I don't think it's so bad to lose some things when integrating with the Shipwright's Grove, tbh. We're a pretty solid state, but being a hardcore Theocracy has its own issues (as seen with us tearing our hair out a bit dealing with the Mothome gods), and our IC decisions have been... interesting. Like our relative lack of diplomatic outreach or the fumbles therein. It's not going to be all sunshine and rainbows integrating with them, but I think having a lot more breathing room of a society with the Federated Anarchy that the Grove has going on wouldn't be a terrible idea. We're not exactly going to be losing the fact that we have a Secret Police or whatnot, because 40k, but I think we have a lot of lessons that we could learn from the Grove and that they could learn from us. They seem to be a lot more outgoing and chill if very battle-hardened to a degree, considering the active efforts the Irrita have been doing with us (without pay, iirc).
Van Zandt - 60 - probably bigger off the map
Is Van Zandt an enemy? I firmly believe they have the potential to be, considering that weird mechanical sharp shadow they have, but like... I still think that it's possible to coexist and work with them.
Like, we
have been doing that. We've steadily grinded away at them diplomatically, and we've finally gotten to a Trade thing iirc, and we can slowly normalize relations. We've long ripped off the bandage that we work with Filthy Xenos thanks to the Voxx Primus terraforming, and they already are used to Psykers, if more in the "use them as supersoldiers and such" lmao. I doubt we'll integrate with them, but we are doing business with them -- they're just um, kind of terrible people.
But it's not like that's unchangeable, it's just that we haven't really done anything to change it. There's a significant faction of Reformists / Iconoclasts in there that we've done extremely little to engage with. Which, sure, yeah, we have AP economy issues and different priorities, but I think it's too soon to pile them in with Chaos polities as enemies. I really think there's work we can do there -- even in a Free Action / free economy thing that can try to push towards a more decent polity we can work with.
Like,
@HeroCooky, am I wrong? Are there options to try to actually tilt the Van Zandt into a more firm ally / more Iconoclastic/Reformist bent? Would idk, be offering material support to the Reformists and dunno, offering preferential trade options or similar be something we could do to shore them up? Would it also be a free action to get information on the Van Zandt and their political factions to know what we're dealing with, considering we're trading with them? What suggestions do you have?
