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... weren't Asari as a race biotic? Or is that fanon?

They are, but being the long lived, culture rich diplomancers of the Galaxy, not everyone took time to train their biotics to combat standard. Our dear Prime Minister is an outlier at being a military genius during her Maidenhood.
 
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[X] Play it cool. Depart in your own shuttle without comment to anybody. Get off of this toothless platform beforethe shooting starts.
-[X] Call for the surrender of the "Navy". Hopefully they're more reasonable.
--[X] And make sure it's recorded for posterity.
 
[X] Play it cool. Depart in your own shuttle without comment to anybody. Get off of this toothless platform beforethe shooting starts.
-[X] Call for the surrender of the "Navy". Hopefully they're more reasonable.
--[X] And make sure it's recorded for posterity.
 
... weren't Asari as a race biotic? Or is that fanon?
Asari are biotic, but it sounds like the Lystheni have minimal experience in ground combat, minimal experience with biotics, and probably NO experience in ground combat WITH biotics. It's entirely possible they just grossly underestimated how much biotic abilities would matter in a gunfight, in the same way that Han Solo could say "hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid" when the Jedi knights were running around trying to save the galaxy literally when he was a kid.

I admit some confusion about how the Lystheni thought killing Mira "and her puppet master matriarch" would completely cripple Virmire. Oh sure, it would cause some major damage to lose their most beloved prime minister and exceptional military commander, but it wouldn't completely cripple Virmire (except for punching the questers in the gut, the face, then between the legs).
Again, the underlying assumption is simple: all societies are fundamentally autocratic. This is more or less true of the salarians. And note that the Lystheni split off from the salarian species at a time when their contact with the bulk of the galaxy's aliens was still pretty new, and that they took some pains to go to a remote reach of the galaxy where no one would bother them. They clearly didn't want much contact with non-salarians. If so, the Lystheni may have been deliberately ignorant of alien cultures even before their self-imposed isolation, so them salarian-o-morphizing alien societies would be totally unsurprising.

IF you accept as a premise that all societies are fundamentally autocratic, then no society can really have a peaceful transfer of power unless great pains are specifically taken to set it up in advance. After an autocrat dies or is removed, there will be a period of paralysis. Anyone who makes a serious attempt to exercise state power during this time will be seen as making a bid to claim the supreme power, and even unambitious people loyal to the state itself will hesitate to do anything drastic until the question "so who's in charge, anyway" has been answered.

Thus, IF you accept this core premise that the Lystheni might well take for granted without even thinking about it, it logically follows that if you can launch a successful decapitation attack against an enemy, they will almost inevitably experience a period of disorientation, chaos, and paralysis. Even in the best possible case where they recover swiftly and a new autocrat takes control, there will still be such a gap in which they are vulnerable.

[Come to think of it, the salarians reflexively thinking this way might have a LOT to do with how their particular style of espionage-heavy, infiltration-heavy, first-strike warfare developed. To salarians, war is a bit like a chess game in that if you can take out the enemy's king Dalatrass, it's likely to be all over regardless of how many other pieces they have in the field. But unlike chess, whether or not you are a success in the postwar environment depends on how many of your own pieces are left. This combination of incentives rewards both sides for leading with aggressive gambits that are likely to result in a swift 'checkmate.' ]

Ok maybe I'm being unfair in my judgement since it might not be public knowledge what happens if the PM is unable to continue their duties, but you'd think spies could figure out the most basic of contingency plans the enemy has in place; like the chain of command! I mean c'mon, do they think our people can't make independent decisions or something
They think our people either won't make independent decisions, or will make independent decisions but will make decisions calculated to maximize their chances of securing the 'throne' in the new power vacuum... Or won't dare to make independent decisions, for fear of being mistaken for ambitious underlings planning to seize the 'throne,' and killed off by other underlings.

It's not about brainlessness, it's about the period of paralysis that ensues in almost any dictatorship whenever the dictator dies.

Unless we find proof of diplomatic communications between the Lystheni and other nutjobs, or even the Rachni, then I don't understand how they expected to survive any sort of Virminian breakdown. I mean surely they didn't expect to absorb our population into their crazy cult, right? Let alone believe they have the capacity to fight off the Rachni themselves.
Maybe they just assumed that if Virmire itself fell, the rachni, who are busy elsewhere, would just stop pushing and not spread out into Sentry Omega far enough to catch the Lystheni. Maybe they have a plan to evacuate deeper into the cluster and just wait until all this blows over.

E: I'm also curious; they understand the stereotypical dynamic between asari maiden and matriarch, but they did not understand that Mira is an asari (aka a biotic) commando that is very skilled and talented? Her background (at least part of it) should be public record, and spies should've found at least one thing that wasn't public record. Lystheni, did you fellows remove your brains? Or did you just use your nuclear power generators to radiate your brains?
Older 'mother figure' leaders telling younger 'daughter figure' leaders what to do is something salarians instinctively understand, because the mother-daughter relationship is very much a ruler-subordinate relationship in salarian society. So that was easy for them to infer; they may NOT have known how maiden-matriarch interactions commonly work among asari and STILL 'deduced' that Kirai was pulling Mira's strings.

At the same time, their only strong sources for just how dangerous a biotic commando is, and their literally magical ability to deflect bullets by wiggling their fingers, would be popular entertainment (which they do not consume) from Virmire (which they seldom visit), plus multi-century-old reference books that they may or may not be interpreting as fully factual.

I'm quite prepared to believe they knew Mira had a background as a commando, but that is why:
1) They had like eight guys pointing guns at Mira,
2) They also threatened Kirai, which they figured would be an effective threat to make Mira AND her bodyguards stand down, since Kirai is supposedly the real brains of the outfit and Mira supposedly knows this.

They were not expecting the part where Mira could lolnope and no-sell their eight guys with guns, because that is not normal even for elite commandos, except for elite commandos who can raise deflector shields by wiggling their fingers, which is something of an outside context problem for the Lystheni.

Severe cultural disconnects can sometimes result in pretty great gaps in the understanding of what is and is not possible.
 
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[blinks]

[takes deep breath]

[cries]
Sorry. I have to have some innovations for communications technology in between, "lasers," and, "quantum entanglement," and neither games nor wiki give me help there. If it helps, laser comms do exist, it's just that they're not easily person-portable.
You've got an extra speech mark there.
Danke.
Will Mira's Martial stat be applied to the combat roll regardless of which action we take @PoptartProdigy?
Once the fight starts, there's no reason not to be coordinating things, so yes.
Sister I need your blood! >:3
I actually don't know what it means apart from being a meme.
Warhammer 40,000 being gratuitously and unnecessarily grimdark even by 40K's standards.

Under the influence of a particularly despised writer for the universe, the Fifth Edition army book for the Grey Knights army contained a scene of them slaughtering a bunch of Sisters of Battle so that they could use their blood as armor enhancements. The Grey Knights are not Chaos-aligned, despite what a reasonable person might conclude from this story, and are in fact supposed to be the Emperor's most devoted servants. They did this on account of the sister's faith being so strong it made them immune to Chaos's temptation, and the Grey Knights wanted that.

Now, think about that for a second. The Emperor's most devoted servants -- those, one might say, whose faith was strongest, and explicitly to that point noted to be immune, not resistant, immune to Chaos's influence -- murdering a bunch of particularly faithful battle nuns to use their blood as armor enhancements...to protect themselves from Chaos's influence.

It was controversial, to the extent that Games Workshop swiftly retconned it at the first available opportunity to the Sisters of Battle nobly dying holding the line while the Grey Knights went after the objective. But, as with many things Games Workshop would rather be forgotten, it lives on in the memes.
I don't think we'd need to be so blatant to take advantage. Though note, Kreia Kirai will be the assumed power behind us, not Marae. She has a history as the much higher level political player. Heh. I wonder if she followed our orders to practice with a pistol?


And I gather it's "fairly common" as in the sense of "the basis of Asari society and hierarchy, with deference to Matriarchs ingrained to a near-instinctual level".


Question, if you don't mind the peek behind the curtain. Did you make rolls for this in the background (especially how well Mira and the assorted Virmiran Marines coped with sudden combat) or is it narrative-based at this time?
I made a roll. Unless there was a three-degree failure, every Lystheni was dying. There was a two-degree success, so it went off without a hitch.
... weren't Asari as a race biotic? Or is that fanon?
They are, but not all are combat-trained. Extremely few are, in fact.
Again, the underlying assumption is simple: all societies are fundamentally autocratic. This is more or less true of the salarians. And note that the Lystheni split off from the salarian species at a time when their contact with the bulk of the galaxy's aliens was still pretty new, and that they took some pains to go to a remote reach of the galaxy where no one would bother them. They clearly didn't want much contact with non-salarians. If so, the Lystheni may have been deliberately ignorant of alien cultures even before their self-imposed isolation, so them salarian-o-morphizing alien societies would be totally unsurprising.

IF you accept as a premise that all societies are fundamentally autocratic, then no society can really have a peaceful transfer of power unless great pains are specifically taken to set it up in advance. After an autocrat dies or is removed, there will be a period of paralysis. Anyone who makes a serious attempt to exercise state power during this time will be seen as making a bid to claim the supreme power, and even unambitious people loyal to the state itself will hesitate to do anything drastic until the question "so who's in charge, anyway" has been answered.

Thus, IF you accept this core premise that the Lystheni might well take for granted without even thinking about it, it logically follows that if you can launch a successful decapitation attack against an enemy, they will almost inevitably experience a period of disorientation, chaos, and paralysis. Even in the best possible case where they recover swiftly and a new autocrat takes control, there will still be such a gap in which they are vulnerable.

[Come to think of it, the salarians reflexively thinking this way might have a LOT to do with how their particular style of espionage-heavy, infiltration-heavy, first-strike warfare developed. To salarians, war is a bit like a chess game in that if you can take out the enemy's king Dalatrass, it's likely to be all over regardless of how many other pieces they have in the field. But unlike chess, whether or not you are a success in the postwar environment depends on how many of your own pieces are left. This combination of incentives rewards both sides for leading with aggressive gambits that are likely to result in a swift 'checkmate.' ]
Also worth noting that this is one place where Virmire's unique form of governance is going to bat for them. The only other representative republic in the galaxy is the Republic of Rannoch, which is again a very different kind of republic. While the Premier is more figurehead than head of state, the elections upon turnover are still characterized by political and family power blocs engaging in some particularly brutal jockeying for position. Combine the Lystheni's understanding of that government form with the fact that Mira until recently was basically an elected dictator (and arguably, given unchecked veto authority, still is) who participates extensively in the management of her government, and you can see why they might feel somewhat justified in concluding that taking her out would lead to significant exploitable chaos.
1) They had like eight guys pointing guns at Mira,
Four. Two guards, the Dalatrass, and the aide.
 
Combine the Lystheni's understanding of that government form with the fact that Mira until recently was basically an elected dictator (and arguably, given unchecked veto authority, still is) who participates extensively in the management of her government, and you can see why they might feel somewhat justified in concluding that taking her out would lead to significant exploitable chaos.
They're probably more right than Mira assumes, but not as right as they assume. On that note, who is Deputy Prime Minister, therefore leading the Virmire Government while we're away negotiating with lunatics, and also next in line as head of state?

(Which role incidentally, coming from the Commonwealth government tradition, still sounds odd to my ears for the position of Prime Minister).
 
Once the fight starts, there's no reason not to be coordinating things, so yes.
Uh, I hate to be that guy, but...

If we don't have a comm laser on this glorified tin can, there definitely IS a reason not to be coordinating things, namely that apparently the Lytheni ships will be able to tell we're coaching our fleet. At which point they can reasonably assume Virmire is in control of the station, and shooting us full of torpedoes starts to sound like a better idea.

Conversely, I am really surprised if there isn't a comm laser on this station. Lasers are not that hard to build compared to, oh, fusion reactors, and they're a pretty foolproof, reliable way to communicate with distant objects. I mean, basically we're just talking about a glorified signal lamp; it might not be possible to make a useful ship-to-ship range device man-portable, but it should be possible to bolt one to the station itself.

Four. Two guards, the Dalatrass, and the aide.
Okay to be fair that is kind of weaksauce and dumb then. I thought they had more guns for their kidnapping attempt, especially since at least one of the people in the opposing party is a little wrinkly old salamander-lady, and apparently the badass pistol-packing granny kind of little old lady either.
 
Also worth noting that this is one place where Virmire's unique form of governance is going to bat for them. The only other representative republic in the galaxy is the Republic of Rannoch, which is again a very different kind of republic. While the Premier is more figurehead than head of state, the elections upon turnover are still characterized by political and family power blocs engaging in some particularly brutal jockeying for position. Combine the Lystheni's understanding of that government form with the fact that Mira until recently was basically an elected dictator (and arguably, given unchecked veto authority, still is) who participates extensively in the management of her government, and you can see why they might feel somewhat justified in concluding that taking her out would lead to significant exploitable chaos.

There is a case to be made that triggering political chaos while enraging the population of a polity that has a fleet waiting to start an invasion is not a great idea. You probably won't get enough chaos to stop the execution of an already made invasion plan, but if the admiral is feeling vengeful there is likely not going to be anyone to remind him he's supposed to be minimizing civilian casualties. They where clearly expecting to utterly paralyze a navy waiting for the word go to launch an invasion, to the point that they would not launch it on the admirals own initiative in response to murdering a popular head of sate during negations. That is a rather optimistic expectation.

Then again they also seemed to think a cruiser or two and a handful of frigates and corvettes could take us out if they had the element of surprise. If they had good reason to expect their ploy to be destabilizing this does shift the nature of their mistake. They seem to be putting way too much faith in standard Salarian tactics of surprise and decapitation. They assumed a decapitation strike would leave the enemy 100% paralyzed, and think surprise is enough of a force multiplier for them to take us out. They are mistaking fantastic force multipliers for "I win buttons." yes surprise and decapitation are super great force multipliers, but they still need force to multiply. It's the kind of mistake I could see someone with decent intrigue but terrible martial and no first hand experience with foreign governments or military operations to make. Which very much seems to be the lysnthi leadership.
 
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They're probably more right than Mira assumes, but not as right as they assume. On that note, who is Deputy Prime Minister, therefore leading the Virmire Government while we're away negotiating with lunatics, and also next in line as head of state?

(Which role incidentally, coming from the Commonwealth government tradition, still sounds odd to my ears for the position of Prime Minister).
At the moment the Minister of War assumes command in the event of the PM's death.
Uh, I hate to be that guy, but...

If we don't have a comm laser on this glorified tin can, there definitely IS a reason not to be coordinating things, namely that apparently the Lytheni ships will be able to tell we're coaching our fleet. At which point they can reasonably assume Virmire is in control of the station, and shooting us full of torpedoes starts to sound like a better idea.
They can reasonably assume you to be in control of the station from the moment you start shooting, really. Otherwise they'd be able to establish contact with their Dalatrass and confirm the opposite. Being shot with torpedoes is almost certainly an inevitability no matter what you do.
Conversely, I am really surprised if there isn't a comm laser on this station. Lasers are not that hard to build compared to, oh, fusion reactors, and they're a pretty foolproof, reliable way to communicate with distant objects. I mean, basically we're just talking about a glorified signal lamp; it might not be possible to make a useful ship-to-ship range device man-portable, but it should be possible to bolt one to the station itself.
Again, having to cleave to canon here.
 
They can reasonably assume you to be in control of the station from the moment you start shooting, really. Otherwise they'd be able to establish contact with their Dalatrass and confirm the opposite. Being shot with torpedoes is almost certainly an inevitability no matter what you do.

could we muddy the wattesr with ECM? make it look like the station is still contested or something? Jamming so they can't talk to the station period to confirm one way or the other.
 
I'm going to admit I'm mildly disappointed that Kirai survived.

I propose that from now on she stands directly in front of us during meetings.

It's worth noting that while Kirai was able to put up a barrier wall which divided the room in half. It was too late to be of much use (Martial score of 4), but she can probably do some quite impressive things with her biotics.

They can reasonably assume you to be in control of the station from the moment you start shooting, really. Otherwise they'd be able to establish contact with their Dalatrass and confirm the opposite. Being shot with torpedoes is almost certainly an inevitability no matter what you do.
Restricted-direction radio transmission is a thing 20th Century Earth is capable of. Mostly, I (and I suspect others) are hoping to be able to get the "do unto others before they do unto us" message to our fleet in a way that the Lystheni don't know what's going on until shooting starts. (Or maybe just before, since a certain amount of prep will be necessary.)
And yeah, torpedoes are kinda inevitable, which is why I'm thinking that everyone who can will be in vac-sealed gear, and possibly very near the shuttles, just in case the platform takes too many hits. (Or escape pods, if the platform has those.)
 
They can reasonably assume you to be in control of the station from the moment you start shooting, really. Otherwise they'd be able to establish contact with their Dalatrass and confirm the opposite. Being shot with torpedoes is almost certainly an inevitability no matter what you do.

It should be noted though that they can't confirm if the Dalatress is dead or a hostage, so even realizing we have full control of the station they may be hesitant to fire upon it.
 
[X] Shoot first, shoot often. Sucker punch the Lystheni with an all-out assault. You possess the advantage of quality. An alpha strike could easily burn half of the Lystheni's ships before they get their engines started, and secure the battle.
 
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[X] Play it cool. Depart in your own shuttle without comment to anybody. Get off of this toothless platform beforethe shooting starts.
-[X] Call for the surrender of the "Navy". Hopefully they're more reasonable.
--[X] And make sure it's recorded for posterity.
 
[X] Shoot first, shoot often. Sucker punch the Lystheni with an all-out assault. You possess the advantage of quality. An alpha strike could easily burn half of the Lystheni's ships before they get their engines started, and secure the battle.
 
Again, having to cleave to canon here.
[blinks]

[takes deep breath]

What part of canon tells us that frigate/cruiser-sized space stations don't have a communications laser in the Rachni War era? The technology physically exists, lasers capable of being detected across the kind of distances that we're likely dealing with are bulky but not so bulky they wouldn't fit on the ship. I mean, a radio antenna capable of sending messages those distances is ALSO rather bulky, it's not like those fit in a vest pocket.

The raw technology of comm lasers is literally a 20th century technology, it's not "too high tech" for a civilization that has, say, CD players, let alone all the stuff even our 'pre-game' Mass Effect society has. Yes, I get that you want to create "steps on the tech tree" between 'Rachni War tech' and the quantum entanglement comms of the game era, but this just doesn't make sense. It's like saying that a well equipped wilderness expedition in an alt-historical Wild West setting doesn't have a hatchet because hatchet technology is too advanced.

If the station doesn't have a laser communicator, a more likely explanation is that it was simply removed prior to the negotiations. For maximum irony, Mira might have insisted on that step due to being worried about the Lystheni coordinating some kind of secret action with their fleet without our fleet knowing about it. :p

could we muddy the wattesr with ECM? make it look like the station is still contested or something? Jamming so they can't talk to the station period to confirm one way or the other.
And yeah, telling our ships to try and deliberately jam the Lystheni's communications with the station by drowning the Lystheni ships in static sounds like a good idea. If the Lystheni are making a mistake because they're projecting that we'd be totally paralyzed by a decapitation strike, it is likely that they will be far less inclined to do anything that might risk killing the Dalatrass unless they are sure that either the Dalatrass wants them to do it, or unless they know the Dalatrass has fallen into our hands.

It should be noted though that they can't confirm if the Dalatress is dead or a hostage, so even realizing we have full control of the station they may be hesitant to fire upon it.
I mean, as I pointed out... if the Lystheni themselves won't hesitate to take decisive action that results in getting the Dalatrass killed, it's kind of surprising that they would expect us to hesitate to take decisive action just because the elective dictator got killed or kidnapped. Possible, but surprising.
 
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[X] Shoot first, shoot often. Sucker punch the Lystheni with an all-out assault. You possess the advantage of quality. An alpha strike could easily burn half of the Lystheni's ships before they get their engines started, and secure the battle.
 
*looks into thread* Hey guys, how have the negotiations been coming alo....


:wtf::wtf::wtf:
Well. That certainly simplifies issues. My unreserved apologies to @pbluekan.
Looks like the lystheni dalatrass is not as old as we originally thought. She compensates for that with the arrogance of youth, though.
Change of plans.

VOTE
[X] Shoot first, shoot often. Sucker punch the Lystheni with an all-out assault. You possess the advantage of quality. An alpha strike could easily burn half of the Lystheni's ships before they get their engines started, and secure the battle.

We have contingency armor/spacesuits et cetera on our shuttle.
Just put everyone in hardsuits, including the dalatrass, and wait out the combat in the most armored portions of the station.
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Explicit kidnapping attempt by the head of state and head of government of the lystheni draws maximum response, and our first responsibility is to our own people. Neutralize the military threat first, turn them into Puerto Rico/Micronesia later. Sucks for the lystheni spacers, but they're not our primary responsibility.

Probably going to have to fight one heck of a shadow war to control the insurgency I expect, but that's Shurna's problem

Looks like the lystheni intelligence pool is about as shallow as I feared.
And they spent so much time spying on our military and science that they did not actually second any analysts to considering what our form of government meant.

To be fair, Mira DID come to power in a military coup, so I can see where a superficial look might have suggested that kidnapping or killing her would throw Virmire into chaos. Still, I would like to find out if they can wave indoctrination as an excuse, or if they were just that bad.
And whether they've been cloning/mass-producing agents for the manpower to even attempt a takeover of a bigger state.
 
[X] Shoot first, shoot often. Sucker punch the Lystheni with an all-out assault. You possess the advantage of quality. An alpha strike could easily burn half of the Lystheni's ships before they get their engines started, and secure the battle.
 
I think we may have finally found someone worse than Cerberus at accomplishing things.

If Cerberus runs a taco cart, it goes rogue and kills all the Cerberus personnel on site.

If the Lystheni run a taco cart, the Lystheni personnel on site are perfectly safe... but they provoke a massive war with an overwhelming, hostile, and unforgiving enemy that kills all the other Lystheni personnel.

At least most of Cerberus's disastrous fuckups only killed everyone in the immediate vicinity. :p
 
Probably going to have to fight one heck of a shadow war to control the insurgency I expect, but that's Shurna's problem

Unless I missed a zero or two in their population figure, we have more soldiers than they have people. An enforced buddy system where each and every one of them gets a soldier buddy is within our capabilities. They are a city state on a planet more than a planetary government.
 
There is overconfidence and then there is a lack of tactical insight that would make even a Krogan flinch.
Remember when I pointed out how small their population is?
When you have no specialists, and everything is compartmentalized to avoid giving any single person a clear picture?
Your analyses suffer.

Furthermore, salarians are short-lived and we have no reason to think the current Dalatrass is anything other than a very old woman.
Not quite:
The Dalatrass calmly produces a pistol from within her robes and levels it at you. "Yes, I quite am. I am...tired of this charade." She gives you a thin smile, smoothing out her hunched posture.
Scumsucker was faking. Ten to one she's in makeup and shit.
I suspect the old dalatrass is dead, and this is her successor.
We may need to be ready for one or more Lystheni warships trying to board the platform in a desperate attempt to rescue the Dalatrass, though.
I'd be very surprised to find any of their ships survive long enough to do that.
Turn 16
Intrigue: Digging For Receipts
Rolled: 97+12(Minister)=109. Needed: 46. Greater Critical Success
.

Reading between the lines, Shurna's people had quite the adventure getting their hands on this data.

With the command you now possess over the Lystheni's transmissions, it wasn't difficult for them to get their hands on the names of some of the Lystheni's command staff. What military they have appears, at first glance, to be somewhat part-time; partially due to their population bottleneck imposed by resource limitations, and partially because they appear to be trying to obscure who's a member of their navy by always having deployments be excused as, "business trips." You haven't yet found anybody who doesn't fit in their duty rotations around a full-time job elsewhere in Lystheni society.

It is...stunningly inefficient, yet entirely typical of the paranoia you now expect from Lystheni.
The exciting bit appears to be their slow work at infiltrating this military. It turns out that, with a bit of makeup, your salarians can pass for the Lystheni's dominant phenotype, and from there it was a matter of a few extremely careful forays into their wider society to ask some leading questions.

Only for them to find that this was not, in fact, the way to go about things.

Vague questions led to the vague answers people give to members of their in-group who can be presumed to already know necessary context, which went back to your analysts for cross-checking. Then those vague questions got a little more specific, and thus so did the answers. Pass by pass, your agents verified small pieces of data, until they had a clear picture of the nature of the Lystheni Navy.

Namely, that nobody even in the navy knows how big it is or what's in it! Everything is compartmentalized. Nobody knows everything. It's maddening.

And then, one of your agents catches an idle comment about Requisitions being a pain in the cloaca about getting materials to them on-time, and something clicks. A week of reviewing surveillance footage later, your agents finally get their lead.

As it turned out, only two people in Lystheni society have enough information to paint an accurate picture of their fleet's numbers and composition. The Dalatrass...and her High Admiral. A male who apparently died several years ago in an industrial accident...and yet has the curious habit of personally buying every bulk purchase of the material you've identified as going to the Lystheni navy, every time under a different name.

Stunningly inefficient. Entirely typical of their usual paranoia.
And yet, not paranoid enough, because when your agents make a covert raid on his home...

Itemized fleet roster for Lystheni navy secured, complete with vessel blueprints. At some point, the Lystheni stole your frigate designs, because they've reproduced them whole cloth. Their corvettes and light cruiser model, on the other hand, are their own make, and pathetic models at that. The entire thing put together is about the size of the Explorer Corps, and by the looks of it, that's all that the Lystheni can currently support without complete industrial collapse. -32,000 credits.
Of all their ships, the only ones that even approach our quality are the frigate designs they stole from us; their corvettes and light cruiser are crap compared to ours. Manned by part-time militia with no naval experience versus our fulltime veteran spacers.

They've literally never fought a space battle in living memory.
This is going to hurt them a lot worse than it hurts us.
Honestly I'm worried that the Lystheni, paranoid as they are, may begin purging their data banks if we try to blitzkrieg into their territory. I'd rather play it cool and attempt to capture VIPs to ensure that we still have some sources of information on them and their discoveries no matter what.
Let them.
The important part is to eliminate the military threat. Intelligence is an optional bonus.
And frankly, I doubt they can wipe everything from forensics. The Reapers didn't, and they physically destroyed shit.

Seriously, just get on the shuttle, force the Dalatress at gunpoint to record a message of her ordering the local troops to stand down, go home and broadcast another pre-recorded message of her confirming she's still alive and ordering them to surrender. They apparently can't function without her - they have to surrender, and we don't blow up a bunch of ships that are about to become our ships.
A hundred to one she has actual code phrases for "I am under duress, activate contingency X" or "If I do not include phrase A in any communication, activate contingency Y". No point risking giving her any opportunity for detailed coordination of her forces.
Not before we let Shurna at her.

Ok, been thinking on this. Specifically, why does the Dalatress think that our government would be crippled if she kills us?
To be fair, do recall that Mira came to power in a military coup, put her friends and subordinates in most Ministerial positions, and then spent the next seven to eight years in what was essentially a purge of all supporters of the old regime. Sure, we said it was for reasons of corruption, but from the superficial view of an outsider with little political experience, it looked like she was simply consolidating her power base.

And the fear of the corporations would have supported such a view anyway. Confirmation bias.
But that implies that the Dalatress doesn't have a successor. But how could that work? Clearly she's not the first Dalatress of the Lystheni. Two options I can think of...
Or?
This Dalatrass is new to her position, everything we were looking at is makeup, and this is the arrogant action of a sheltered heiress out to make a name for herself. This is possibly supported by the part where she straightens up and stops looking frail.
 
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The Dalatrass calmly produces a pistol from within her robes and levels it at you. "Yes, I quite am. I am...tired of this charade." She gives you a thin smile, smoothing out her hunched posture. "I must admit, I was almost alarmed when your fleets began moving into position at our border. Spoiled our plans for a preemptive strike quite thoroughly. Imagine my delight when you threw away your advantage for the sake of negotiations."
It should be noted that the Lystheni were planning to attack us fairly soon.
 
This Dalatrass is new to her position, everything we were looking at is makeup, and this is the arrogant action of a sheltered heiress out to make a name for herself. This is possibly supported by the part where she straightens up and stops looking frail.

Why would she pretend to be the old woman though? What does it gain her over presenting herself as the new Dalatrass? No, if this is a young Salarian in make-up, she almost has to be a body double.
 
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