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The Secrets' Crusade

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Shwaggy said:
-Though of course being able to solve the situation with our fancy totally-not-magic and prior knowledge of how it turned out doesn't necessarily mean we could have done it right in their place.
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I will state for the record that humanity at is current point in quest would have been able to annihilate what made the Sphere so horrific with relative ease. But detection, reaction and eventual cure would rely 100% on Practice. Mending specifically, actually, and you've seen smaller scale actions of the type that would be required.

Shwaggy said:
[] Write-in
-To try and think outside the box here, perhaps the mistake is trying to fix it all by themselves. Were there any other races around at that time they might have called in for aid?
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There were, but none even close to the level of the Shiplords' power (maybe with the exception of the Neras). Something that I've danced around a little is this: there were a not-insignificant number of active interstellar polities in the space between the Shiplords and the Sphere. Part of the early stages of the war involved the Shiplords trying desperately and largely futilely to protect them from the Sphere's invasion. They managed to get refugees out as it became clear that holding those systems was untenable against an enemy with active War Fleets, the technological capacity to build mobile Orrerys same as the Shiplords, and massive and far 'closer' Regular Fleet type forces that they would drop detachments of hundreds to thousands out at the boundary of the SEZ and boost at max drive into it until they were out of War Fleet range. At which point everything inside of the SEZ would either die, or something even more horrible. I'm dancing around the latter specific because I'd like to describe it in narration, but I expect you can all guess.

The War of the Sphere wasn't the Hjivin vs the Shiplords. It was the Hjivin vs The Rest of the Galaxy. And they very nearly won.

Faraway-R said:
What I am asking - what precisely do the Shiplords have cultural trauma against? What is the problem this scenario is angling to solve?

If it's about finding a way to prevent the Uninvolved interfering in worldly matters then it's a Catch-22 scenario in the first place.
---Failing to defeat Hjvin Sphere in a timely manner will have the Uninvolved eradicate the Hjvin Sphere in a perversion of what they are supposed to be;
---Defeating the Hjvin Sphere in a timely manner would likely require confronting the core of the plan, creation of a perversion of what Uninvolved supposed to be.

Either way, the cultural trauma related to Uninvolved will take place... Or if I am reading it right, it will be a cultural trauma that was pre-existent since the times before even the Uninvolved but somehow related to what they did.
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You're not entirely sure. In truth, you're not sure if the Shiplords really know at this point. The simulations appear well used, as all aspects of the last memory system were, but they're approaching this from a cultural viewpoint so very different to that of humanity. Remember what the mission you accepted was, why the Adamant was sent here. The Uninvolved believe that something in these places might be able to find another way out of the war you've begun. Another way to stop the Shiplords, and to humble them. If you can find a different way out of this scenario, then it would be proof that humanity can do what the last message from the Regulars in the 3BOS asked you to do. How you apply that? You're not sure. But it would be actual evidence, and something that you don't think the Shiplords could even attempt to ignore.

I will say this, though. The trigger point for the Shiplords wasn't what the Hjivin were becoming, it was how they were ended. An Uninvolved Involved itself, and a race died. Something in that act activated a complex of fear and another emotion that Mandy guesstimates to be loss from the Shiplords that's so deeply rooted in their cultural identity that it's never described. It simply is.

Faraway-R said:
That is, after all, why they insisted on the people in question deactivating their nanites (IIRC, it's been a while) before any negotiations would properly continue.
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You remember correctly, yes. I wish the pauses hadn't ended up so long.
 
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[x] Contact Fleets were diplomats as much as anything else, but were any of their number ever as skilled as you? What might happen if you simply ask?

I think I'll go with this for now. Though it runs the risk of us showing the shiplords that this potential solution was unavailable to the via Practice, it does show that solutions do exist. Further who is to say we will absolutely need practice? Amanda is a very good diplomat and the power of just asking something really isn't to be underestimated. We know the Hjivin were hiding something but not necessarily why which is pretty important in itself. Was it because they had malicious plans already made, or we they simply worried about how it would look to others?

I could be convinced to change my mind but this seems the most radical departure from what they have probably tried thus far.
 
Snowfire said:
If you can find a different way out of this scenario, then it would be proof that humanity can do what the last message from the Regulars in the 3BOS asked you to do. How you apply that? You're not sure. But it would be actual evidence, and something that you don't think the Shiplords could even attempt to ignore.
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One thing that is niggling at me: What is the mechanism for the scenario to have a different way out? How does a (presumably) Shiplord-built system handle actions that never happened and no Shiplord would consider?
 
...
Maybe this is just because of extrapolating from current tech and how it works...
But it strikes me as telling that the Shiplords are more capable of DOING harm, then of PRVENTING harm.
But I'm seeing how this fits together, I think?
Shiplords know that the Hjivin at some point went full on freaky monster on them. More importantly, before that they were basically throwing the Shiplord's playbook at them, and basically winning because the Shiplords can hurt better then they protect. And as if losing that fight wasn't bad enough, God suddenly shows up to SMITE the monsters...Which just goes to show the Shiplords that they are BADLY outgunned if they want to protect the Galaxy from a Hjivin from happening again. Because what if God has a pet project like the Hjivin building up strength?
Can't leave weaker polities around or they get eaten by Hjivin. Can't ascend themselves to become God because there are More Gods waiting and there's no garuntee they can win that fight.
...
I feel like Shiplords are...Not QUITE in the same emotional headspace as that famous 'YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!' rant, but they might have been always somewhat close to it, and this event was just...So bad it kicked them over the edge. Like they considered themselves the Galaxy's shield, or intended to be something like it, and found a case where...They just...Couldn't protect. The BEST thing they could do was stomp it down when they saw it but it involved nonsense that they couldn't actually tell what was up.
So they double down on the military, on the intrigue, and add multiple doses of ruthlessness to ensure nothing goes wrong. But what they LACK, fundamentally, is the understanding that the Gods had to see where/how the Hjivin went wrong. Humans have it because they're bonded to the Uninvolved Dragons, and perhaps for some time before they went freaky the Hjivin probably had it as well...
But while Amanda could HAPPILY sell the Shiplords Practice, and how to use it, and with it, for the first time, a BETTER WAY then going full Jackboot on the Galaxy...IDK if the Shiplords would be willing to even sanction that use.
MORE disconcertingly, the Shiplords HAVE a supply of humanity, or at least they HAD one, that should in theory give them an in to Practice, and finally figure out this Last Secret... The Shiplords don't seem to be able to do anything better then the fear/hate/pain stuff. Like whatever they do in the Practice sphere it's dark and torturous and horrible, even when they're trying to use it for healing, as we saw with the Medicant.
 
Zaealix said:
...
Maybe this is just because of extrapolating from current tech and how it works...
But it strikes me as telling that the Shiplords are more capable of DOING harm, then of PRVENTING harm.
But I'm seeing how this fits together, I think?
Shiplords know that the Hjivin at some point went full on freaky monster on them. More importantly, before that they were basically throwing the Shiplord's playbook at them, and basically winning because the Shiplords can hurt better then they protect.
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You're probably not wrong, but to a large extent I think this is because the technology of the setting tends to favor offense over defense.

A War Fleet can destroy pretty much any solar system not covered by something like humanity's Orrery system. Furthermore, War Fleets are very mobile, while Orrery systems have to be deployed to fight effectively as far as we can determine. Therefore, it is going to be hard to defend everything when the enemy has War Fleets.

And as if losing that fight wasn't bad enough, God suddenly shows up to SMITE the monsters...Which just goes to show the Shiplords that they are BADLY outgunned if they want to protect the Galaxy from a Hjivin from happening again. Because what if God has a pet project like the Hjivin building up strength?
Can't leave weaker polities around or they get eaten by Hjivin. Can't ascend themselves to become God because there are More Gods waiting and there's no garuntee they can win that fight.
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...I don't think that's the core of the Shiplord craziness regarding the Uninvolved.
 
Perhaps the Shiplords came from the Second Secret, they had creators that created them like Humanity with the Dragons. What their creators created them for who knows, but the loss of their creators could be the cause of their cultural trauma. What would the Dragons be with no Humanity?
 
...can someone clear some confusion for me?

I didn't participate in the first quest, so references to the things that happened there may be lost on me.
Snowfire said:
We know how this war ended, what the Sphere was trying to create and the horrors they were willing to commit to do so. But did they start from that place, or did the Shiplords make them become that? Surely that has to be our first question.
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It is a very good question! Can I get the current understanding of the chronology of the Hjivin war? Because I was under the impression that the actions that led to their destruction were in response to the war waged with the Shiplords that they weren't winning fast or decisively enough. An act born of desperation or necessity, rather than something that was intended all along. The imprint we got through Amanda described them as none too happy with the process.

And yet, this very update talks about the Hjivin desiring that result from the point of the first contact with the Shiplords:
Snowfire said:
We know what the Hjivin are now,: a wave of nausea surged across the link as you all remembered what you'd seen. :We know what they want, and how they...just don't seem to care what it costs.:
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Snowfire said:
You knew that in true history, the Shiplord whose form you were currently wearing had chosen to undertake a limited covert probe into the nature of what the Sphere was hiding. It had succeeded, but not without consequence, and the whole point of this was to try something different. And you knew, as everyone who had likely ever entered this room, what the Hjivin truly had to hide.
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So what happened there?
Snowfire said:
:It has to be something cultural.: You answered immediately. :We know the Tribute Fleets hold a place of near-reverence within their culture; this could be related. It's hypocrisy at a truly awesome scale, of course, but that's nothing new. There is a difference between predictive modelling and their chosen forms of control, of course, but either is oppression on a scale where comparisons lose meaning.:
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Snowfire said:
From a beginning of curiosity came concern, then suspicion, to be followed by horror as the full truth of the facade was revealed. A desperate escape, from the creations of brilliant minds seeking to chain anything that would stand against how they saw reality, a slavery as subtle as it was obscene. A slavery you had seen variants of - how had they rationalised the use of such things in your present?

Then came war. A war that shook the pillars of the galaxy, with all the horrors that you knew the one your actions had largely begun would bring. Worlds broke and stars burned, scorching entire systems in their death throes.
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These quotes talk of "slavery", which as I understand refers to nanotechnology the Shiplords use to plant their agents among the younger races. I am not sure I got the point about the Tribulary Fleets; what's the connection there?

The later quote also mentions concern, suspicion, and horror. Whose feelings are those? Ours? Is the "desperate escape" about the Hjivin trying to escape the Shiplord paradigm by any means necessary? Was the cause for war that the Shiplords decided to pry into a "cultural secret" via the nanotechnology brainwashing, which greatly escalated the conflict?

We talk as if we knew all along about what the Hjivin wanted, or what they had to hide, but we also admit to not knowing if they would have become that without the threat of the Shiplords. Isn't there a contradiction between two statements?

If what they hid was their secret plan to become the Great Goo Locusts, we'd have no doubt about whether "they started from that place"; and if they didn't, then what was it that they were hiding?
 
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Nevill said:
It is a very good question! Can I get the current understanding of the chronology of the Hjivin war? Because I was under the impression that the actions that led to their destruction were in response to the war waged with the Shiplords that they weren't winning fast or decisively enough. An act born of desperation or necessity, rather than something that was intended all along. The imprint we got through Amanda described them as none too happy with the process.
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I was going to field this one, because I have permission to share what would have been spoilers before this update. But I decided to check my facts with Snowfire before posting it and he said he wanted to yoink what I wrote to use in his info post. :p My post would have, in fact, been wrong in some subtle ways, so I'm okay with this.

So I'll just say that you'll definitely get this answer.
 
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The War of the Hjivin Sphere - Part 1
  • Informational
    • The War of the Hjivin Sphere was the largest armed conflict in known galactic history, a meeting of powers close enough to be peers and fully possessed of all the horrors of Secrets-based warfare on such a scale. It is the only example of this form of warfare since the establishment of Shiplord dominion over the galaxy, with a confirmed death toll reaching well into the hundreds of billions. This figure does not include the consequences of the singular Involvement that brought the conflict to a sudden and stunning conclusion.

    The Hjivin were a fully fledged interstellar power at the time of Shiplord first contact, and one in the process of rapid expansion. They were not limited to uninhabited systems, either, absorbing preexisting civilisation with the same ease as Second Secret technologies allowed them to terraform barren or unusable environments. On an initial glance, these annexed worlds all seemed quite content with the arrangement, their cultures still basically in place and autonomous under Hjivin suzerainty.

    When Contact's analysts looked closer, however, they found pieces missing in what should have been a cultural melting pot. Further examination at the order of the Contact Fleet's commander led them steadily towards the truth, until a final, highly risky mission by two of the Fleet's intelligence operatives revealed it in full.

    The Hjivin had found a way to maintain control of other polities through judicious application of the Second Secret. They had in fact already cemented control of their own species using these techniques long before expansion beyond their own star system had begun. To Shiplords of the time, this was an atrocity on the same scale as it is seen by humanity as of the current point in the quest. The Sphere didn't have to conquer or exterminate newly discovered races. They simply took control of them.

    It is a testament to the skill and valour of that Contact Fleet's personnel that any message reached Shiplord Survey Command. Several far more guarded attempts at diplomacy were launched in response to the truth beneath the Sphere's elegant facade, but all ended in failure. The last of them was met by a declaration of war from the Hjivin's ruling minds, having come to the conclusion that the Shiplords were, whilst powerful, also vulnerable. The draw of the technological capabilities of their kind and the challenge of a peer's personal protective systems was too much for them to simply let pass.

    In truth, the military strength of the Shiplords at the time was significantly less than that of the Sphere. War Fleets had long since become the preferred form of combat by the Shiplords, to the point that the maintenance of other combat arms had been reduced to sublight-only system defence craft and semi-fixed platforms that acted as nexi for their Orrerys. Their role was strictly defensive, and were intended to hold a system against an enemy assault until a War Fleet could arrive. Given the compact nature of Shiplord space at the time, response times longer than a galactic day were rare to say the least.

    Had it been the full War Fleet strength of both polities arrayed against each other, the Shiplords' technological edge would have delivered them a convincing victory - as indeed is what happened on the rare occasions where Hjivin and Shiplord War Fleets met in full flight. The wrinkle lay in the Sphere's massive wing of more conventional FTL-capable forces that, whilst deeply limited in terms of strategic agility, proved more than capable of swamping the relatively light defences of the Shiplord colony worlds despite the best efforts of defending War Fleets.

    This truth was even more the case for the worlds of younger species scattered across the broad sweep of space between the Hjivin and Shiplord core worlds. Although all possessed some naval capacity, most had grown under the steady watch and protection of the Shiplords. When that aegis faltered, few were capable of adapting in time. A handful of more advanced or militaristic polities were able to provide local naval support to Shiplord commanders, and the sacrifices of those crews bought time for the deployment of massive evacuation craft.

    On closer evaluation, these evacuation craft bear a striking similarity to the Collector class vessels of the Tribute Fleets.
    -Kalilah Mishra

    Although there's no record of Neras involvement in the battles of the War of the Sphere, Starhomes converged in unprecedented numbers on these threatened polities as well as the Shiplord colonies in the line of advance. Their ability to traverse distances at War Fleet scale speeds came as a surprise to the Shiplords, but not one they had any reason to object to. Lending their jump capacity to the evacuation fleets allowed the massive ships to make scores more journeys than they'd have been able to alone, and saved tens of billions from the encroaching Sphere.

    Even this could not save the entire population of those worlds, however. Especially not those unlucky few close to Hjivin space. And as the Sphere advanced, so too did their logistical corps, establishing stellar convertors around stars to fuel their continuing invasion. Shiplords of the time lacked starkillers, but as the truth of their enemy spread along with their invasion fleets, development began on the first prototypes of ancestors to the Lumen class. Alongside this development came that of a new generation of FTL-capable warships, deploying into the first formations of the Regular Fleets.

    Shiplord military infrastructure groups had not been idle, either. Ancient stellar-scale construction vessels reactivated from carefully tended storage yards had thrown up a bristling wall of fortifications across the border systems. And for all they had not been able to save, the valiant to often self-sacrificial defence by Shiplord War Fleets and the militaries of younger races had bought enough time for the Shiplords to properly train and deploy their first wave of Regular Fleet detachments.

    The Hjivin minds had expected for the Shiplord core worlds to be more challenging than their colonies, or even the homeworlds of younger races. But for all their attempts to explain, the Hjivin's leaders had never quite believed the Shiplords' claims of age. They saw an enemy forced to swivel to tactics that would surely be unfamiliar, and saw no reason to halt their advance. Nearly half a century after first contact, Hjivin fleets entered combat all along a line of seventy-three Shiplord border systems.

    What followed would not end for more than a century, and is collectively known as the Battle of the Burning Line.
     
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  • Informational
    • As promised, so it is produced. If people would like a little more time to ask questions before voting or thinking about write-ins, I'll happily extend the deadline to Friday night. With that said, I should also probably poke at this. The suggestion made by @mastigos in their post here would be entirely valid as a write-in. Exactly how the simulation will handle it, you're not sure, but it appears very well designed. And you know for sure that the Uninvolved have the capacity to end this war with ease if they could be convinced to do so.

    If this misses any questions already asked, I apologise, and will be happy to give what I hope to be complete answers if you ping me.
     
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    Hm. This post helps contextualize "what if we just asked the Hijvin what was up with them?" Namely, the Hijvin are extremely likely to respond with either "noncommittal" or "now you have discovered our secret, mwahahahaaa" and attempting to hijack us. With Practice we have a tool that can no-sell that (assuming the simulation understands Practice or that we can make it understand)... but it's still an issue and things won't end well.

    So our options boil down to "pray to the Uninvolved, if we can somehow contact them" or "use Practice." I'm not optimistic that normal diplomacy will work, even with Amanda's level of skill in the field, because this is a hegemonizing swarm that views other people's opinions as raw material to be reconstructed as suits them.
     
    Simon_Jester said:
    So our options boil down to "pray to the Uninvolved, if we can somehow contact them" or "use Practice." I'm not optimistic that normal diplomacy will work, even with Amanda's level of skill in the field, because this is a hegemonizing swarm that views other people's opinions as raw material to be reconstructed as suits them.
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    Part of what led the Hjivin minds to rejecting the Shiplord overtures was based on how they just didn't believe that the Shiplords could be so old and not have taken the same route as they'd done. The idea just didn't exist to them. What has Amanda shown to be remarkably good at doing at various points across this story again?

    I will repeat, there is a reason that this is an option. And it ain't Practice.
     
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    Maybe the key thing then, is not to push and look into the territory and society of the Hjivin, but to show them Shiplord society and culture and drill in that yes they really didn't do the Hjivin thing, maybe through a cultural exchange of some kind that could also give them some room to investigate the irregularities.
     
    [x] Contact Fleets were diplomats as much as anything else, but were any of their number ever as skilled as you? What might happen if you simply ask?
     
    Since I don't have a better idea,

    [x] Contact Fleets were diplomats as much as anything else, but were any of their number ever as skilled as you? What might happen if you simply ask?
     
    Sure, I'll give this a shot:

    [x] Write-in: Get the key information as quickly as possible and then try to get the attention of the Uninvolved early.

    Because the one major issue with the current leading option? Even if it worked, it wouldn't have been historically plausible, because there WASN'T a diplomat of that caliber available at the time. It brings to mind what @Shwaggy said:
    Shwaggy said:
    -It's kind of Kirking the Kobayashi Maru, by bringing in a method that simply wasn't available in the scenario.
    -While showing there's a better option now, it would be a justification of their past choices - sure, Practice fixes things, but they didn't have Practice so they have no reason to believe their methods until now were in error.
    -On the other hand, if we can solve it that way it supports a statement of "You couldn't necessarily fix things without going full suppression, but we can, so you can lay down this burden of protecting the galaxy alone and rely on us."
    -Though of course being able to solve the situation with our fancy totally-not-magic and prior knowledge of how it turned out doesn't necessarily mean we could have done it right in their place.
    -This is also a predictive simulation based on their recordings and data, and using predictive logic they coded - there's not really any way of knowing what the Hjivin's reactions to a very different chain of events would have been. Unless this is superscience prediction on the level of Practice, grabbing accurate information from the ether?
    -Also solving it through Practice and having that communicated to the Shiplords here may cause a reaction, whether a good, bad, or mixed one I couldn't guess. Also depends on if it just sends that locally, or automatically broadcasts it further.
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    Coda said:
    Because the one major issue with the current leading option? Even if it worked, it wouldn't have been historically plausible, because there WASN'T a diplomat of that caliber available at the time
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    I don't think it's totally implausible for the Shiplords to have had (or been able to *find*/produce at an earlier date) a diplomat of Amanda's caliber. If anything, the old Shiplords seem like they would be much closer to considering it than those after the war.

    Especially if they expanded the candidate pool beyond Shiplords.
     
    WillRobinson said:
    I don't think it's totally implausible for the Shiplords to have had (or been able to *find*/produce at an earlier date) a diplomat of Amanda's caliber. If anything, the old Shiplords seem like they would be much closer to considering it than those after the war.

    Especially if they expanded the candidate pool beyond Shiplords.
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    Yeah, but on the other hand, it's at least plausible that whatever Amanda-tier diplomats they might have had then, weren't on hand until things with the Hijvin had escalated to where not even an Amanda-tier diplomat could sort things out (insofar as this is possible). And that no generation of Shiplords since the creation of this simulation had the capability.
     
    Wait is the reason the Shiplords hate Practice is that they saw the Uninvolved wipe out the Hjivin, something they can't replicate or have a response to?
     
    Snowfire said:
    As promised, so it is produced. If people would like a little more time to ask questions before voting or thinking about write-ins, I'll happily extend the deadline to Friday night. With that said, I should also probably poke at this. The suggestion made by @mastigos in their post here would be entirely valid as a write-in. Exactly how the simulation will handle it, you're not sure, but it appears very well designed. And you know for sure that the Uninvolved have the capacity to end this war with ease if they could be convinced to do so.

    If this misses any questions already asked, I apologise, and will be happy to give what I hope to be complete answers if you ping me.
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    I mean, my initial idea was specifically finding out about the twisted ascension attempt and warning the Uninvolved early enough that they respond without going to urgent extremes.

    That said, I do like "apply solar tier diplomacy to convincing the Uninvolved that this is an abomination with a good chance of mind controlling the galaxy"

    Also there's the question of what we expect the reaction to be if we DO beat this simulation. And if our Masques can survive the resulting scrutiny. Because that kind of informs decisions about things like using Practice, which is super obviously glowy and will DEFINITELY BE NOTICED. Or if we even want to win this in the simulation.

    Plus there's another concern: are we going to come off as catspaws of the Uninvolved
     
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    Snowfire said:
    the valiant to often self-sacrificial defence by Shiplord War Fleets and the militaries of younger races had bought enough time for the Shiplords to properly train and deploy their first wave of Regular Fleet detachments.
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    Hooray, with our big brothers in the Shiplords, our sacrifices have ushered in a new age of peace and tranquility in the galaxy, right! Right, Shiplords?

    Shiplords?

    Hey, bro, what are you doing with that Collector...?
     
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