The Secrets' Crusade

[Mossconfig]

leading those arguments.

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The Teel were pre tribute system. They rebelled against the tightening of secret usage because they saw it wasn't leading anywhere nice.

It reinforces the big difference between pre sorrows and post sorrows shiplord motivations.

I think we should zip right home, tell everything we know, then hit up Consolat Origin, hopefully there's the magic macguffin. If that doesn't work then hitting up the later secrets to see how shiplord society embraced the sorrows might give us insight on that whole thing.

 

[Torgamous]

The Teel were pre tribute system. They rebelled against the tightening of secret usage because they saw it wasn't leading anywhere nice.

It reinforces the big difference between pre sorrows and post sorrows shiplord motivations.

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I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about the curator of the Sphere War Museum, who both knew all about the Sphere and got up to date military intelligence to the point that she told us they'd taken a captive.

If exposing facts about the tribute system and drawing a comparison to the Sphere were enough to break it, it would have been broken by now.

 

[MTB]

If exposing facts about the tribute system and drawing a comparison to the Sphere were enough to break it, it would have been broken by now.

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What we have to face is millions of years of inertia of 'our way is the only possible one and therefore correct'; it won't be enough to point out that there were other solutions for the Sorrows (and new races); we also have to fight against the denial of our proof because if we are right the SL have been wrong for millions of years and how could that be true?

 

[TheEyes]

I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about the curator of the Sphere War Museum, who both knew all about the Sphere and got up to date military intelligence to the point that she told us they'd taken a captive.

If exposing facts about the tribute system and drawing a comparison to the Sphere were enough to break it, it would have been broken by now.

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I mean, do they even know? Their soul science is rudimentary compared even to humanity, much less the Consulat. They might not even know, much like ther they didn't really know what the Hijivian were really up to

 

[Mossconfig]

I mean, do they even know?

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Which brings us around to what is the obviously observable fate of those taken, shiplord society's reaction to such, and why we as a thread didn't ask Kicha.

 

[Snowfire]

and got up to date military intelligence to the point that she told us they'd taken a captive.

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Do recall that Kicha was a squadron or battlegroup commander at the time of the Second Sorrow and somewhere around the rank of Fleet Leader at the time of the War of the Sphere.

From what little you've seen of it, Shiplord society appears to have been optimised to manage cross-disciplinary progression in a way that only a culture of immortals could.

Kicha is the overall leader of the Hearthguard, a faction that has significant influnce within the Shiplord Authority. But she's also got quite a few other hats, among them being one of the oldest Shiplords alive in terms of elapsed time. She's had a very long time to acquire influence and access.

 

[justinkal]

She's the overall leader of all Hearthguard, not just at her Sorrow? Interesting.

 

[Mossconfig]

She's had a very long time to acquire influence and access.

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And she wasn't aware of the truth of what the Hjiven were doing, and reacted badly to finding out. How little does the average shiplord know?

We have a weapon aimed at the weakness of the shiplord society, their society. Going to Origin might allow us to sharpen it, but popping back home to offload everything we know needs to happen before we go to one of the shiplord's most defended places.

 

[eternaleye]

Weren't humanities ships hulls unalterable single-molecule things? And everyone was unhappy with the shiplords who had similar ships, but using human souls or whatnot?

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My memory is that it was specifically their ship that could heal their other ships, and which felt like Soylent Green.

 

[TheEyes]

And she wasn't aware of the truth of what the Hjiven were doing, and reacted badly to finding out. How little does the average shiplord know?

We have a weapon aimed at the weakness of the shiplord society, their society. Going to Origin might allow us to sharpen it, but popping back home to offload everything we know needs to happen before we go to one of the shiplord's most defended places.

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A political weapon like this is effectively useless if it can't be delivered, and frankly Amanda and the Adamant are really the only hope humanity has of delivering a message to a Shiplord polity that has spent close to a million years making itself deaf to all outside influence at all, let alone criticism. Frankly the only deliverable we have that is of real worth to the rest of Earth are these hints about the Fourth and Eighth Secrets, along with the warning that the later is super-dangerous to experiment with, given Iris's near-disastrous attempt to fork herself. Really wish we could have stolen some Fourth Secret tech, though; a quick unlock of that Secret would have been the final component of President Thera's Third Revolution and a massive gain for humanity as a whole.

 

[Snowfire]

And she wasn't aware of the truth of what the Hjiven were doing, and reacted badly to finding out. How little does the average shiplord know?

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Um...what are you referring to here? She understood what the Uninvolved told the Shiplords, that the Sphere were trying to turn into a consumptive Uninvolved in response to the war turning against them. She knew that they used Second Secret biohacks to enforce order within society, and that they applied these control mechanisms indiscriminately via plague vectors.

What neither she nor any Shiplord knew was the actual Uninvolved PoV on ending an entire species and exactly why they chose to act. She lacked the viscerally personal experience that Amanda shared with her, one that you were only able to access due to Practice being totally bullshit.

I'm honestly a little confused by this line of reasoning.

 

[Tirfarthuan]

I think the question is more about why the Shiplords are doing something as viscerally horrible as their soylent green ships and if it's well publicized in their society.

Iirc the Shiplords came down on the side of 'might as well use the biomass' and it let's them fix their ships mid combat. Since they had already devolved to this specific form of traumatizing people.

Of course to them I guess they don't have Practice senses and it's just an ethical bad that Kicha already hated and is well publicized at the Fifth Sorrow, where the Tribute System was the cause of the problem. It's only utterly viscerally horrifying to those with Practice senses - and especially to a mender like Amanda.

 

[Mossconfig]

line of reasoning.

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The idea I was thinking of was that we confront them with the truth of the true effects of the tribute system, aka that they're inadvertently recreating the soul effects that the Hjiven sphere was doing. That forces shiplords to make a choice. 1) Hjiven weren't so bad, or 2) Man that's fucked up we didn't know. Couch it in the same archaic language used against the Gysian's were warned with for extra drama.

The problem isn't an overbearing regulatory system, it's the fucking tribute system and the shiplord's refusal to trust.

deliverable we have that is of real worth

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Also that the void between stars is safe

Shiplord polity that has spent close to a million years making itself deaf to all outside influence at all,

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They have a hackable communication network, and we only need to upload one video file. Let the rumors spread it around. Plus. That isolation works both ways. It would certainly be the most interesting thing that's happened for thousands of years, and in an immortal society that's valuable, right?

 

[Torgamous]

That forces shiplords to make a choice. 1) Hjiven weren't so bad, or 2) Man that's fucked up we didn't know.

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3. It's unfortunate that we are forced to use such horrifying tools, but unlike the Sphere we have a greater purpose that must be fulfilled.

 

[Mossconfig]

greater purpose that must be fulfilled.

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Ok, then we kill those ones. It's less than 100% of them.

Also, the greater purpose of not building vaccum collapse weapons is a position that can be attacked. I'm thinking we have some kind of arms control treaty to codify our opposition to reality ending weapons (homegnizing swarms, time travel, vacuum collapse), and invite everybody. G7 and have the hearthguard sign it too, as opposed to the shiplord authority not signing up. Broadcasting that would poke holes in the "greater purpose". Of course, some shiplord's would radicalize themselves into Hjiven appreciation, but not all.

 

[Torgamous]

I'm thinking we have some kind of arms control treaty to codify our opposition to reality ending weapons (homegnizing swarms, time travel, vacuum collapse), and invite everybody.

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That's not really a "we" thing though, is my point. Amanda Hawk doesn't have the authority to do that anymore. That's a thing that the G7's diplomats and propagandists will have to handle after getting our findings, not a thing that we as a lone whistleblower on Shiplord public wifi can do.

Of course, some shiplord's would radicalize themselves into Hjiven appreciation, but not all.

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And you seem to have misunderstood. They won't do that. They've consistently been perfectly happy saying "this is evil and we're doing it anyway."

 

[Mossconfig]

They've consistently been perfectly happy saying "this is evil and we're doing it anyway."

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My theory is that they don't know exactly how evil they've been (Hjiven tier) and the accusation of such that they've never been forced to wrestle with will reduce the casualties of the war.

Amanda Hawk doesn't have the authority to do that anymore.

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Yeah, but "here's how we can cause the shiplords confusion, pain, and hopefully civil war" is a very convincing argument. Plus. Going around convincing the leaders of the other nations might be a near quest arc.

 

[TheEyes]

Also that the void between stars is safe

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Still not sure that's true. Yes, the Gysian told us that, and he might even believe it, but he could have been lied to or not know himself. The issues are twofold, and both come down to the inability to do proper interstellar light cone forensics:

The first issue is that all this stellar-scale construction and war ought to have been noticed by human astronomers and hadn't been for some reason. The galaxy is, after all, "only" 100,000 light years across, so humanity ought to be seeing the results of the occasional Lumen or whatever having been deployed by a hyper-aggressive Shiplord Authority over the centuries, as well as the apparent terraforming of the entire Galactic Core, the entire thing going dark as it's covered in Dyson Spheres, which ought to terrify everyone exactly as much as it sounds like. Somehow, though, the stars still looked lonely and inviting, for all of human history, when they really, really shouldn't have; someone, or more likely something, has been carefully wallpapering over all of this, and has been doing it for as long as the stars have been a warzone.

The second issue, which I brought up way back during the Second Battle of Sol (wow was that really five years ago?), is that the Shiplords themselves don't do light cone forensics on target species, like for instance humanity, even when they desperately want more intel, such as against the Nileans or humanity after the Second Battle of Sol. The final form of Shiplord surveillance, something that even Practice bullshit would have difficulty stopping, would be to use FTL-equipped optical telescopes to gaze "back in time", by just jumping back far enough away to see the light that's still traveling away. The moment that the Tribute Fleet didn't report back, for example, the Shiplords should have been able to jump FTL telescope arrays a few light-days away from Sol and been able to catch a livestream of exactly what went down, but they didn't*, either because they couldn't or because if they tried there'd be something out there waiting for them, something even the Shiplords don't want to mess with, if they tried it.

*- Note that they could have also just set up a listening post at the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, 4.3 light years away and done the same thing, so there's actually even more complications here.

Point is there's something really weird here, and until that gets cleared up I don't trust that it is actually safe to linger between stars.

 

[Torgamous]

My theory is that they don't know exactly how evil they've been (Hjiven tier) and the accusation of such that they've never been forced to wrestle with will reduce the casualties of the war.

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They do know they're as bad as the Sphere. Either they knew that they and the Sphere were both doing whatever bad soul stuff you're talking about and were okay with that, or they didn't know that either of them were doing bad soul stuff and they were okay with being as bad as they believed the Sphere to be.

They have had to wrestle with it before. The Hearthguard hasn't just been curating museums this whole time.

You're not giving their capacity for self-justification anywhere near the credit we've spent the whole thread being shown it deserves.

Yeah, but "here's how we can cause the shiplords confusion, pain, and hopefully civil war" is a very convincing argument. Plus. Going around convincing the leaders of the other nations might be a near quest arc.

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It's going to be a thing that Adriana does, because it's her job and not ours.

 

[Snowfire]

Scheduled vote count started by Snowfire on Dec 7, 2022 at 11:02 AM, finished with 144 posts and 9 votes.

• ---

  7 people have voted

  [x] Return to the Hearthguard memorial to
  - [x] Remember

  • Coda
  • Tirfarthuan
  • Dmol8
  • MTB
  • TheEyes
  • Torgamous
  • Lightwhispers

  1 people have voted

  [X] Return to the Adamant to assess and plan your next move.

  • Mossconfig

  1 people have voted

  [X] Return to the Adamant to assess and plan your next move.
  - [X] Compose a poem about the health benefits of nuclear pasta.

  • Baughn

 

[Queen Kit]

Just gonna throw this out here.

I'm really confused on the line of thought that the shipyards are doing the Hijven thing. They aren't doing the same things from what I can see. They are not making everyone in their home a biologically brainwashed mass of obedient slaves with the second secret.

If they were, and of they or their leadership was, we wouldn't see the Hearthguard who are able to exist with an opinion in opposition to The Authority regardless of the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of being able to enact change from that held view.

This isn't to say that they aren't doing their own unique terrible things. But every time you make this direct connection I get more confused. Their people, from all interactions we have had, seem to be able to exist as individuals and not a hive or swarm kinda thing. They do still as a society seem to feel the Hijven were wrong and are not doing precisely what they did.

I'm not trying to say things aren't bad. Just trying to say that as someone trying to follow the current debates I'm very confused on how this comparison and term/ race is being used.

 

[Mossconfig]

"Because it makes you easier to find," Entara replied immediately, a shadow flickering across their face. "You truly didn't know?"
"It's that simple?" You asked - demanded really. After all that, decades of fear, all for nothin- You cut the thought away.
"Not entirely," more shadows flickered as they spoke. "It's certainly easier to eradicate a species if they don't hide away between stars, but it also provides a line of fear that few ever cross. It's a chain that is never cut, and I believe acts as a final barrier to any race attempting to fight for true freedom. The cruel trick is how it's so vague. Placed alongside directives with extermination as the price of breaking them, it suggests the cost to be similar. "
"Is there truly nothing out there?" Mary sounded as disappointed as you'd ever heard her in your life.
"The Neras sometimes meet there," Entara told you. You remembered that name from Insight reports. The only known contemporary of the Shiplords, they were a sentient fungus with seeming innate mastery of the First Secret. Exactly how they had that, no one knew. "But that's all I'm aware of, and I'm aware of a great deal. For all that they did, the Shiplords didn't skimp on the education they offered us. I've spent decades at a time out in the dark spaces between suns, and nothing came for me."

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I think that this is plenty convincing for me

Hijven thing

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The thing that the Hjiven were doing to the meat was entirely different from what the shiplords are doing. I'm saying that the soul deep wrongness of shiplord tribute fleets is similar to the soul deep wrongness of the Hjiven thing. Something that the shiplords wouldn't be aware of because they suck at soul science.

 

[Mossconfig]

Theorizing on why the shiplords might be different from the Hjiven, I think that the Hjiven kept their victims, and therefore souls alive for the duration. The shiplords might "just" be reprocessing biomatter, therefore the suffering soul structure only is able to feed on a bit of suffering.

Anywho, my idea was to zip back home to get the ball rolling on the plan. Diplomats going around diplomacing, and a task force going out there to track down a tribute fleet to pull it apart and see if there's specific we can point to.

 

[TheEyes]

Theorizing on why the shiplords might be different from the Hjiven, I think that the Hjiven kept their victims, and therefore souls alive for the duration. The shiplords might "just" be reprocessing biomatter, therefore the suffering soul structure only is able to feed on a bit of suffering.

Anywho, my idea was to zip back home to get the ball rolling on the plan. Diplomats going around diplomacing, and a task force going out there to track down a tribute fleet to pull it apart and see if there's specific we can point to.

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We (as in the questers) honestly have no idea, because we have almost no idea what a soul is, or how soul-space intersects with and interacts with the conventional universe, certainly not like the humans in the Quest do.

We know that the Unisonbound were able to detect that the Shiplords used the humans donated as Tribute in the construction of the second Tribute Fleet, and possibly the Medicament, and that was likely the source of the "Essence disruption" that caused the ships to be more effective against the FSN than they should have. But what does that mean, exactly? Are human souls actually being mutilated by the Shiplords, twisted into still-living, still-suffering hull plating, sort of like the, well I was about to make a Rick and Morty reference but honestly there are so many it's hard to make just one, or is it more passive, the souls have passed on and it's "just" the raw biomass that's being used?

 

[Snowfire]

We (as in the questers) honestly have no idea, because we have almost no idea what a soul is, or how soul-space intersects with and interacts with the conventional universe, certainly not like the humans in the Quest do.

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A caveat on my statement about soul science. The Shiplords have a very focused practical understanding on how souls interact with the rest of reality and how to affect them. In simpler terms: they developed a gun that could shoot Uninvolved and a targeting system that would let them aim. But that's kinda where the matter ends for them.

Mary would pull out her hair in pure fury at the state of Shiplord soul-science. It's sufficient to their purposes, and in those specific areas far exceeds humanity's abilities. But it leaves so much untouched.

By comparison, humanity in-quest can detect souls and have worked out enough to see some of how souls can affect reality - this helped along a lot by the rather blatant examples of Practice. They can scan and monitor them to a level that would probably surprise the Shiplords, but that still isn't sufficient to Mary's purposes - example: Amanda can see that her soul is changing, but human theory isn't good enough to work out where that might lead. There are hints of what's happening with the soul, which have given Mary and the rest of the scientific community much to furiously think about - Mary's thoughts being far more focused after seeing the Sorrows. But only hints, and nothing that any of them would want to make authoritative statements about.

To use those same simple terms: the Shiplords have a gun and a set of soul-vision goggles. Humanity is trying to bootstrap their way into an entire functional tech-base. One of those things is much harder than the other.