kelgar04
Knight Watcher
- Location
- Here and no were
I know I just want to know where they put the blasted thing the last thing I want to happen is some of our units getting exposed to a potential reaper artifact if they hid it on their capital world.
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Terminus Quest: A CKII Mass Effect Quest
I know I just want to know where they put the blasted thing the last thing I want to happen is some of our units getting exposed to a potential reaper artifact if they hid it on their capital world.
- Location
- United States
[x] Wipe her off the map. She says she has power. You don't like the idea of a post-war Lystheni society having anybody entrenched, and a mid-war society with an obvious rallying point is just as undesirable.
I know this is not going to win but this 'sister' feels way too convenient for me
I know this is not going to win but this 'sister' feels way too convenient for me
We have no indication that the Reapers are in any way involved in this, and Mira doesn't have any IC reason to know about them much less think that their artifacts might be responsible for the Lystheni's strange behavior. It's not even probable that was the case - the Lystheni were quite paranoid and weird well before they finished looting those artifacts. And when the Reapers wipe out a place they tend to be rather good about removing their own tech IIRC, with most situations where they leave artifacts being locations where they suffered a rare defeat and don't know about them. The last thing the Reapers want is loads of Reaper tech laying around so that the races can study them and be better prepared to stand against the coming harvest.
- Location
- Terra
[X] Accept her offer. Whether or not you can trust what she says, she's left you a lot of room. If you can reduce the number of potential combatants, and perhaps even avoid a fight entirely, you will.
kelgar04
Knight Watcher
- Location
- Here and no were
I guess I jumped to conclusions with what they found I guess when I heard unethical experiments and artifact I assumed reaper sorry
But what ever the case we need to find that damned thing I'm still quite worried about it being somkind of threat
- Location
- New York
Her own people can try her.
You keep saying "that damned thing" and you need to remember that this wasn't one artifact, but several taken over a period of years. These were artifacts of the same non-Prothean precursor civilization that we've seen other examples of thus far. This is going to be a rather large number of artifacts given the time it took them to fully loot the ruins, and as has been pointed out there's no way they could have disposed of the majority of them on such short notice.
We might be able to guess something about at least some of the artifacts they've found based on the experiments they're doing, but it'd be a very loose guess. Something involving some kind of previously unknown exotic energy perhaps, with the Lystheni experiments being an attempt to figure out what other things might be analogous. We'll just have to find out, and having someone from the inside should help us in that regard.
kelgar04
Knight Watcher
- Location
- Here and no were
Damn forgot that I keep jumping to conclusions best wait until we know more before I start scream reapers or damned artifacts.
Anyway the enemy admiral being captured and off the board is a good thing I wonder how much he knows about their ground forces and who much could we get out of him.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
This may actually be one of the rare cases where that isn't true. The reflexive, residual loyalty of the Lystheni for their Dalatrass is such that we may have to do everything in our power to investigate and punish her crimes.
This would also set a valid legal precedent for us to claim legal jurisdiction over Sentry Omega in the postwar galaxy. We may now take that for granted, but remember, the Citadel doesn't. To them, we're the government of the planet Virmire, NOT the Sentry Omega cluster. Establishing that we have been taking steps to enforce laws and civilized norms throughout the cluster, and have done all in our power to establish sovereignty over the cluster, may help avoid problematic situations down the line where the Council tries to subtly undermine our sovereignty over all those yummy star systems the Explorer Corps has been findig.
Furthermore, the typical breakdown signs of indoctrination are different than what we see here. The Reapers indoctrinate beings for a purpose, not to lash out randomly and purposelessly. When Saren became indoctrinated, he started acting as a Reaper agent. Benezia, likewise. The asari secretary on Virmire was indoctrinated; she acted as a sleeper agent for years, then assassinated some asari commanders during the Reaper War. When Cerberus became indoctrinated, they began working to serve Reaper ends in a consistent, calculated manner. Insofar as the rachni have been indoctrinated, they are presumably serving Sovereign's goals.
The science team investigating the Reaper corpse in Mass Effect 2 became indoctrinated and died... but that was presumably because the best use the dormant Reaper could think of for them was as enslaved husks, to help it repair damages or secure it from further intrusion.
The Lystheni? Their actions don't make any sense in that kind of context. They antagonized us, they performed experiments that don't make a lot of sense even in the context of Reaper indoctrination like "gee, I wonder what happens to salarians who get radiation poisoning." We have encountered no signs of anything like husks or Reaper constructs. They're not remotely powerful enough to do anything likely to benefit the Reapers militarily (unlike the rachni, Cerberus, or the Collectors). They're not in a good physical position to do genuinely useful research beneficial to the overall Reaper agenda. There's no specific evidence of Reaper technology as such other than "the Lystheni be crazy, yo."
Hell, it's as believable that they're getting hit by some kind of Leviathan mind control as by Reapers, or by some totally unknown third party. Remember how one of the possible victory conditions for this game is "create a new tech tree?" It seems highly unlikely that Poptart would have included that in the game without including some 'outside context' alien artifacts and technologies for us to discover. It's very possible that the Lystheni tripped over some of them.
Also bear in mind that we're talking about the alleged admiral captured by the alleged Dalatrass's alleged sister. The Lystheni are definitely crazystupid enough to be playing some kind of elaborate quintuple-reverse-bluff gambit or something.
[X] Accept her offer. Whether or not you can trust what she says, she's left you a lot of room. If you can reduce the number of potential combatants, and perhaps even avoid a fight entirely, you will.
Absolute worst case scenario this gets some of our ground troops killed in an ambush. Absolute best case scenario we avoid all the future ambushes inherent in fighting against the Lystheni insurgency.
Absolute worst case scenario this gets some of our ground troops killed in an ambush. Absolute best case scenario we avoid all the future ambushes inherent in fighting against the Lystheni insurgency.
- Location
- France
- Pronouns
- She/They
[X] Wipe her off the map. She says she has power. You don't like the idea of a post-war Lystheni society having anybody entrenched, and a mid-war society with an obvious rallying point is just as undesirable.
This is just way too convenient for them. If it was a rebellion from the bottom, I would be all for it, because they would probably try to clean up their act. But I believe we can only expect the same insanity from her. And she knew what was happening from the start. She's just trying to save her hide.
This is just way too convenient for them. If it was a rebellion from the bottom, I would be all for it, because they would probably try to clean up their act. But I believe we can only expect the same insanity from her. And she knew what was happening from the start. She's just trying to save her hide.
So let her save her hide for now.
In doing so, she saves lives of our boots on the ground, and the credits spent on waging a campaign & reestablishing order on Taramnal.
Should we find her to be a closet insurgent, or otherwise unsuitable for our goals? We stage an "Insurgent attack" led "By former Armiral of Lystheni Navy", with all the "Video footage" claiming any Lystheni cooperating with us to be traitors, then we claim to act in the best interests of their people while praising the departed Dalatrass (Whose wise council would be missed by all!), roll in the tanks (Conveniently already stationed on Taramnal) and take over.
Without allying with her, in immediate future we would still take over - but the cost of fighting and, more importantly, reestablishing order would be significantly higher. And the whole affair would be simpler, I'll grant you that.
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Even if this is just her trying to save her own hide or use this as an opportunity to grab the top spot in her society, that's ok. She's willing to surrender pretty much unconditionally - the only thing she's stated she requires is us not shooting those who will follow her order to surrender to our forces, which is pretty much a requirement for an honest acceptance of someone's surrender anyways. It doesn't particularly matter if she's doing this for selfish reasons, so long as she's willing to accept whatever terms we dictate to her, and that she will continue to play ball with us.
She's already shown that she understands that her own society is dysfunctional to the extreme, and that she understands how we'd perceive how the research being conducted would be viewed - that alone shows that she's more intelligent, sane, understanding of diplomacy, and how reality works than her delusional sister is. It doesn't matter if she's scum herself, so long as she's cooperative scum that realizes that the gun is in our hands, has always been our hands, and us pointing it elsewhere doesn't mean she's safe from us. If we have to leave a team of combat trained 'advisers and bodyguards' who will live in her home with her to ensure she understands that she's to stay in line, so be it. And if she's not cooperative, we should hopefully end up with enough understanding of the Lystheni's internal politics to pick a replacement for her later down the line.
Remember that this is the Terminus. Scum and outlaws abound, and sometimes to get things done you've got to be willing to work with such people instead of putting a bullet into their skulls. It's part of the reason we haven't had all those corrupt CEOs arrested or killed - it would cause us more problems than it solves.
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[x] Wipe her off the map. She says she has power. You don't like the idea of a post-war Lystheni society having anybody entrenched, and a mid-war society with an obvious rallying point is just as undesirable.
Ridiculously Average Guy
I'm you, but stronger
- Location
-
[X] Refuse her offer. You are not acceding to restrictions on your actions when going into your army's first ground invasion. She can surrender in person to the soldiers who find her, just like everybody else.
[X] Accept her offer. Whether or not you can trust what she says, she's left you a lot of room. If you can reduce the number of potential combatants, and perhaps even avoid a fight entirely, you will.
Because she's asking to surrender, basically unconditionally. It might be a trick, but getting a rep for refusing to accept surrenders is a Bad Thing.
Because she's asking to surrender, basically unconditionally. It might be a trick, but getting a rep for refusing to accept surrenders is a Bad Thing.
Point of order:
We don't actually know how much of their military we destroyed outright, how much was crippled, and how much actively surrendered in the face of overwhelming force due to a pressing urge to not die.
It might be worthwhile to simply leave them with a handful of corvettes for local space policing as a sop to local feelings, while we provide the other corvettes and the bigger ships(frigates and light cruisers). And it would allow us to put our stamp on any military/paramilitary force they raise.
And I'll point out that all this talk of generations really ignores previous precedent.
The Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force was (re)formed in 1954, less than ten years after the end of WW2. The German Deutsche Marine was (re)formed in 1956, eleven years after WW2.
Five to ten years is going to be enough to press reset on the Lystheni military, especially given how quickly salarians mature.
Send a bunch of newborns to school in Virmire for training after they physically mature, and bring them back.
Serves multiple purposes, both military and social; if we're going for sociocultural and economic domination, might as well expose everyone we can.
Nope.
We really have no need to be interested in the habitable planets we gave them, with the sole exception of their research planets(yoink!); after all, we've yet to colonize the ones we've already discovered and claimed, and the rest of the cluster remains open for exploration.
Just claiming the old buffer zone increases the planets we have access to by around 33%.
*shrug*
That's easy enough to check, since we know who their Admiral is from his procurement , and have his DNA, and invaded his house. And they don't know any of this.If it's the same guy, we have tentative confirmation that the lady is at least acting in good faith in this matter.
If it isn't him, at the very least we know that she doesn't know as much as she claims to.
As long as they don't know exactly how much we know, anything we're told can be crosschecked for veracity and to build a profile as to whether you can trust the other person to negotiate in good faith.
We don't even strictly have to take the research systems depending on what they are researching there, just ensure that our people are able to do research there unmolested and that the Lystheni share any research data from their own projects with us. If it's precursor stuff though, we're definitely taking over the research opportunities.
Systems, not necessarily planets. Some of them probably won't have any worlds of worth, or might just have asteroid belts.
Doomed Wombat
Let's go Darling!
- Location
- Dancing on wires!
Kinda what I jumped too as well.
Also I thought they looted a prothean ruin not a precursor ruin which was why we were so upset?