The issue is this is just the sort of play the Junta WOULD do. They have displayed a shockingly laissez faire attitude towards life, attacking our explorers DETERMINED that we were genocidal aliens and would murder them all. Then they took our ship and stole all the bits out of it for their own benefit with a barely a howdy do for it. we've made it overarchingly clear that we favor them, so if they break the peace but win without question, we're unlikely to do anything about it, and the only assets in the crossfire are not their own. Hell, they could have blown up the stations because there was evidence of treachery and now it's ash. They've been at war a long time and frankly saw a way to end it in their favor without any of their people dying, and if others die? So what. Then they get to sweep in like heroes and lay it all on the dynast's feet. Frankly the fact people see them as trustworthy at all is mystifying.
Traveller, The Rise of Empire: A Naval Design, Procurement and Command Quest
- Thread starter 4WheelSword
- Start date
- Original Art Quest Sci-Fi
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
Everyone had already voted for the shinies when it came up. You actually voted for both in an attempt to both have and eat cake. As the person who pointed out the political dimension I would like you to stop grasping at my straws and come up with your own justifications.
There are unstated logical leaps in this, as well as two massive, unstated, frankly absurd assumptions.
The first absurd take is that the outcome that was gotten was the outcome that was desired. The deaths of the primary Chambrestrong line leading directly to nuclear holocaust is not a particularly sane outcome. It's a hereditary monarchy, they've got plenty of backups to step in, the succession is well-defined by now. (Hell, three people in the main line survived.) Even if there was no Chambrestrong left, the senior military leadership deciding to destroy everything instead of simply assuming power in their own name and preparing to prosecute a conventional war again is a far more rational outcome than "LET'S BURN IT ALL".
This ties in to the second absurd take and the first logical leap: We know who pulled the trigger, when it was time to end the world. The Dynast military are not robots, as established by the ground-based command centers refusing to execute Unthinkable without additional information. This wasn't a series of inevitably-falling ordered dominoes. So the unstated, absurd assumption is that it was, and the logical leap is that our partners aren't telling us who's responsible for ending the world when we know who chose to initiate the apocalypse in response to an unsuccessful decapitation strike. Three members of the ruling family (and god knows how many cadet branches) survived, after all. Nobody apparently bothered to actually check who was in charge before going off the deep end, or if they did, that just makes their responsibility worse. Whoever bombed the Chambrestrongs did not, in fact, pull the trigger on the end of the world. The Chambrestrongs or their military leadership did.
From there we take a leap that somehow connects the Daughters to the nebulous "people reponsible for this" invented by the previous paragraph, despite the fact there's fairly little evidence this is the sort of thing the Daughters would actually be interested in, and despite the fact that total nuclear annihilation really wasn't a sane outcome.
Then we take another unstated logical leap that anyone involved in the aftermath of this is going to wish to see nuclear weapons visited upon Home after having seen the dome of the capital city of the Chambrestrong Dynasts cracked open by one and the hundreds of thousands if not millions dead by it, not to mention the knockon effects it ultimately had when someone ordered Unthinkable. Like this is the best argument ever for don't try to decapitate the ruling dynasties, at least not without a much deeper penetration into the military.
And finally we take the last logical leap that the civilian government of Home are therefore going to nuke their own population and/or space forces out of fear, because if the Daughters were that much a discrete, targetable entity, they wouldn't exist. The government would have already gotten rid of them. So you're basically arguing the government is going to destroy themselves with a pre-emptive Unthinkable when you go "which could also be nuclear". That's even more nuts than what actually happened.
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I still don't understand why we would want to side with the Junta. I said it earlier but for the sake of keeping everything in one post, they knew beforehand that there was a possibility of action that caused them to send a giant astroid ship to move towards the inner system. They should have notified us that they suspected a shift in the balance of power. They have not been acting in good faith with most of our interactions.
The issue with having Daughter agents infiltrated in our command structure isn't their ideology, which we know little about, it's the fact that we have an unknown quantity affecting the decision making process of our command structure. We also brought it manpower from the S'Taxu system, so we undoubtedly have agents of the Junta in our Navy.
Our role here is to protect the interests of Home. We are not doing that by rolling over and letting a military dictatorship have their way.
The issue with having Daughter agents infiltrated in our command structure isn't their ideology, which we know little about, it's the fact that we have an unknown quantity affecting the decision making process of our command structure. We also brought it manpower from the S'Taxu system, so we undoubtedly have agents of the Junta in our Navy.
Our role here is to protect the interests of Home. We are not doing that by rolling over and letting a military dictatorship have their way.
KleverKil'Vanya
Ortillery Operator
I think part of it is people getting really fucking tired on this system just causing problems by existing making us deal with them because they cant just stop being literally shitheels to each other for more then an update at a time, at this point I'd like us to just be able to not hear about yet another fucking stupid issue from them. I'd also rather we actually expand instead of being stuck in the 'but but it's EVIL to expand, how could you, you FASCISTS vote for that?!' phase these kinda quests repeatedly die in.
grimely
Twink Death Sufferer
In the interests of not hyperfixating, there are also some questions we need to ask of the surviving Dynasts too.
- What were the actual operational parameters of Unthinkable?
- Who ordered the execution of Unthinkable?
- Was that order in compliance with the defined parameters of the dead hand?
- If not, why was it executed in spite of those parameters?
- For the sake of completionism even though this is obvious, what was the thought process that resulted in our Homies being killed?
Coyote Niff
the most transbian obligate scavenger on the 'net!
- Location
- Misery!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I know my plan doesn't explicitly say so, but that's part of why I included the Ranger HVT sweeps-we need to know as much as possible in a manner not controlled, even though I support them IC, the PMC and their information networks. We lost people and need to know as much as we can.
- Location
- Here, there, everywhere.
Yeah to be honest I'm tired of dealing with them as well.
This is our fault though - we chose to destabilize the status quo by bombarding one side of the cold war, then realized that we didn't have the stomach for cracking domes, and tried to rebuild that tenuous peace and are now watching the consequences of that.
Doubloon
Quelle horreur!
Because we have a pretty good deal going! Like, materially so. We get shipyard tonnage, we get pilots for our recruitment pool, we get a safe harbor for fueling and repair and assurances of safety for civilian traffic heading southwards onto Staging Point.
Yeah, in-world the Junta offered us a lot of good shit. Out of game, the GM waved a bunch of good shit under our nose. And all we had to do was to get it was to destabilize the political situation by moving away from the Dynasts. Plenty of people in the thread said this was going to destablize the political situation. We did it anyway. Let's be honest, all these nukes and everything else wouldn't have happened if we had taken the Dynast's less good offer. That's why the GM had them offer us a less good offer! To see if we'd take the bait. That was the game, the test the players were being subjected to. This is our performance on that test and the grade we got.
WilyMachineKing1
Executive Manager of Limbus Company
- Location
- Reno Nevada
[X] OPLAN: Shadow Marshal
Vote is still going on yeah? If not, my apologies.
Vote is still going on yeah? If not, my apologies.
A deal that was bait and I highly doubt they'll ever follow up on.
- Location
- Somewhere in the stacks
- Pronouns
- She/Her
We've been using the Junta's S'taxu shipyards for several updates now, though?
And mark my words following this they are going to want to renege on the deal citing no confidence in our protection and start trying to force us out of system.
Coyote Niff
the most transbian obligate scavenger on the 'net!
- Location
- Misery!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Doubloon
Quelle horreur!
So if they were always meaning to screw us over why are they still negotiating with us? Why did they work with our engineers to design a missile boat? Why not pull their dastardly fait accompli the moment we were on the back foot, wreck the Sakumo, and tell the Bowshot task force to leave the system or be fired upon?
It seems like prime time for betrayal has passed.
WilyMachineKing1
Executive Manager of Limbus Company
- Location
- Reno Nevada
Thank you!It sure is! No apologies needed!
Wiadi
Uncompromising Radical Leftist
- Location
- Something Clever
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] OPLAN: Slow Walk
I'm not saying we need to trust them to act in good faith, necessarily, but I think we can at bare minimum trust them to act in accordance with their own best interests. At least until given any concrete reason to think otherwise.
That would be a fascinating choice considering that, y'know, they're only able to get away with the shit they're getting away with (and I'm not denying that they're getting away with Some Shit here) because it remains in our interests to maintain positive relations. Cutting ties now would cost them badly needed support for rebuilding at minimum, and if it led to a military conflict that would be absolutely catastrophic for them. Conversely, letting us keep using their yard space is relatively cheap when it's not like they're liable to have a ton of resources to spare for ship-building in the near future anyway (and considering we're paying for the ships we build, I'm pretty sure our use of the yards is actually an active economic gain for them instead).
I'm not saying we need to trust them to act in good faith, necessarily, but I think we can at bare minimum trust them to act in accordance with their own best interests. At least until given any concrete reason to think otherwise.
[X] Plan Hard-Nosed, High handed
KleverKil'Vanya
Ortillery Operator
That turns this into players vs. GM, that is only ever going to end one way.
Making the players choose objectively worse options to not have to deal with kind of laborious and annoying slog will lead to players refraining from engaging future plotlines that could result in the same situation.
Wiadi
Uncompromising Radical Leftist
- Location
- Something Clever
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Good thing that's not actually at all what's going on here, then.
(even leaving aside that, y'know, for some of us this plotline is Fun And Cool and not at all a punishment - it's frankly obvious that 4WS isn't actually playing this adversarially and it would be extremely easy to tell the difference if that changed)
- Location
- Australia
While I can understand why such a vague tip-off likely wouldn't have been shared with us in such a small time span (the PMC at the time might have suspected that we could be the instigators of whatever incident might occur), this kind of intelligence, if more quickly shared, could significantly improve our speed and capabilities to respond to crises, conflicts and adversaries, both ones as rapidly evolving the S'Taxu Debacle or more gradually developing scenarios/situations. Once we set up an intelligence branch we should make intelligence sharing and collaboration with our allies, in official and unofficial capacities, a high priority.
@4WheelSword, is there any realistic possibility we can prevent the 11-year-old's execution, say for example denaturalising (removing any S'Taxu citizenship) indefinite (maybe even intergenerational) exile from the S'Taxu system and an absolute, permanent formal relinquishment of any noble titles, privileges, or claims in S'Taxu for the child and any possible descendants, with the child taken to Home (presumably given Home citizenship or at least permanent residence) under the care of whatever social care, support and/or adoption system exists in Home for orphans and/or children taken from parents (who can't or won't adequately look after their children)? Perhaps given a new name and identity, under some kind of witness protection program, similar to IRL children who have committed serious crimes like murder when they were too young to be held criminally accountable but have been successfully reintegrated into society as law-abiding well-adjusted adults after being in the juvenile justice system?
Could being sentenced in Home's juvenile courts, served in Home's detention/rehabilitation system (which I'm assuming doesn't have a death penalty, at least for juveniles, and hopefully has some rehabilitative and restorative justice ethos), help at all in any way alleviate concerns that the child is "escaping" or receiving disproportionately light judgement and punishment? Granted, even that compromise might not adequately satisfy calls for retributive "justice" considering the sheer magnitude and widespread scale of this tragedy.
Is there any argument or justification, in S'Taxu and Home legal doctrine and popular morality/ethics, that could plausibly, even possibly, find purchase whether in an attempt to sway the S'Taxu general public or provide legitimacy, or even a smokescreen, to permit higher levels of S'Taxu governments to (clandestinely or publically) cut any such deal with us?
For example, is the child under the age of criminal responsibility? Is collective punishment outlawed/illegal/illegitimate/deemed cruel and unusual punishment (assuming they have any restrictions on punishments deemed cruel and/or unusual)? Could it be creditably argued, whether from Home or S'Taxu legal theory and moral principles (perhaps common heritage of human rights, or at least lip service paid to respect human rights?), that killing the surviving child would be effectively retaliatory genocide, which is as fundamentally wrong as the Xyploni Genocide or any other genocide or form of genocide, whereas at least sparing his life could prove a valuable and prominent symbol (assuming that his survival is publically known) of both our societies rising above such an act of indiscriminate revenge killing (in the same way that sentencing a murderer to life in prison has been argued as restoring the humanistic values which were violated by murder via treating the murderer humanely, systematically restoring respect for human rights and life)?
What price would we have to pay for such, if any, concessions on killing and sentencing of the child, and could we conceivably convince our government to pay that price?
Sorry if this is a bit meta-gamey line of questioning to pursue, I just thought it might be worthwhile to ask considering the contention it's causing in the thread. Thank you for any answers you might be able to provide, and thank you for creating such an interesting, thought-provoking and compelling quest and collaborative narrative for us all to enjoy, discuss and contribute to.