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The Shadow of Old Transgressions (Homeworld/Mass Effect Crossover Quest)

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[X] Try to Broker Peace Between the Kushan and Taiidan
[X] Help with the Refugees

Either of these sound like a nice change of pace, and a chance to meet new people and solve problems by means other than force.
 
[X] Try to Broker Peace Between the Kushan and Taiidan
[X] Find Bentusi Sentinels and Help against the T-Mat

With the wraith being quiet-ish for now, putting out fires seems to be most pressing.
 
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Book 2: The War of Return
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    • Uncharted Space


    Making the decision that you're going to broker peace between the Kushan and Taiidan is all well and good, but there are a lot of details that still need to be worked out. Chief among them is finding them to begin with. Or at least finding the Kushan. It's a big galaxy and all you have to go on are rumors.

    Well rumors and one more thing. You and your friends retrofitted their mothership with a Bentusi style inertialess drive. It was an incredibly involved project and as such you have very detailed readings of their drive signature.

    It doesn't let you track them from across the galaxy, but it does mean you can almost instantly tell whether they're in the system or not after you jump in. And so that's what you do following the rumors and skipping from system to system only stopping long enough to recharge your hyperdrive cores and calculate the next set of quantum algorithms.

    It still takes a while, but eventually you are able to track down their fleet to an unremarkable system with nothing more than a few asteroid belts and a gas giant. It seems that they are restocking their fleet as you can see several mining operations going on and you jump in quickly to ensure that you have a chance to talk before the Kushan jump away again.

    As your sub minds pass you the sensor readings you have to admit to being impressed by how far the Kushan have come. Their ships are definitely giving off more energetic readings than last time, not to mention being much larger and sporting a large number of capital ships. You aren't sure how exactly you'll approach this, but there's nothing for it but to dive right in.

    So without further ado Iuno opens a channel to the Mothership and their fleet command, Trosk. For the second time she is pleasantly surprised with how fast he responds. Their conversation flows back and forth in a tide of information almost as fast as between Bentusi themselves.

    While they do so you have the somewhat harder task of delivering the dead. For months now you've been carrying not just the survivors of the Marduk, but all the bodies you were able to recover, not that there were many of them. Now you contact the fleet directly looking for their clan, the few survivors have told you the basics of what to expect. The priest to talk to and the customs that must be observed.

    It takes time, but you can tell the Kushan appreciate you upholding their customs, and by the time you are done Iuno has finished talking with Trosk, "I think this is going to be very hard. They really want Hiigara back. It's the whole point of their war. Still I got the sense that he's not completely set on it. If they can get a nice garden world to settle without continued fighting I think it would be enough."

    Of course that is itself a problem. Garden worlds are coveted for a reason. They aren't very common in the galaxy. Consulting your charts you do a search and your cartographic submind turns up just two possibilities.

    [ ] Give them the Coordinates for an Unexplored World
    The Bentusi have been exploring the galaxy for a long long time, and at the same time have no intention of ever settling on a planet. As such they know of a few systems tucked away in the corners of the galaxy that have perfectly good planets. You don't think your fellow Bentusi would mind giving them away, especially to the Kushan, but it wouldn't actually resolve the core tension between the Kushan and Taiidan. At best it would lead to a ceasefire and an uneasy one at that.

    [ ] Negotiate with the Taiidan for a Garden World
    You'll have to go to the Taiidan to negotiate their side of things anyway so you could always ask them for a garden world. Your records indicate that they have several colonies that have populations small enough to be feasibly evacuated. Iuno's projections are that such a concession would mollify the Kushan, at least for the near future. But it would be a hard sell to the Taiidan.

    Of course the main demand of getting the Taiidan to give up Hiigara would work as well, but its immediately clear to you that the Taiidan would never concede to that. It just wouldn't be feasible since the world is a core part of their Republic. They would only concede it after a definitive defeat.

    There are a few minor species with colonies even more sparsely populated than the Taiidan as well. But this effectively has the same issues as using a Bentusi world. It would not really resolve the core conflict, and you'd have to convince the current colonists to leave.

    =======

    [ ] Work on the Fleet
    -[ ] Pick a Research Project.
    One of the Bentusi characters can perform research on something for the fleet. Except Aurora as she has already been picked in this side mission.

    Pick a Codex/Interlude
    [ ] Write In
    Pick something you'd like to know more about.

    =======
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Arcanestomper said:
    They would only concede it after a definitive defeat.
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    Well, they aren't exactly putting up a good showing.

    Of the two... Under the circumstances I think the simpler option followed by a timed armistice would let the Taiidan fight the eldritch horrors rather than be distracted by the mistakes of the past.

    ...Also we can recruit more Kushan for our Crusade against omnicidal monsters, bleeding off the more "excitable" of the Exiles while gathering Friends to our banner.
     
    Arcanestomper said:
    [ ] Give them the Coordinates for an Unexplored World
    [ ] Negotiate with the Taiidan for a Garden World
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    You know, it occurs to me that this doesn't have to be quite an either/or. Since we do know the coordinates of several unexplored worlds, and its not as if we'll be settling on them, perhaps it would be possible to arrange some kind of swap. Say, negotiate with the Taiidan for a Garden World for the Kushan, for the symbolic value/to settle the dispute for now, with the additional offer of say, an unexplored world to each side if they're willing to make peace (thus sweetening the pot for the Kushan, and also softening the blow for the Taiidan).

    As for research, why not have Ulysses work on Monomolecular Armor? If we're going to be fighting the T'mat again. we will want the protection...
     
    DaLintyGuy said:
    Well, they aren't exactly putting up a good showing.

    Of the two... Under the circumstances I think the simpler option followed by a timed armistice would let the Taiidan fight the eldritch horrors rather than be distracted by the mistakes of the past.

    ...Also we can recruit more Kushan for our Crusade against omnicidal monsters, bleeding off the more "excitable" of the Exiles while gathering Friends to our banner.
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    I was actually going to give you some more recruits once the negotiations were settled one way or the other. But you can specifically ask for some as well.

    Rivenscryr said:
    You know, it occurs to me that this doesn't have to be quite an either/or. Since we do know the coordinates of several unexplored worlds, and its not as if we'll be settling on them, perhaps it would be possible to arrange some kind of swap. Say, negotiate with the Taiidan for a Garden World for the Kushan, for the symbolic value/to settle the dispute for now, with the additional offer of say, an unexplored world to each side if they're willing to make peace (thus sweetening the pot for the Kushan, and also softening the blow for the Taiidan).

    As for research, why not have Ulysses work on Monomolecular Armor? If we're going to be fighting the T'mat again. we will want the protection...
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    You can certainly sweeten the pot for the Taiidan. Especially if you offer to a trade a system that is better than their current colony.
     
    Arcanestomper said:
    I was actually going to give you some more recruits once the negotiations were settled one way or the other. But you can specifically ask for some as well.
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    The concept is to push the inevitable round two further down the road by going "all those who want glory, and to get a moral victory over the Taiidan, can join us to fight the omnicidal threats facing the galaxy". Such a move takes the ones most likely to restart hostilities or see just how much they can get away with and puts them to productive work as volunteer formations.
     
    Arcanestomper said:
    You can certainly sweeten the pot for the Taiidan. Especially if you offer to a trade a system that is better than their current colony.
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    I was also thinking that a Tripartite Agreement between the Taiidan, the Kushan, and the Bentusi (as represented by us) might have a better chance of being respected if push came to shove, than just them agreeing to something with each other, if only because both of the other groups involved hold us in fairly high regard.
     
    Looking at our Projects, it might be a good time to retrofit the antifighter frigate into a Drone. Monomolecular Armor requires strategic materials we don't have, after all.
     
    And didn't we finish the armor research, anyway? The thing was we needed materials for the forges involved in actually making the stuff, like DaLintyGuy hinted at.
     
    Rivenscryr said:
    And didn't we finish the armor research, anyway? The thing was we needed materials for the forges involved in actually making the stuff, like DaLintyGuy hinted at.
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    You did finish it, and you do need some more eezo in order to make forges. I probably won't track it specifically since that didn't work out too well. But you'll definitely need to find a source.

    DaLintyGuy said:
    ...You know, I think you are right.

    Also.
    @Arcanestomper do we benefit from what the Irunese learned from their study of T-Mat salvage?
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    They'll give you the research if you ask, but it's nothing the Bentusi didn't already figure out from their own earlier studies of T-Mat salvage.
     
    [X] Give them the Coordinates for an Unexplored World
    [X] [Research] Give the antifighter frigate the Drone keyword


    I assume trying to pull off the more "excitable" portion of the Kushan would occur in the next update?
     
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    [X] Negotiate with the Taiidan for a Garden World
    -[X] Offer the coordinates of an unexplored world to sweeten the pot
    -[X] Ask about eezo while you're at it.

    [X] [Research] Give the antifighter frigate the Drone keyword
     
    One clarification before the vote goes too far: We have the coordinates for empty garden worlds, but for lack of a better term do we have authority to offer them? We're pretty young after all, and Bentusi may be traders and all that so it's all well and good that we're pretty free to bargain with our own personal resources but is there some... I dunno, Bentusi Trade Authority that handles larger issues?

    We can obviously hand out the coordinates regardless of whether we'll get in trouble for it later.
     
    [X] Negotiate with the Taiidan for a Garden World
    -[X] Offer the coordinates of an unexplored world to sweeten the pot
    -[X] Ask about eezo while you're at it.

    [X] [Research] Give the antifighter frigate the Drone keyword
     
    SerGregness said:
    One clarification before the vote goes too far: We have the coordinates for empty garden worlds, but for lack of a better term do we have authority to offer them? We're pretty young after all, and Bentusi may be traders and all that so it's all well and good that we're pretty free to bargain with our own personal resources but is there some... I dunno, Bentusi Trade Authority that handles larger issues?

    We can obviously hand out the coordinates regardless of whether we'll get in trouble for it later.
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    Technically you don't have that authority. But you personally feel that it would probably go over well for the cause you are envisioning.
     
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