The problem, as I see it, is that your scenario assumes that, at the time the message in Step 3 is sent, that the player knows or assumes that the player of Fal'cie will get the message in time to do something about it. At that point in time, you *must* stop and evaluate the situation. Nothing that happens after that point in time has any relevance to whether not the message in Step 3 violates the IR. Otherwise you get into the situation I described before where whether nor not Allomere breaks the IRs depends on whether or not the player of Fal'cie comes back to read the messages and take action. i.e. whether or not Allomere broke an IR depends on what action some other player takes. And that's just silly.
I agree and disagree. I agree that we must evaluate the situation completely based upon the entire situation stopping at the point the message is sent in step 3. We cannot assume that the player will read it before the turn change, and for best evaluation we must assume they never get that message.
However, I disagree because I believe that if you state that even though the player will never read the step 3 message, that it doesn't matter. The in-game punishment is based upon the player's actions or non-action at step 2, and the message relating to it is merely stating the obvious course of action that the General would take if the Marshal openly disobeyed orders as an IC choice. With that in mind, the step 3 only has the function of re-stating the obvious and would be just as relevant for that letter to have been sent after the turn change, stating that the Marshal would be punished because he chose to openly disobey orders, not because of lack of activity but because of an IC choice not to.
