Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
They did it by hiding the matter until they knew a race well enough to tell them. A galactic ban means that it's clearly stated to everyone that it is possible. Two very different mechanisms here.
The Secrets' Crusade
- Thread starter Snowfire
- Start date
- Original Sci-Fi
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
All the easier for us to sign a treaty banning attempts to do it, then!
We can also have clauses in the treaty banning square circles and burning ice cubes.
I was tempted to throw in "honest used car salesmen," but Humanity 2.0, God help us, probably has those. Also "reasonable Shiplords," but while that's starting to sound like an oxymoron, it's an oxymoron we want to oxygenate as hard as possible...
Well yes, but the point is that openly and solemnly avowing that we absolutely will not blow up the galaxy during this conflict hopefully scores us at least a FEW propaganda points as part of the overall effort to undermine the Shiplords and sow dissension within their ranks.
It gives more ammunition to the Hearthguard if they are even trying to argue "look, these guys are a hell of a lot more like the Teel than they are like the Gysians, and we really, really shouldn't be trying to murder them for the sin of not wanting to all be murdered by us."
This.
@Snowfire , I'm going to be candid with you. This setting of yours has a terrible beauty and grandeur to it, and I know you've spent years of your life building it up to the revelations we've had lately.
But you do need to allow for the fact that others won't necessarily see everything here the same way you do.
The Shiplords don't come across as relatable or sympathetic. They're broken, they're horribly broken, and the monstrous crimes they have committed as a direct consequence of their brokenness are to a large extent responsible for their own total inability to find a permanent solution to the very problems they claim to be trying to solve by committing the crimes.
The Shiplords have dumped too much abuse on the galaxy for us as OOC quest voters, or realistically for the peoples of the galaxy itself IC, to embrace them and say "we understand that you were trying your best."
No, they were not trying their best, or if they were trying their best then their best is shit. If this is the best they could do, then they should have responded to the Fourth Sorrow by totally abdicating their positions as galactic overlords, recusing themselves due to rank incompetence and unworthiness. And then they could pass that burden of duty, along with all their lore and equipment, on to the Teel. Who might not have been perfect at it, but would at least have not spent the whole goddamn Pleistocene being complete monsters to everyone else in the galaxy.
That's the reality of the setting you've crafted. I'm sorry if that doesn't align with your own feelings on the matter, but it's what dozens of us see when we look at it from an outside view.
...
The point being, we do understand that the Shiplords themselves are in massive denial and are horrifyingly psychologically invested in continuing to murder everyone like they've been doing for the entire Pleistocene and continue to do today. We understand roughly how they came to be in that kind of denial, and what justifications they use for their ongoing genocidal actions. We get it.
But at this point, we are basically sizing up their whole culture like a bunch of engineers sizing up a skyscraper to figure out where to put the big blocks of C4 to do a controlled demolition on it.
Which means we're not going to have a very romanticized view of it, and we're not going to have a lot of respect for the long list of reasons they've constructed for why the whole screaming blood-spattered murder-edifice doesn't need to come crashing down.
All right, then. We phrase a very nonspecific and broad ban against "weapons of interstellar destruction" or whatever, perhaps "weapons of interstellar destruction using the Secrets." Basically anything bigger and hairier than whatever the hell War Fleets use to blow up stars.
It really shouldn't surprise or outrage the Shiplords that any species is capable of thinking of means to use the Secrets for interstellar destruction. And if it does, we're already going to push that outrage button anyway when it turns out that G7 members (us) have been to the Sorrows, because you don't have to spend much time at the Sorrows to learn the basics about how the Secrets can be used to imperil the universe.
Last edited:
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
For example, a mandatory visit of each Sorrow when a new species either does their first FTL jump or start using a Secret, combined with an invitation to a galaxy-wide surveillance comittee that makes sure via well, surveillance, that no race starts playing with existence itself (atomic weapons proliferation ban coupled with inspections). And if they are xenophobic enough to say 'no' after the visit, the invitation and some time with the galaxies diplomats? Then might be the time to talk about measures to ensure they do not destroy everybody (like, involuntary inspections, disarmament etc.). Because the Sorrows show also that there are races that really push the big red button.
That system I just proposed would be better than generalized week of sorrows. And that's just me after 5 minutes, in-story they have experts from different races to come up with something better. And OOC we as players can brainstorm a better solution.
That system I just proposed would be better than generalized week of sorrows. And that's just me after 5 minutes, in-story they have experts from different races to come up with something better. And OOC we as players can brainstorm a better solution.
- Location
- LEO
I disagree. We humans 1.0 have a wikipedia article about false vaccum decay. The cat is already out of the bag. Our fiction has already has a category for the Hjiven, the "homegnizing swarms". We don't need to publicize the exact methods that these can be done with, but that they exist can't be hidden. People know uranium and centrifuges are involved in the creation of nukes, and international actors pay attention to the flow of such material.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I'm fine with that option too.
At this point I'm just trying to calculate the wording for maximum salutary effect on the Shiplords, bearing in mind that they're bonkers insano paranoid about anyone inventing a galaxy-busting superweapon and that this cuts both ways. In practice this should probably be left up to whatever poor fuckers are trying to psychoanalyze Shiplords; I'm honestly tempted to see if we can get in touch with the Hearthguard and just ask them to figure out what the language should be.
Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
- Pronouns
- She/Her
You compared a vacuum collapse bomb to MAD earlier. The vital distinction there is that MAD is not inherent to the creation or use of nuclear weapons. America used nuclear weapons twice and came out of that having secured a very lucrative peace. When the Soviet Union built their first nukes, they were "just" a way to streamline WWII-style strategic bombing.
Past that, the nuke became the anti-air weapon of choice for if you want to be absolutely certain that zero enemy bombers will reach your cities. It wasn't just one nuke = one dead city and the US(A/SR) running up the score. Nukes were death, but they could also, in the early stages, be survival.
MAD developed as that balance was ratcheted into the stratosphere. The alternative to mutually assured destruction was not, at any point in the process, no destruction. It was individually assured destruction.
A vacuum collapse bomb doesn't have any of that. It didn't take millions of years for someone to build one because the Shiplords were just so amazing that they kept everyone else from building the Universal Lemming Engine. It took that long because it's very hard to find a polity that's collectively that batshit, but that also managed to survive all the way to First Contact.
A treaty not to do it will stick because almost everybody who will ever exist for the entire rest of the universe has a strong incentive to make it stick. And anyone who doesn't respond to that incentive will respond to everyone who does.
tl;dr RIP to everyone the Shiplords' paranoia has ever killed but we're different.
Point of order: the Hijiven's monstrosity was less "homogenizing swarm" and more like "birth of Slaanesh". They were specifically making an evil "Uninvolved", not grey goo; even the Fifth Sorrow was closer to a homogenizing swarm than the Third, and that one turned out to be ultimately harmless-ish.
It's telling that even among the Sorrows only two of them, the First and the Third, involved species actually thinking about creating universe-enders. Are these the only examples the Shiplords have of smoking guns, or are there others that are not considered Sorrows, that even the Hearthguard consider "legitimate" kills for actively trying to end existence?
The fatal flaw of this plan is that the Shiplords would never accept an alliance of species to be anything other than a threat. Kicha, our closest hope to being the leader of a Shiplord schism movement, proved it here:
And I know that what we're talking about isn't the same as a wartime alliance that leads to unsanctioned experimentation with Secrets, but the Shiplords are paranoid to the point of clear irrationality and would be unable to draw a distinction, not after literal millions of years of sunk costs locking them into their extremist mentality.
Last edited:
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Well, then, at some point the motherfuckers are just gonna have to die, aren't they?
I mean, I get that this is the outcome we're hoping to avoid, but if it's true that every option for breaking the logjam is itself something illegitimate that they'll go berserk over... there's just no way around this except through the Shiplords, because continuing to tolerate the Tribute system is utterly intolerable.
I mean, I get that this is the outcome we're hoping to avoid, but if it's true that every option for breaking the logjam is itself something illegitimate that they'll go berserk over... there's just no way around this except through the Shiplords, because continuing to tolerate the Tribute system is utterly intolerable.
I think this is a very good point:
With the key being controlled demolitions. I mean, as a reminder, when Amanda smashed through the Tribute Fleet Leader's assumptions and got past the reflexive genocidal rage (which, definitely is a yikes factor we are currently dealing with, that's a terrible combination of words) the Shiplords on the fleet committed suicide.
It is very, very, very likely that any successful assault on Shiplord social structures is going to kill a lot of Shiplords in an absolute sense of 'a lot'. There is a good chance that a measurable fraction of the population of the reining galactic superpower will literally evaporate. We are talking a lot of people by any objective accounting, and I want to emphasize that this is something you have to care about even if you aren't Amanda who at this point we can be quite sure cares very much. This is something we have to wrangle, even with the dark temptation to say good riddance and hope every Tribute Fleet instantly turns into a bunch of empty hulks, because those Shiplords would of course be people we somewhat got through to and we want as many of them to survive and help influence Shiplord society away from genocide as possible.
It's not top of my priority list that we perform a perfect takedown for the sake of the Shiplords. There's a whole galaxy full of non-Shiplord people that would benefit very very much from us having a good plan, rolling several nat 100s, and accidentally making Amanda run for president of Shiplordia or whatever they call their polity (am I just blanking or do we still not know?). But the Shiplords are on the list. We should care, even if the Shiplords wouldn't. Maybe especially because they wouldn't.
With the key being controlled demolitions. I mean, as a reminder, when Amanda smashed through the Tribute Fleet Leader's assumptions and got past the reflexive genocidal rage (which, definitely is a yikes factor we are currently dealing with, that's a terrible combination of words) the Shiplords on the fleet committed suicide.
It is very, very, very likely that any successful assault on Shiplord social structures is going to kill a lot of Shiplords in an absolute sense of 'a lot'. There is a good chance that a measurable fraction of the population of the reining galactic superpower will literally evaporate. We are talking a lot of people by any objective accounting, and I want to emphasize that this is something you have to care about even if you aren't Amanda who at this point we can be quite sure cares very much. This is something we have to wrangle, even with the dark temptation to say good riddance and hope every Tribute Fleet instantly turns into a bunch of empty hulks, because those Shiplords would of course be people we somewhat got through to and we want as many of them to survive and help influence Shiplord society away from genocide as possible.
It's not top of my priority list that we perform a perfect takedown for the sake of the Shiplords. There's a whole galaxy full of non-Shiplord people that would benefit very very much from us having a good plan, rolling several nat 100s, and accidentally making Amanda run for president of Shiplordia or whatever they call their polity (am I just blanking or do we still not know?). But the Shiplords are on the list. We should care, even if the Shiplords wouldn't. Maybe especially because they wouldn't.
- Location
- LEO
Sure, we can add what the Hjiven were doing under 3 things. The mind control, enslavement through homogenization, and unwilling soul manipulation? Something for the diplomats to word correctly.
Rereading the second battle of sol, the tribute fleets is said to use biomechanical computers, and if the theory that they use tribute biomatter for them is true the Hjiven comparisons are even clearer.
I don't think the Shiplords are using living human brains for anything as banal as calculators; if nothing else that's incredibly inefficient when the Shiplords have highly advanced bio-nanotechnology on their side and all the resources of a Kardeshev Type II 1/2 civilization to work with. No, the only thing that makes sense is that the anti-Uninvolved guns that the Shiplords have, the same weapons that caused the "Essence Disruption" debuff that we saw in SBoS, require the use of souls, possibly as ammunition or fuel, and the Shiplord Authority decided to ignore the obvious conflicts of interest and use Tribute races in their construction rather than using their own people like a properly 40K race would*.
But that's sort of a distinction without a difference. Regardless of what ship system the Shiplords are using living people to build, or whether or not the Shiplords know whether or not using living people in their construction means they're forcing innocent Tribute species' souls into eternal torture (@Snowfire's posts would suggest they have no idea either way), the fact that they can't definitively rule it out is just one more thing that makes them irredeemable monsters. It's just one more example of the Shiplords choosing to make an Olympic sport out of coordinated high diving off of the moral event horizon for the past million plus years.
* Well a properly 40K race would use children instead of adults, and then conscript their parents to be the ones firing the soul gun, because their innocent souls just gives the soul gun that extra, lovely tang of added confusion and betrayal.
You know, I'd actually include the Shiplords' Lumens and possibly even planet killers on the list of proscribed weapons. The only reason to Death Star a planet or Sun Crusher a star is to indiscriminately kill everyone around it; there are so few instances where that would not be a war crime that they're barely worth mentioning. I still don't anticipate a galactic non-proliferation treaty to sway the Shiplords away from their murderboner ways, but calling out weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction as awful and unworthy of contemplation is absolutely worth doing for its own sake.
- Location
- LEO
I mean, universe enders are in a different league. The human tendency to move away from indiscriminate weapons like poison gas is a human thing born of our history. I do think that asking the shiplords to acknowledge the existence of civilian noncombatants is worth trying but I don't expect much to come from it. Perhaps a different treaty, to show shiplords how they'd be treated if they surrendered?
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
The one complication is that the Shiplords probably have some kind of more controllable version of the planetary nanomass built by the Zlathbu (?), the race that ended in the Fifth Sorrow.
I'm honestly not sure how you'd put something like that down, if it were deployed in a system defense role, without a weapon capable of ending all life on a planet it was fired at.
I'm honestly not sure how you'd put something like that down, if it were deployed in a system defense role, without a weapon capable of ending all life on a planet it was fired at.
Enthusiast#117
This is not the Profile you are looking for
- Location
- United States
Individuals become suicidal all the time.
The Uninvolved are entire species who commit collective suicide.
The spiteful desire to take someone with you into death is not a complicated unheard of thing for us to understand. But I think the shiplords likely had to be taught that it exists for other species.
If 'X' is the amount of technological and industrial work required to build a device that can end the universe, then no single polity can ever be allowed to advance to the point that 'X' is realistically available to
individuals or small groups.
Because it's a statistical guarantee that you will end up with a nihilistic mad scientist or cult, who wants to end everything for everyone eventually. And when they appear they must not have the tools to actually do it.
For a sane mind to allow 'X' to be widely available, you either need some mechanism to keep those people from developing 100% of the time (which is kind of oppressive) or the species must be fundamentally incapable of that kind of spitefully nihilistic omnicide (which, if it's not a natural feature of the species is it's own kind of horror to enforce).
If 'Y' is how advanced a society must become to make 'X' widely available to it's populous, then if a species isn't compatible with either of the above then it must be prevented from achieving 'Y'.
How can one ethically stunt technological growth like that?
The shiplords seem to have decided that there is no ethical way to do this.
And of the unethical ways, inflicting trauma seems to work for them, so that's what they do.
Either way, I'd like to point out that humans are neither of those two things (we're very much capable of being omnicidal, and someone somewhere can always slip through the cracks, even with the circles) so we're going to generate plenty of our own nhilistic madmen over time.
If we turn out not to be capable of editing the Secrets to prevent the apocalypse either, what's the plan?
If we allow ourselves to reach 'Y' before we have a solution, then it's only a matter of time before the world ends.
The Uninvolved are entire species who commit collective suicide.
The spiteful desire to take someone with you into death is not a complicated unheard of thing for us to understand. But I think the shiplords likely had to be taught that it exists for other species.
If 'X' is the amount of technological and industrial work required to build a device that can end the universe, then no single polity can ever be allowed to advance to the point that 'X' is realistically available to
individuals or small groups.
Because it's a statistical guarantee that you will end up with a nihilistic mad scientist or cult, who wants to end everything for everyone eventually. And when they appear they must not have the tools to actually do it.
For a sane mind to allow 'X' to be widely available, you either need some mechanism to keep those people from developing 100% of the time (which is kind of oppressive) or the species must be fundamentally incapable of that kind of spitefully nihilistic omnicide (which, if it's not a natural feature of the species is it's own kind of horror to enforce).
If 'Y' is how advanced a society must become to make 'X' widely available to it's populous, then if a species isn't compatible with either of the above then it must be prevented from achieving 'Y'.
How can one ethically stunt technological growth like that?
The shiplords seem to have decided that there is no ethical way to do this.
And of the unethical ways, inflicting trauma seems to work for them, so that's what they do.
Either way, I'd like to point out that humans are neither of those two things (we're very much capable of being omnicidal, and someone somewhere can always slip through the cracks, even with the circles) so we're going to generate plenty of our own nhilistic madmen over time.
If we turn out not to be capable of editing the Secrets to prevent the apocalypse either, what's the plan?
If we allow ourselves to reach 'Y' before we have a solution, then it's only a matter of time before the world ends.
Last edited:
- Location
- LEO
That's false logic. It's "X" plus "all the infrastructure to keep your universe ender safe/hidden from the rest of the galaxy".
The second value is a variable that the rest of us, those who want to survive can impact, and in any complex species that reaches a certain level of technological sophistication the number of people who want to survive will be more than those who don't.
Enthusiast#117
This is not the Profile you are looking for
- Location
- United States
There is a lot of empty space out there between the stars to hide things in.
An oppressive police state governing the galaxy, constantly scanning for signs of construction in empty space is one option.
Can you guarantee that it (or some other non-opressive decentralized option) will be 100% effective, forever?
- Location
- LEO
No, because nothing ever will be. If that's the standard of proof the shiplords are looking for they're shit out of luck. Some freaky quantum foam interaction could push the vaccum collapse button tomorrow, and we'd never know. The important part is that A) it's better than what the shiplords are doing right now and B) arms control would fundamentally attack the shiplord's reason for fighting.
Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
- Pronouns
- She/Her
There's also a whole galaxy full of non-Shiplord people that would benefit very very much from us having a good plan, rolling several nat 100s, and convincing everyone in the million-year-old death cult to jump off a cliff.
I don't see a "we keep every Shiplord we can alive so they can slowly reform their way out of this" option. Seeing as how we're, you know, already at war with them, because of all the genocides they do.
The options at this point are that they immediately stop doing genocides, or we keep fighting them until they stop doing genocides. In the words of Innuendo Studios, "for fuck's sake do not make Gabe your whole-ass praxis." This is especially true when you're not even in the same society as the one you're suggesting reforming.
The problem I see here is treating "advancement" as a single linear value. Like, it's not America's insufficient advancement that's keeping me from building a nuke in my garage. It's specifically my limited access to fissile material, good enough centrifuges, and probably other stuff. It's a lot easier and less...every negative adjective to limit those things instead of declaring that a society can't develop past the point where it could in theory provide free universal uranium if it really wanted to.
Enthusiast#117
This is not the Profile you are looking for
- Location
- United States
Morally better, I grant you. But I don't think it would be more effective.
Keeping species from reaching 'Y' by inflicting trauma has worked for them for a long time.
A collective agreement between species to ban that category of device or research and crack down on violators is subject to too many variables.
What do you do about a deceptive, arrogant species that hates regulation and wants to conduct their reckless experiments anyway? That pay lip service to intergalactic law while disguising their experimental structures as regular space stations?
Or who genuinely want to follow the law but value privacy so highly that they refuse to spy on their own citizens?
Or are paranoid that the forbidden research is hiding some juicy weapons tech all their rivals will have if they refrain themselves?
What are the odds that these situations are recognized and resolved before they actually have a shot at building the device?
How do you even resolve this if these attitudes are central to the psychology of the species?
Sure, most of the time things are fine. Trust is okay. Trust is healthy and good. But this is a situation where it only takes one bad call to ruin it all, and everything is at stake. Nobody has the right to risk the entire universe on a roll of the dice, when a more certain path is available.
Scaling up, even tiny risks become unconsiousable.
If I handed you a button and said that pressing the button had a one in a trillion chance to blow up the world, but if it doesn't it instead spawns you a free meal from nothing, how often would you press it?
Never? Only once? On bad days when you can't get food?
Distribute copies of the button to every starving child in 3rd world countries?
We can do math to find out how long the world lasts on average under different conditions.
On the cosmic scale, there are essentially three numbers that occur most often: 0, 1, and infinity.
Either something is impossible, a situation is utterly unique, or it essentially is happening somewhere all the time.
It's not good enough to make ending the universe 'unlikely', because then it's just a question of how long until someone pulls the trigger.
The solution I imagine the shiplords are looking for is how to ethically make it as close to impossible as possible.
Editing the Secrets is a good solution. But I don't think we have a good backup solution yet.
I don't think they'll really go for any solution that's less effective than their current one.
Traumatizing people into not advancing technologically has - to them - a proven track record.
In real life there already has been a kid building a nuclear reactor in his backyard shed. People only discovered this when tracking down the radiation leak.
Imagine if he could have gotten some fissile material by jailbreaking a replicator.
But yes, treating it as a single linear value is reductive. I'm using it as a shorthand, but the principle is sort of similar. There are a chain of prerequisite techs you want to keep people from progressing through.
Torgamous
Aspiring Gynoid
- Pronouns
- She/Her
No, they're clearly not. We've established that they're doing genocides for literally no good goddamn reason. Just out of a belief that they're the arbiters of who deserves to exist, with absolutely no connection to any kind of extinction threat to justify it.
The solution the Shiplords are looking for is a second coming of the Consulat, who they believe died to give the Shiplords in particular the galaxy. That belief overlaps with them keeping people from destroying the universe, but it also covers them just arbitrarily creating whatever standards they like for allowing anyone access to any of the Secrets, on pain of genocide.
- Location
- LEO
If the shiplords decide that this is a compelling justification then there's nothing stopping them from creating Von Newman sterilizers for the galaxy.
Also, you're not factoring in the existence of the uninvolved, who if incorporated into an arms control scheme would multiply the efforts of the rational species.
If such a species arose, they would be in the absolute minority, I'm sure that the rest of us could get together and offer them an ultimatum on a case by case basis.
Last edited:
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
We have no reason to think that any of the available universe-ender options even can be engineered down to a level where individuals can plausibly make them, with the possible exception of individuals who have Practice and can do things like single-handedly conjure up entire cities ex nihilo.
Tell me, are you familiar with the phrase "Humanity 2.0" within the context of this quest?
Presumably, go back to the drawing board, figure out how the Elder First altered humanity to produce Version 2.0, and further alter ourselves into Version 2.1, with any plausible willingness to engage in nihilistic universe-destroying madness edited right out of the species. Assuming that issue wasn't fixed in v2.0 or for that matter v1.1 ...
Enthusiast#117
This is not the Profile you are looking for
- Location
- United States
That the shiplords prefer to let life develop and only curate it when it grows too advanced is interesting, yes. They must think the risk is worth it for some reason.
Perhaps they fear Uninvolved action should they attempt a sterilization?
I do wonder about Practice sometimes. I wonder if it's truly energy from nothing or if the power will one day run out. If it's reliable over the scale of millennia then that's great.
If it requires semi-regular willing sacrifice to maintain, that's it's own set of problems.
But we do know that the Uninvolved have some kind of finite life cycle. If no more of them are being made, then long-term plans can't really rely on their help.
Do we actually know that much about what sorts of alien psychologies are most common?
The only people around with the relevant statistical data would be the shiplords and the Uninvolved I think.
How average is the human perspective I wonder.
Last edited:
A couple points:
The Shiplords themselves had a fairly reasonable answer to not facilitating vacuum collapse before they met the Hjiven. In the modern fully explored galaxy, that's a reasonable starting point and we should not forget it.
The current horror is ultimately a trauma-fueled response to the Hjiven, not to vacuum collapse. The Shiplords conjoined the two issues mentally, but we should not copy this error.
For better or worse, the Shiplords have not allowed any current species to be within generational development of giving the universe a bad ending. This means we do in fact, have time to develop an alternative galactic community structure to the Shiplord system.
And we have of course, already pulled the trigger. Galactic society is going to change no matter what. Whether or not everyone else wins, the Shiplords are going to lose their complete hegemony. This entire quest is about finding the best win condition we possibly can - but the genie escaped the bottle after Sol IV. What happens if we can't end the war with diplomacy and/or Practice is, inevitably, that we go back to the initial plan of fighting it.
The Shiplords themselves had a fairly reasonable answer to not facilitating vacuum collapse before they met the Hjiven. In the modern fully explored galaxy, that's a reasonable starting point and we should not forget it.
The current horror is ultimately a trauma-fueled response to the Hjiven, not to vacuum collapse. The Shiplords conjoined the two issues mentally, but we should not copy this error.
For better or worse, the Shiplords have not allowed any current species to be within generational development of giving the universe a bad ending. This means we do in fact, have time to develop an alternative galactic community structure to the Shiplord system.
And we have of course, already pulled the trigger. Galactic society is going to change no matter what. Whether or not everyone else wins, the Shiplords are going to lose their complete hegemony. This entire quest is about finding the best win condition we possibly can - but the genie escaped the bottle after Sol IV. What happens if we can't end the war with diplomacy and/or Practice is, inevitably, that we go back to the initial plan of fighting it.