somebody else all ready to jump in, post a description and character sheet for final approval. I'd rather keep this thread focused on the visible scenery and events, but iterative character creation feedback can happen in the discussion thread ( https://questden.org/kusaba/questdis/res/120347.html ), or the houserule doc has a link to a Discord server for deeper analysis of the mechanics.

rolled 6, 8, 9, 10, 5, 7, 9, 5, 7, 8, 10, 4, 8, 2, 8, 5, 5, 9, 1, 6, 7, 3, 1, 4, 8, 5, 3, 6, 2, 10, 4, 10, 4, 1, 5, 9, 6, 5, 7, 4, 1, 2, 8, 10, 4, 9, 8, 6, 3, 10, 3, 6, 2, 9, 2, 1, 1, 10, 10, 3 = 344

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>Attackers win if Scathra yn Thera surrenders
>mind like an affectionate little puppy
>almost completely incapable of creativity or individual initiative
>Since this is just a training exercise, the Unquestionable has decreed that there shall be no deliberate killing

Demjen send a squad of Chalcothete under whatever the demon-realm equivalent of a white flag is in order to negotiate a truce and terms of surrender, as per the Unquestionable's orders. Clearly the most certain way to ensure her will is carried out and a single force wins without deliberate or accidental killing is for Scathra to willingly concede. Rolling for Red Team to gather/present appropriate bribes to the puppy-minded island. Not sure what the tummy-rubs and peanut butter equivalents are here, but I assume such knowledge could be found IC.

>>1001843
"Deliberate killing" in the sense of excessive force against soft targets, or continuing to attack someone already incapacitated or otherwise neutralized. "No accidental killing" was emphatically not part of the decree.

If red team all surrenders, they'll be removed from the field and teal team wins by default no more than three days later. The baidak aren't very interested in negotiating for anything else, and you'd probably have to get past them - either sailing or marching through lightning range out in the open, or searching for a sneaky route underground or above the cliff - to even attempt delivery of a bribe to the actual behemoth-manse.

>peanut butter equivalents
>rolled 6, 8, 9, 10, 5
Meat. Enough to be worth losing the exercise would probably be more than could fit in the cargo hold all at once, and this is a sparsely populated area on the outermost layer, so you don't know offhand where the nearest market which has that much for sale even is. If it's more than five or six hundred miles, Whirligig can't safely get there and back inside three days.