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Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition

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Warning: Cool It New
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    • cool it
    Reports on this thread have been blowing up, and upon looking, civility seems to have gone out the window in this thread sometime in the last 24 hours. Consider this a bucket of cold water.

    Two people have been removed from the thread for 3 days:

    Dmol8 — Rule 3
    Simon Jester — Rule 3

    @Lightwhispers already said it well enough that I'm not going to reinvent the wheel:
    Lightwhispers said:
    Do not treat "being right" as justification for being unpleasant.
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    The Seventh Vial New
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    • "And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done. And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great." Revelation 16:17-18​

    GDI Intelligence Operations HQ, New Zealand Blue Zone
    40 Hours After Kane's Private Delivery

    Intelligence Director Samuel Dax stared at the sealed paper envelope, as well as the USB thumb drive, with the same expression a man staring down a hissing cobra might. Standing next to his desk, Deputy Director Terrence Donnelly had the expression of a man who just drank an entire jug of sour milk.

    "Hackett warned me about this kind of thing, you know. That he likes to play games like this."
    "In this situation, I have to wonder if there's something else going on. With Granger and Hackett, it was more subtle but more direct?"
    "Hm. Well. Time to see what the fuss is."

    Director Dax slowly reached down and took the letter in hand. It was on thick paper, sealed with wax. The symbol matched previous "gifts" from Kane, which lent credence to this being the genuine article; almost no recent communiques bore this specific symbol, and his analysts had had to go back centuries for it to crop up more than once a decade. The method of delivery lent credence as well. But now, it was time to actually see what this was about.

    After opening the letter, he began to read.

    ====================================================================
    To Director Samuel Dax,
    Whomst I Am Sure Shall Read This First,
    These Words That Follow Are The Words Of Kane,
    So Mote It Be.

    Director,

    Now that the niceties of intrigue and formality are satisfied, I shall not overly waste your time on this letter. The method of its delivery serves a twofold purpose. First, it reinforces that you are reading the words of Kane, and not some two-bit imposter or false prophet. Secondly, it shall hopefully impress upon you the raw gravity of the situation; while we all like to treat such undertakings as one of my assumed abilities, to get as far as I did, as quietly as I did, was no mean feat. Thus, I am hopeful you understand that what I am presenting is, in fact, sincere.

    I will assume you shall utterly peruse the contents of this letter and the attached data drive, whose contents are quintuple-encrypted with the keyphrase at the bottom of this letter, along with the instructions of how to initiate the decryption; only after they meet your grudging satisfaction shall you pass them on. This is to be expected, and even encouraged; I would be an utter hypocrite to chide someone for caution from their direst foe! However, I must humbly request that you limit who sees the data files once decrypted. Your eyes, the eyes of young master Terrance, and perhaps one or two others, but no more. Loose lips used to sink ships, but what we aim to sail here is far larger and more frangible than a mere water vessel.

    Your people have found records of my time on this planet, and at least shadow and echo of my original plans, before the blessing-that-is-a-curse of Tiberium came to this planet. We have clashed for decades over competing visions of the world. Competing methods and means. But the time for clashing is coming to an end.

    Tiberium is beginning to mutate. Not tomorrow, but soon, your miners, and ours, will be less and less effective. The crystal will soon begin to spite us in truth and dig deeper. Everything we have done thus far has only slowed it. If we continue the course, or even if we merely united efforts to carry on our efforts to tend the Garden, we would simply be delaying it a few years, time to let you evacuate your people and leave me and mine to choke and die.

    But what if there was another way?

    The thumb drive contains a video message to be played only in the presence of the Director of GDI, and their Cabinet if needed, as well as a handful of…let us call them previews, of what I offer. The latter can be shown to Seo, or dear Former Treasury Director Granger, to verify their potential.

    The time draws near where we shall all step out of the shadow of Tiberium, into the glorious light of the future, to light a beacon against the darkness between the stars.

    I look forward to seeing you there.

    Sincerely,
    Kane
    ====================================================================
     
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    • KnightDisciple said:
    Interesting, interesting. What particular data are you basing this on, and in what way are you thinking Kane will pull one over on GDI?
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    Because a) it's kane and b) it's kane.
    He's probably got a secret backdoor that'll let him suppress tib growth in Nod regions while turbocharging it in Initiative-controlled regions. Or it'll detonate the earth in a way that sends his reinforced capsule flying toward his destination. Something like that.
     
    The Lone badger said:
    Because a) it's kane and b) it's kane.
    He's probably got a secret backdoor that'll let him suppress tib growth in Nod regions while turbocharging it in Initiative-controlled regions. Or it'll detonate the earth in a way that sends his reinforced capsule flying toward his destination. Something like that.
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    Except he needs to do literally none of that to achieve his goals? He's perfectly canonically fine with leaving GDI with a working TCN in exchange for his sweet ticket off this planet down in Threshold 19.
     
    Are we still assuming Kane wants to do his post Tib War 3 objectives? As in, getting off the planet with his core followers?

    Because there's a good chance that Kane might be more serious with his plan to maybe befriend GDI or maybe get hocked on a TCN style project. On one hand, GDI is reigning supreme. They're now the largest political entity, they've gotten a good chunk of the world's surface Tib free, and they're in the process of dominating the solar system.

    On the other hand, GDI is at a crossroads. With Tiberium deep into Earth's crust, GDI's future is extremely splintered. It could try to evacuate Earth but they simply don't have the infrastructure (yet) or the tech to move hundreds of millions into space. They can try and begin abatement operations to try and reverse the Tiberium issues but Tib will mutate faster than GDI can drill and building spikes and inhibitors.

    Kane has one major piece of leverage: the tacitus. With it, he can give GDI anything to complete the plans for what they want. Whether evacuation or full Tiberium control, he can give it to them and he knows that. And GDI probably knows this. Sure they could crush Nod give half a decade but that won't solve the Tiberium in Mantle problem and they know it.

    Kane can force GDI and NOD to accept something, and manipulate them. GDI gets something to either save Earth and/or save humanity, NOD may get a chance to flee with Kane because GDI is still angry at NOD. And that bastard Kane probably knows it.

    Unless GDI finds a silver bullet to Tiberium or decide to forsake most of humanity, they might have no choice but to see what's kane's offering.
     
    tbf Kane is pragmatic enough to realize that with the GDI actually getting it's head screwed on straight he's never going to directly win so time to actually negotiate and move the fuck on.
     
    Binge-Reader said:
    tbf Kane is pragmatic enough to realize that with the GDI actually getting it's head screwed on straight he's never going to directly win so time to actually negotiate and move the fuck on.
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    Yeah, that's Kane's big advantage. Chances are NOD is gonna die in a few years with how much GDI has grown and NOD will be reduced to isolated cells and scattered Remnants. The problem is that GDI knows that Earth's probably gonna be screwed in anywhere between a decade to the next century. Even if they despise Kane, GDI's leadership (IE us) has so far shown their willingness to sacrifice reputation and resources to stop tiberium from killing everyone.

    And at the very least, GDI already works with Noddies, or at least former members of Nod and can make tempary truces for tib abatement. If given the option of a silver bullet to stop Tiberium or a giant noah's ark to save humanity at the cost of beating NOD out of existence, good chances GDI's leadership will take the former options.
     
    Look, Kane is sus as anything, cause lets face it he's Kane, but that does not mean he is infallible (MY OWN FORCES), nor is he invincible. Could he put some kill switch in the TCN, yes. Could he do it in a way that we would never find it, probably not (he is Kane). Certainly not once we could fully reverse engineer, tear apart, and test the designs. Would he do it, maybe, there are logical reasons for him to want some guarantee just in case we backstab him, and Kane is enough of a long term thinker to know that we want him dead, and we will still want him dead in a century or two, so sabotaging a bunch of monkeys who might be a nuisance later is logical as well. The questions I'd have are how could he sabotage the TCN and how bad would the damage be?

    Well, whatever Kane gives us, we are going to want to use it against the Tiberium first and foremost before we use our industrial capacity to build Kane his fancy cult space ship and/or whatever else it is he wanted. Kane knows this, so part of his requirements for this deal are us working on what he wants while we are working on the TCN. One of the core things we are going to want is the knowhow of how to build a TCN by ourselves, partially for Venus in the future, but also to guard against Kane (or one of the nutters he leaves behind) pulling a kill switch. So the way he could sabotage the TCN wouldn't be explosives or L-Tib explosions, it would be some signal to the tib to hard lock them back into the growth/mutate mode in which case we would be no better off then we are now, possibly worse if the gowth/mutate settings are not currently at max (though I don't know why they wouldn't be especially after the Visitors messed with Tib and caused its rapid expansion over Tib War 3).

    So, damage assessment to our current infrastructure is likely to be realatively low as it wouldn't effect our current infrastructure. During the whole TCN process we would be continuing our Orbital evacuations, and even if we didn't, we currently have a minimum viable population off Earth. We would also simply by osmosis be getting better at Visitor tech (though we are very likely to insist on getting the actual technical specifications), which would allow us to get more shots at our own jury rigged TCN, as will the Visitors arround Jupiter. So short term, not good, but even seeing the tech we'd be able to eleminate alot of the dead ends that so often happen, which would enable us to start making our own TCN. Further issues could be caused by disloyal NOD causing havoc, but that would have happend with or without Kane sabotaging the TCN.

    This leads to what happens after, especially if Kane pulls a parting gift. We have enough infrastructure in orbit and have reasch the point to start mass ferrying people off of Earth. We have some buffer to allow us to buy more time to get more people off. All the Crown Stations are fully complete with all Bays. The Moon has >10k people on it permanently and Aldrin is expanding rapidly. We have gene and seed vaults, cloning, printable organs, plants designed for deep space, orbital industrial output, shipyards, and more. We are poised to start mass production of space warships and planes and soon mass production of O'Niel habitats with the Flyuts for evacuation. So if there was some kill switch embeded in the TCN, either by design, or by a signal Kane could broadcast to the Tib once he got clear, the GDI would survive, and the GDI has killed Kane before. Doesn't mean he said dead, but that does mean he could be made to serve all of his life sentances.

    TLDR: I think Kane would keep the option of a kill switch just in case the monkeys are irrational, but wouldn't pull the trigger if he got off Earth with his space ship.
     
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    We don't know what he's offering yet, but I'm fine dealing with him in good faith if it fixes the tiberium problem.

    If we get control then we can just turn Venus or wherever into a tiberium processor to dump waste material and asteroids onto so we can make whatever wonder materials and go boldly into the crazy hi tech future.

    If the price for that is then building him a spaceship so he can leave us the hell alone, okay. That's not a bad deal. Take your ship and get out of here.
     
    VinnyMoneyHo said:
    Are we still assuming Kane wants to do his post Tib War 3 objectives? As in, getting off the planet with his core followers?

    Because there's a good chance that Kane might be more serious with his plan to maybe befriend GDI or maybe get hocked on a TCN style project. On one hand, GDI is reigning supreme. They're now the largest political entity, they've gotten a good chunk of the world's surface Tib free, and they're in the process of dominating the solar system.

    On the other hand, GDI is at a crossroads. With Tiberium deep into Earth's crust, GDI's future is extremely splintered. It could try to evacuate Earth but they simply don't have the infrastructure (yet) or the tech to move hundreds of millions into space. They can try and begin abatement operations to try and reverse the Tiberium issues but Tib will mutate faster than GDI can drill and building spikes and inhibitors.

    Kane has one major piece of leverage: the tacitus. With it, he can give GDI anything to complete the plans for what they want. Whether evacuation or full Tiberium control, he can give it to them and he knows that. And GDI probably knows this. Sure they could crush Nod give half a decade but that won't solve the Tiberium in Mantle problem and they know it.

    Kane can force GDI and NOD to accept something, and manipulate them. GDI gets something to either save Earth and/or save humanity, NOD may get a chance to flee with Kane because GDI is still angry at NOD. And that bastard Kane probably knows it.

    Unless GDI finds a silver bullet to Tiberium or decide to forsake most of humanity, they might have no choice but to see what's kane's offering.
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    He is not going to take all of nod with him especially since they are not all exactly loyal to him as a person and more as a concept, also gdi is not going to let nod continue to exist anywhere near them and will get them integrated into gdi one way or the other.
     
    doruma1920 said:
    he's Kane, but that does not mean he is infallible (MY OWN FORCES), nor is he invincible.
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    I cant really recall one time we got the upper hand to him in quest

    We have made problems for lot of nod warlords but havent really fucked over him directly

    So technically so far he been infallible

    Only thing i can think of is getting access to his background
     
    Definitely speaking more generally about Kane not being infallible.

    GDI doesn't often directly fight Kane himself and Kane has learned it generally goes badly if he does, hence the multiple Tiberium wars usually ending with Kane dead, at least Temporarily.

    Plus the "My own Forces" quote is literally him having a bit of a breakdown because parts of Nod betrayed him. Again as usually happens every generation or so.

    He's very good at what he does and uses the shadows to hide what he's doing so he can play infallible but he's very much not.
     
    armentho said:
    I cant really recall one time we got the upper hand to him in quest

    We have made problems for lot of nod warlords but havent really fucked over him directly

    So technically so far he been infallible

    Only thing i can think of is getting access to his background
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    Even getting access to his background is probably at least partially a Kane plot. I was referring to the instances in the C&C games, where there's been more then one time where Kane hasn't had things go according to his plan.

    IE:

    View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92CpPdhFo-o

    I'm not saying he isn't very, very good at what he does, cause he is, nor to not go through everything he gives us with a fine tooth comb. Kane's great skills are charisma, planning, and risk management, and gaming it out I doubt Kane would risk getting what he very much wants, just to turn a knife, he's got other priorities.
     
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