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The Secrets' Crusade

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Okay, so the thing that's confusing to me is why this war is so culturally important/traumatic to the Shiplords. I mean, for all that we can see why the Uninvolved would find this deeply disturbing (both the bits about the Hjivin turning into a cross between an Uninvolved and a ravenous monster as well as the bits about an Uninvolved unilaterally breaking their noninterference policy), but from the more material perspective of the Shiplords they were fighting a war against a race - a big one, but still a mostly conventional war - that then comes to an abrupt halt because some being from a higher plane of existence lolnopes their opposing civ.

It makes sense as being a moment of major historical note, but the reaction the Shiplords have apparently had (the whole Tribute System causing genocide upon genocide for countless eons) is way the heck out of proportion to the actual effect the events we see described would have had on them.
 
I wonder if the Shiplords would have been perfectly fine with us showing up to the system and asking to be let in.
 
carterhall said:
Could the Shiplords be the de-evolved forms of the Uninvolved that struck the blow?
Like, they did what was necessary, but it was still a betrayal of the premise of the Uninvolved, so as penance they returned to the physical universe to prevent a situation like this from occurring again.
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me.me.here said:
Okay, so the thing that's confusing to me is why this war is so culturally important/traumatic to the Shiplords. I mean, for all that we can see why the Uninvolved would find this deeply disturbing (both the bits about the Hjivin turning into a cross between an Uninvolved and a ravenous monster as well as the bits about an Uninvolved unilaterally breaking their noninterference policy), but from the more material perspective of the Shiplords they were fighting a war against a race - a big one, but still a mostly conventional war - that then comes to an abrupt halt because some being from a higher plane of existence lolnopes their opposing civ.

It makes sense as being a moment of major historical note, but the reaction the Shiplords have apparently had (the whole Tribute System causing genocide upon genocide for countless eons) is way the heck out of proportion to the actual effect the events we see described would have had on them.
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Something both of you seem to have missed is that the Shiplords were referred to as "old mentors" of the Uninvolved which acted here. So they are presumably familiar with the process of becoming Uninvolved from near the beginning of the process, and thus it's entirely reasonable for them to have technology which can affect the Uninvolved/soul-based effects.
 
[X] Lea Halwood

I want to see what the other mender will see of the injuries inflicted by this critical success.
 
[X] Iris
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Nice. PR has this concept of 'Superintelligenz', which basically have two ways to evolve from a race ascending: symbiotic or parasitic. The parasitic one sucks all life from one or more galaxies before it evolves further.
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So, it is possible to access some other area/concept/space that plays not nice with the mundane reality. And Uninvolved are Uninvolved because of philosophical reasons only. Seems like the SL work on protecting base reality from being the playground of Ascended - by culling all that wouldn't play nice.
 
me.me.here said:
Okay, so the thing that's confusing to me is why this war is so culturally important/traumatic to the Shiplords. I mean, for all that we can see why the Uninvolved would find this deeply disturbing (both the bits about the Hjivin turning into a cross between an Uninvolved and a ravenous monster as well as the bits about an Uninvolved unilaterally breaking their noninterference policy), but from the more material perspective of the Shiplords they were fighting a war against a race - a big one, but still a mostly conventional war - that then comes to an abrupt halt because some being from a higher plane of existence lolnopes their opposing civ.

It makes sense as being a moment of major historical note, but the reaction the Shiplords have apparently had (the whole Tribute System causing genocide upon genocide for countless eons) is way the heck out of proportion to the actual effect the events we see described would have had on them.
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Well, their reaction to this event may have to be seen in reference to the other three major historical watersheds whose existence is implied by the other three 'reserved systems.' Furthermore, they may have been aware, or even somewhat caught up in, the Hijvin ascension and know that it represents an existential threat to life in the galaxy. A bullet they dodged, but dodged only because of the Uninvolved's power which is itself an existential threat if they choose for it to be.
 
If 'Uninvolved' is only a cultural thing instead of evolutionary, stopping the development of entities that see our material universe just as feeding/playing grounds by any means is something traumatizing.
Although, if that's the motivation of the SL, I don't see how the existing system achieves that.
 
MTB said:
If 'Uninvolved' is only a cultural thing instead of evolutionary, stopping the development of entities that see our material universe just as feeding/playing grounds by any means is something traumatizing.
Although, if that's the motivation of the SL, I don't see how the existing system achieves that.
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We've hypothesized before that the traumatization of galactic species before they go Uninvolved may have a concrete effect on their collective post-ascension gestalt minds. That is, they are unwilling to even consider confronting or antagonizing the Shiplords, because they are incapable of imagining such confrontation after all that has happened, and incapable of imagining the Shiplords as a foe that can be defeated.

The Shiplords obviously having very refined anti-Uninvolved weapon technology, possibly specifically honed to bust anything like what the Hijvin turned into, may contribute as well.
 
me.me.here said:
Okay, so the thing that's confusing to me is why this war is so culturally important/traumatic to the Shiplords. I mean, for all that we can see why the Uninvolved would find this deeply disturbing (both the bits about the Hjivin turning into a cross between an Uninvolved and a ravenous monster as well as the bits about an Uninvolved unilaterally breaking their noninterference policy), but from the more material perspective of the Shiplords they were fighting a war against a race - a big one, but still a mostly conventional war - that then comes to an abrupt halt because some being from a higher plane of existence lolnopes their opposing civ.

It makes sense as being a moment of major historical note, but the reaction the Shiplords have apparently had (the whole Tribute System causing genocide upon genocide for countless eons) is way the heck out of proportion to the actual effect the events we see described would have had on them.
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It's a failstate is my gut feeling.

"This is what happens when we don't act strongly enough to weed out this kind of behaviour, the Uninvolved convince themselves to step in instead, and that breaks things"

It's probably just that we lack the context to know what it is an Uninvolved acting in the physical realm breaks.
 
Alectai said:
It's probably just that we lack the context to know what it is an Uninvolved acting in the physical realm breaks.
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Uninvolved becoming involved is bad - flamethrower and ants bad. Here we see one of them eradicating a complete race, body and soul. If that becomes an acceptable paradigma, you are on a slippery slope when it comes to justifying interventions.
 
MTB said:
Nice. PR has this concept of 'Superintelligenz', which basically have two ways to evolve from a race ascending: symbiotic or parasitic. The parasitic one sucks all life from one or more galaxies before it evolves further.
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Wait shouldn't that be three? Mutualism/Symbiotic, Parasitism and Commensalism. Edit: Why isn't there a commensalistic option in there?
 
MTB said:
Uninvolved becoming involved is bad - flamethrower and ants bad. Here we see one of them eradicating a complete race, body and soul. If that becomes an acceptable paradigma, you are on a slippery slope when it comes to justifying interventions.
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The Hijivn were...

Slippery slope arguments are dangerous. The Uninvolved had to act as drastically as it did, here, in part because they waited as long as they did. Any lesser action at this point would have been catastrophically, existentially dangerous.

You'll see more of these...

Let's call them people.
 
Baughn said:
The Hijivn were...

Slippery slope arguments are dangerous. The Uninvolved had to act as drastically as it did, here, in part because they waited as long as they did. Any lesser action at this point would have been catastrophically, existentially dangerous.

You'll see more of these...

Let's call them people.
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Hah.

Only thing worse than cosmic genocide would have been half assing it and teaching them how to do it themselves, huh?
 
Lightwhispers said:
Or, not doing it and allowing the Hijivn to commit cosmic omniphagy. Once things got that far there were no good options.
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Which is an argument to be careful of the sliding slope argument, and a fairly general one.

If you want people to wait until the situation is extreme before they take any action against it, then there will be more extreme situations. I don't have any handy quotations for this next one, but IIRC it's also difficult to find any examples of slippery slopes actually being slippery, in real life; extending the conditions under which one may take action tends to lead to more pushback against such actions, not less.
 
[X] Lea Halwood

Yeah, decision made. I want to see Iris's reaction but I think seeing it in the third person is probably fine, but Lea's thought process will be more insightful.
 
So, if I'm reading this right, the Hijvin were becoming Slaanesh and it took one of the oldest Uninvolved going full Khorn to stop them. And from the sound of it, if they had been just a little bit slower investigating or had hesitated for even a moment, that would have been it for the universe. In response to that mess the Shiplords are now hypervigilant for any hint deamonic taint and if they so much as suspect there might be some in your general vicinity they will purify you. The lesson I'm getting here is 'never go 40k'.

[X] Lea Halwood
 
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Lightwhispers said:
Something both of you seem to have missed is that the Shiplords were referred to as "old mentors" of the Uninvolved which acted here. So they are presumably familiar with the process of becoming Uninvolved from near the beginning of the process, and thus it's entirely reasonable for them to have technology which can affect the Uninvolved/soul-based effects.
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No, I didn't miss it. It's just completely irrelevant to the point I made, which was that as best as we can tell the Shiplords were not the party that unleashed an atrocity nor the party that had an atrocity unleashed on them - and hence the Shiplords are accordingly going to be less emotionally attached to the outcome/reasoning involved in said action due to it being only indirectly connected to them. Which doesn't exactly jive with the Tribute System, which the Shiplords are very emotionally attached to, being a result of this event.

Simon_Jester said:
Furthermore, they may have been aware, or even somewhat caught up in, the Hijvin ascension and know that it represents an existential threat to life in the galaxy.
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I'm dubious about this. The timeline the Uninvolved perspective is kinda fuzzy, but they do specifically note that the war is pretty short - "tens of cycles", and that the Uninvolved hadn't seen anything different/wrong about the war at the start. I'm not 100% sure, but I'm also vaguely recalling a description of the actual process of turning into an Uninvolved that indicated it was pretty quick once the species had come to a consensus - on the order of days or single digit years.

Put together, and it indicates that the Hjivin ascension was something of a reactionary measure to the war, and that the Shiplords most likely weren't expecting that sort of escalation (since the Uninvolved certainly weren't).
 
me.me.here said:
The timeline the Uninvolved perspective is kinda fuzzy, but they do specifically note that the war is pretty short - "tens of cycles",
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I will say more on this tomorrow - trying to get to sleep at a reasonable time today - but timescales for an Uninvolved are likely to be rather different to those for almost anything else in existence.
 
me.me.here said:
No, I didn't miss it. It's just completely irrelevant to the point I made, which was that as best as we can tell the Shiplords were not the party that unleashed an atrocity nor the party that had an atrocity unleashed on them - and hence the Shiplords are accordingly going to be less emotionally attached to the outcome/reasoning involved in said action due to it being only indirectly connected to them. Which doesn't exactly jive with the Tribute System, which the Shiplords are very emotionally attached to, being a result of this event.
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You don't think a society that taught other civilizations how to become uninvolved would have an emotional reaction to a perversion of that process? Especially given it's horrific nature?
 
me.me.here said:
No, just that the reaction would be significantly less potent than if the action had been done by/to the Shiplords.
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It doesn't have to be maximally potent, only potent enough.


spikethehobbit said:
So, if I'm reading this right, the Hijvin were becoming Slaanesh and it took one of the oldest Uninvolved going full Khorn to stop them. And from the sound of it, if they had been just a little bit slower investigating or had hesitated for even a moment, that would have been it for the universe. In response to that mess the Shiplords are now hypervigilant for any hint deamonic taint and if they so much as suspect there might be some in your general vicinity they will purify you. The lesson I'm getting here is 'never go 40k'.
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I think you take the imagery too far, but as a rather overextended metaphor it does, broadly speaking, work.
 
me.me.here said:
No, just that the reaction would be significantly less potent than if the action had been done by/to the Shiplords.
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Hmm. I mean you're probably right, but the Shiplords seemed significantly invested in this whole system to a near religious degree even then. What's changed is the means. That uninvolved called them mentors and I think
The desire to make something more of the galaxy, to create something better for those that came next, that was to be treasured. That had been the first lesson your race had ever been taught by another.
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this part was also talking about them. It seems like a fairly powerful relationship and commitment by the Shiplords, not just to the people that become this Uninvolved, but likely countless others. The thing they appear to have structured their society around was perverted into something evil. That would shake anyone pretty badly, and it's not like it was just the one incident. Even these five hidden systems aren't likely the only thing shaped them on this course, just the biggest/most famous ones.

Also, they probably would have been the ones to have an atrocity happen to them along with everyone else if this thing hadn't been stopped. That kind of thing is legitimately terrifying.
 
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