Brainstorm fun ideas for how dissidents might use terrorism

[Shorty Lickens]

against the Coalition States.
Ideally non-fatal acts of terrorism. I am thinking about these issues from the perspective of the CS, the Dissidents, the residents of the nicer, happier parts of Chi-town, the repressed residents of the crummy parts of town, and how do the PC's fit into this puzzle?

[Shorty Lickens]

I should point out I'm looking like comic book style acts of terrorism, the kind where they DONT kill innocent people. But also get the attention of the local nazis (in this case, CS), and force them to push on the people, revealing their true nature and encouraging more dissidents.

[desrocfc]

against the Coalition States.
Ideally non-fatal acts of terrorism. I am thinking about these issues from the perspective of the CS, the Dissidents, the residents of the nicer, happier parts of Chi-town, the repressed residents of the crummy parts of town, and how do the PC's fit into this puzzle?

There are myriad ways to sow terror without committing homicide. When I did my Joint Command level course, I had the opportunity to play the G2 (Intelligence) officer for a series of wargames - the G2 plays the part of the enemy in the tabletop run throughs. I had way too much fun sowing the discord to ruin "blue force" plans. In any case, a few examples below:

Communications Infrastructure. Target and destroy/damage tele-communications and radio towers, fibre cables, network hubs, etc. The idea is to disrupt or make difficult communications from the authorities to the populace, as well as for people to reach out and connect with each other. Sows panic and discord, all the while giving the authorities something else to deal with.

Utility Infrastructure. Target and destroy/damage water treatment, sewage, garbage collection/disposal sites, collection sites, or drop off points. The idea is for effluents to collect and cause unsanitary and unsatisfactory conditions for the populace and another issue for the officials to deal with. You throw a litre of oil into a water treatment plant, or blow an effluent line to spill into a residential or commercial area, things get messy very quickly (pun intended).

Transport Infrastructure. Target and destroy/damage public transit sites, pick-up points, bus stops, railways, subway stations or even just access points to them. This extends to sabotage of the vehicles prior to their picking up passengers, forcing additional work to check for issues prior to departing and delays in the system. Aside from the repair bill, sows fear in populace as they wonder if they will be caught in the blasts, or is the transport safe? Are the drivers and pilots happy coming to work now knowing they could be blown to bits?

Financial Infrastructure. A little more difficult in the target setting; targeting to destroy/damage banking infrastructure has a deep-seated impact on the populace and confidence in the authorities.

None of these necessarily have to blow up either. After two or three blasts to develop the pattern, a suspicious package left outside the front door of a bank, radio station, under a freeway support structure near a bus stop, these will all trigger police response to validate the threat is real or not. It's about sowing that fear in the populace of that they may be caught in the crossfire, unable to access services they are used to and how this changes their perspective on the authorities and possibly push back or challenge them for negligence or incompetence. Particularly if the culprits blend into the populace. The "someone must know something" response from authorities should be pretty easy to follow from there. In the examples I used to base my efforts, I looked at the Zapatista and Algerian National Liberation Front, though both did have serious tendencies to target the civilian population of their oppressors.

Food for thought and a few ideas.

[Library Ogre]

There's also always the "infinite magic pigeon" option. If you know the name of the local commander, send him a couple magic pigeons a day. There's always the popular "PROSEK SUCKS!" option, but don't forget the more fun idea of "Let's send him requests for military information, like he's passed secrets to us in the past." Or thank him for military intel he never sent. "Thanks for the warning about the raid at Tulsa, John. We were able to get most of our people out." That would be awkward at a staff meeting.

[taalismn]

Use illusion spells to create scenes of CS soldiers doing bad things to innocent civilians, then have them and their 'prisoners' rush away and disappear. Start rumors of the CS disappearing folks who are never seen again. Since there's an element of truth to such scenes, but the CS doesn't want it common knowledge, they'll be hard pressed to convincingly deny it in public.....a few magic and psychic hints, and you ideally get a CS faceman exasperatedly saying "NO, the disappearance in Liberty Quad WASN"T one of ours; we were busy grabbing the d-bee scum over in Emperor Court!"

[taalismn]

[
This has probably already happened
and probably the go-to explanation any time they need to bury soldier abuse.
"It wasn't us it was a mage in disguise"

"But your men took Candace! She wasn't an illusion! She was my friend!"
"Candace doesn't exist."
"..."
"She was a figment of imagination implanted in your head by magic suggestion. something so powerful and insidious that you couldn't tell that Candace didn't exist. Mages can be tricky like that, filling your mind with elaborate falsehoods."

[Aermas]

Paint all the deadboy armor in the armory baby blue.
Use psychics to give the officers earworms
Intercept radio commands & adjust them slightly
Illusions of Karl Prosek in a stockade with behind himErin Tarn holding a rather large paddle...
Open a rift to the Clown Dimension
Pirate radio slogans against the CS
Take the brakes of the hovercycles
Draw rude scribbles on the Psi-Stalker's heads
Holovids of the worst offenses of the CS played into hacked terminals
Inspire another Juicer Uprising by swapping out their Juice for the Apple variety
Destroy factories, transportation lines & other key infrastructure points
Underground schoolhouses with rotating cells of students
Have the PCs steal Bradford's furry fanfiction collection & paint it on the walls of the barracks


But as much as you want to play this as non lethal this isn't really "terrorism". It's civil disobedience & generalized dissent.
If you want to cause terror poison the warer supply & then raise the corpses. Import a few vampires. Stake eviscerated dogboys to a wall. If the PCs are psychos & don't care about killing CS personnel because they view them as non innocents*, they could do all kinds of twisted stuff.

*I'll try to clarify this, some may view them all as evil & therefore fair play to murder/hurt. Some may view them as evil but still not what to murder/hurt them directly or with "unheroic" weapons like IEDs or poison. Some may view them as working with evil but not directly evil themselves & so focus more on fooling them, in example, the Duke Boys, Robin Hood, & Hogan's Heroes.

[Mack]

Randomly teleport glitter bombs into CS buildings. They don't do any damage, just cover the place in glitter.

[taalismn]

Set off stink bombs and high pitch-frequency noise generators/dog-whistles around DogBoys.

Use ludicrous magic to drop the drawers of CS officers as they review the troops or meet with their superiors. Alternatively, shrink their uniforms.

Stinkbomb the CS military barracks' laundry facilities or taint the washer water with delayed-effect chemicals that as they dry, look and smell like **** stains....

Paste radar-reflective chaff-foil strips on flocks of pigeons. Watch Chi-Town air traffic control go nuts tracking down bogies.

Hack the public announcement videoboards to send out false information to the masses ranging from announcing 'mandatory nudist day' to cuts in electrical power, water, and rations. Alternatively, post raunchy animation depicting CS officials in less-than-wholesome activities or dignified appearance.

Set up fake construction sites to hamper/divert traffic. Ideally fake work orders to CS contractors/engineers to send them to tear up perfectly good streets and buildings looking for faults or effect unnecessary repairs.

[hup7]

Would Psi-nullifier be effective? "Note: The nullification power is a reflex action that responds to all (even multiple) psionic and magic attacks directed at him
(including area affect spells) as well as any unleashed within 10 feet of him."

I read that as the psi-nullifier has to be the target OR the caster has to be within 10 feet. vOv

Targeting the military infrastructure should be primary focus of anyone interested in such activities. Replacing missiles with TW goblin bombs of varying non-damaging spells.

Teleport (both objects and people) could be incredibly destructive / disorienting. Teleport in, drop some large scale area of effect (World of Chaos?) then teleport out again.

Really though after the first few disruptions, if the PCs notice the existence of the Vanguard - then their primary goal would be exposing the Vanguard to the troops. This would cause a huge rift (definitely pun intended) in the Coalition forces / higher ups. Who knows? How long have they known? I do not think the Vanguard can both remain invisible AND be effective at stopping anything.

[taalismn]

Really though after the first few disruptions, if the PCs notice the existence of the Vanguard - then their primary goal would be exposing the Vanguard to the troops. This would cause a huge rift (definitely pun intended) in the Coalition forces / higher ups. Who knows? How long have they known? I do not think the Vanguard can both remain invisible AND be effective at stopping anything.

Oh yeah, definitely mess with the Vanguards' IDs and PR; ideally when they're around troops who aren't familiar with them. "Oh look, evil mage!" Vanguard: "What?! Hey, wait, I'm on your si-*BLAM*

It's kinda like the side stories to Star Wars: Legends/Expanded Universe where at least one Jedi convinces the clones to kill the Inquisitors by painting them as Jedi.

[ShadowLogan]

Spread Terror via Musical Acts that attract younger crowds to shape their thinking that terrify their more mature counterparts.

Sell "tech" based "See Aura" equipment and provide misleading information on how to "read" said results.

Hack the public announcement videoboards to send out false information to the masses ranging from announcing 'mandatory nudist day' to cuts in electrical power, water, and rations. Alternatively, post raunchy animation depicting CS officials in less-than-wholesome activities or dignified appearance.

You could also go one step further and make undetectable Deep Fakes via doppelgangers*. Raunchy animation? Try raunchy "live action" with these doppelgangers (and not all have to be doppelgangers)! And you don't have to stop there...

You could also engage in street acts that prompt a police response, but the doppelgangers make it look like someone else is responsible (like Prosek). You could even have multiple examples of the same person at the same time at the same place.

*used here as a catch all term for any magic/psionic/power/ability that allows one to alter their appearance for disguise purposes.

[Killer Cyborg]

Send anonymous messages to two different officers telling them each that the other has been replaced by a duplicate, or is under the influence of mind control.

[glitterboy2098]

actually, if i may make a reading suggestion? the Mechwarrior Dark Age Novel "Ghost War". the Protagonist spends most of the novel infiltrating various dissident groups, making himself invaluable to them and attempting to guide their actions. at one point, he suggests a plan he calls "low intensity terrorism" as an alternative to a particularly bloodthirsty plan another in the group suggests. LIT involved basically wrecking public services in minor, but annoying ways. one example used was telephone and internet networks (well, the scifi names for the same). he pointed out that as he was walking around the town the day before getting familiar with the area, he saw dozens of distribution hub boxes for those around the city on buildings, and that if he'd had a pocket full of plastic explosive and timed detonators, he could have planted microcharges and blacked out communications across half the city. he made a similar point about the power grid. the idea being to start of with nuisance strikes, stuff that at first no one even knows are terrorism. then once people are frustrated by those, you do something a little larger, bust still pretty much harmless.. and create a false political movement to take credit for things. the general idea too being to focus on wedging open the cracks in society.
in the book, to kick off their campaign of such actions, they used a small explosive device to blow up a sluice way gate.. during a heavy rainstorm. the resulting flood of water overflowed into a sweage treatment plant. which backed up the sewage pipes across the poorer section of the city. later they blew a water treatment plant, and left the richest part of the city without water. the combination put the two social classes at odds more than normal. they burned down mansions, blew up fire stations.. gradually expanding the level and violence of their actions. the general idea being to make the populace uneasy, distrusting of the government and its security efforts (police, military, etc), and conductive to the idea of someone else stepping in and creating stability.

now, in the book their goal was the discredit the local planetary government, and create an environment where their benefactor could step in and take control, but for the CS, the goal could easily be to damage the power of the current leadership within a CS city, in order to let some other faction within the local government take control, or some outside group. whether this is part of a wider resistance, or just local politics, is up to the GM.

(i'd post the section from the book coverign the idea, but it is a lengthy one (several pages in the novel) and i'm not sure how the rules for posting such stuff work right now, and if i'd get in trouble)

[ShadowLogan]

What about finding causes for mass protests that TPTB (in this case the CS) would not like, but the populace at large could support and which would provoke TPTB into an out of line heavy handed response. From a certain POV TPTB might consider these protests a threat to the status quo, possibly even "terrorism" if they feel intimidated (which is one avenue per the definition of the term). There are plenty of real world examples from the past 50years alone one could point to concerning rights of the populace that TPTB did not like and responded with a heavy hand.

[Nekira Sudacne]

What about finding causes for mass protests that TPTB (in this case the CS) would not like, but the populace at large could support and which would provoke TPTB into an out of line heavy handed response. From a certain POV TPTB might consider these protests a threat to the status quo, possibly even "terrorism" if they feel intimidated (which is one avenue per the definition of the term). There are plenty of real world examples from the past 50years alone one could point to concerning rights of the populace that TPTB did not like and responded with a heavy hand.

The problem is, Protests are generally fostered when the government is oppressing it's own people and they see that people elsewhere have it better.

But the books make it clear that the Coalition Mega-Cities are the best place in the continent and arguably the world to live. There is no discontent to exploit, quite the contrary, living in the Coalition States is so highly desireable entire cities worth of shanty towns crop up nearby of people desperate to get in.

It's not analogous. The people of the Coalition don't protest because they beleive they have it as good as it's possible to have it. That's not going to motivate them to turn out in any relevent numbers. They're not unhappy that they don't have rights because they don't think they should have rights. That's the point of keeping everyone illiterate.

[ShadowLogan]

The problem is, Protests are generally fostered when the government is oppressing it's own people and they see that people elsewhere have it better.

But the books make it clear that the Coalition Mega-Cities are the best place in the continent and arguably the world to live. There is no discontent to exploit, quite the contrary, living in the Coalition States is so highly desireable entire cities worth of shanty towns crop up nearby of people desperate to get in.

It's not analogous. The people of the Coalition don't protest because they beleive they have it as good as it's possible to have it. That's not going to motivate them to turn out in any relevent numbers. They're not unhappy that they don't have rights because they don't think they should have rights. That's the point of keeping everyone illiterate.

I'm not saying it would be easy, but it is unlikely the CS actually enjoys 100% satisfaction/approval ratings.

Part of the approach I suggested is centered on the notion of changing people's minds on things, where one would start via this approach isn't clear, but it could come from foreign (acting in secret) or domestic sources depending on what the topic, but the topic is likely going to come in some form centered on:
-"expanding" their rights (this might be the hardest to start)
-living up to the ideal of whatever rights they do have
-returning rights the state has decided to rescind
-scandal that that angers the populace about some govt action/policy.

[Library Ogre]

I'm not saying it would be easy, but it is unlikely the CS actually enjoys 100% satisfaction/approval ratings.

And I'd also say there are likely political factions within the CS who want things to be different, without wanting the CS itself, or even Prosek rule, to end. Of the ones I laid out, I could definitely see Anti-Mutant, Isolationist, and Free State groups protesting, even if they're not throwing bottles.

[Shorty Lickens]

These are all great ideas!

THANKS GUYS!!