- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yes, they actively use social engineering to get them to do so. Fearful Uninvolved that cannot think about involving themselves into the affairs of the galaxy/SL.
The Secrets' Crusade
- Thread starter Snowfire
- Start date
- Original Sci-Fi
Of Atrocities And The Hjivin Sphere - Part 2
Baughn
Healing-type writer
- Location
- Dublin
Yes, but-
Also yes.
We based the Hjivin largely on certain of Robin Hanson's ideas. He wrote an entire book about it, though I'll warn you up front, Hanson seems to think what they did may be a good idea. I don't mean to say he's an evil lunatic—he appears to have convinced himself this is a good outcome. So, maybe just lunatic. Bear that in mind before you buy the book. XD
That being said, authorial intent was to make the Hjivin worse. They're as terrible as possible, to as great a degree as is possible, while still being the kind of monsters that seem... not likely, but given the size of the galaxy, plausible. A path that someone would step down. A path that's rational; where most steps on the path were taken because they benefited the person taking it, and where many could even be said to benefit those it were done to, from the twisted perspective of someone already halfway down that road. The 20th century Hjivin would be horrified by what came later, and their civilization at the time included plenty of people who warned that this might happen, but... those weren't the people in charge.
That's the most terrible part of their design, as far as I'm concerned. They're someone we might become. An outcome I am happy to warn people away from, but one I feel not enough people pay attention to. Though I think their ending is unlikely, that's more because our incentives and physical constraints are slightly different; not because we, as people, are all that different.
I don't know their full backstory, though if I were to guess, it would go somewhat like the following...
= = =
The Hjivin started out much like ourselves. Prior to their 20th century, there were no significant differences. So that's where we'll start.
Most of you already have an inkling of what I will say. They went through their version of the gilded age—they had robber barons, labor movements, slaves and slave rebellions, and let's not forget governments trying to keep all this in check. Trying, as much as anything, just to maintain their own power. They were, perhaps, a little more socially inclined than us; which is to say, they were more inclined to follow the herd, less inclined to rock the boat or do things that benefited them, specifically. Not outside the gamut of humanity, though; just biased a little.
When technology became a significant factor, it got used. Instead of a culture that rejected drugs in favour of a religious adherence to pristine humanity (Hjivin-ity), governments and corporations made sure to take advantage of them. There, too... well, the jobs were terrible anyway, and people had to do them anyway, you understand. Giving workers something to take the edge off seemed fine, right? And in a sense, it really was; the problem is the second-order effects, as it always has been.
But in any case, they were less inclined to worry about those. A smaller chance of rebellions or strikes? Great! It's win-win. And if the same drugs tended to kill people at about the end of their useful work life ... well, we're talking about the lower working class anyway. Not, um, 'real' people. Besides, they could always resign if they wanted to.
(Fill in a hundred more atrocities.)
When genetics allowed them to do it, they segregated people by genetic purity. Not races... though there was some of that... but mutational load, mostly. It wasn't done by force, and didn't have to be; it was simply an offer provided, to anyone looking for a partner, that let them check if a child they had with said partner was likely to have any form of disease, or other limitation. Perfectly... reasonable. You can do the same right now.
The result, on a society already close to being caste-based, I guess you can imagine. But to spell it out: The castes hardened. Marrying outside your own became not just frowned upon, but foolish. Stupid and irrational. In some places, it was made illegal; the children, you understand.
Of course did this ensure there'd be no cross-pollination between castes at all, thoughts or otherwise. It became quite easy to see the others as.. 'other'.
(And another twenty, equivalent second-order effects applied.)
And then, the First came into their hands... and the Second, Third... all the way to the Eighth, I dare believe.
The society I've described isn't stable. Obviously. Places like it have existed for real, still do to some degree; they never last, in part because they can't compete with outsiders and in part because if you put a steel-toed boot on 90% of your population, there will eventually be enough pressure built up for some series of coincidences to bring it down. Where the Hjivin differ from ourself is three-fold.
- They were more cooperative to begin with, less likely to rebel; it was also less likely for nations to go to war. I've mentioned that.
- Their ruling classes were, being more cooperative, also less likely to backstab each other. It would take a longer series of coincidences to bring down their society at all.
- And then they gained access to the Second.
The dominoes fell from there, and a lot has been guessed. The caste system hardened into true differences in species. The under-castes, which was nearly everyone, were given the desire to follow their rulers—though not to gain any pleasure from it; that turns out to be a different subsystem entirely.[1]
They weren't able to alter mental functionality directly, because souls are complicated; but they were able to edit their genetics, using trial and error to remove the capacity for rational thought from those who didn't need it, the capacity for muscular strength from the technicians running their computers... again, with little reason to make anyone feel happy about it. The population was already under control. This was a matter of mop-up.
And, of course... the rulers could apply this to each other, removing aspects such as empathy for their lessers. Of course, the way they were being raised, that basically already didn't exist. But from that moment on, no children would ever risk falling into confusion about it, or risk finding un-approved playmates.
(And... you guessed it... insert a thousand more minor changes.)
It was a fine art, by the time they met the Shiplords. The Hjivin engineers and scientists were all Feynman or Einstein-level geniuses, rational to the bone; their soldiers fearless; their leaders cold, calculating beings who would never blink at sacrifice, but who would never do so unnecessarily, either. It was the obvious path, the inevitable end-state that surely every species must come to, and hence the Shiplords' claims could not possibly be accurate.
And then, towards the end of the war....
The Hjivin, unlike any species since the Consolat, cracked the secret of the soul. They theorised how Uninvolved work, and how their own minds worked, well enough to make practical use of the knowledge. A skill their leaders immediately put towards the creation of an artificial, massive, hungry entity—an "uninvolved" that would never cease growing, never fade or die, and which would not even be their own demise. A cybernetic shell for themselves, if I can use that term. An artificial mind where they would be in charge, and everyone else in the Hjivin empire would still exist, as living parts of the abomination.[2]
Those part of their living minds that the rulers found useful, anyway. No scientist-caste has any need for thoughts besides those of science, I suppose.
1: Quite a surprise when I learned it, and I wish I could find a reference right now. But at any rate, whatever subsystem in your brain makes you enjoy things is completely disjoint from whatever makes you want to do them. That's why you can procrastinate on things you enjoy... and why you sometimes want to keep doing things which you don't. They're usually aligned, but not always; it's a bug. Try to keep that in mind.
2: This might sound a bit like the Conjoiners. I assume the next paragraph disabused you of that notion.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Yeah.
That's about what happens when the rather longstanding "deliberate fractionation of the species through bioscience" trope (which has occured in science fiction many times) meets capitalism meets the specific details of what is and is not possible in the Secrets 'verse.
That's about what happens when the rather longstanding "deliberate fractionation of the species through bioscience" trope (which has occured in science fiction many times) meets capitalism meets the specific details of what is and is not possible in the Secrets 'verse.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
For those still curious about the Hjivin, the above threadmark should grant you the rest of what I wasn't really able to put to print in my own post.
Of everything we've made in writing Practice War and Secrets' Crusade, this Sphere remains the one most likely to give me nightmares. Because something like it could happen to humanity, if we're not careful.
Not the same way, perhaps. But close enough. Fiction, it's said, can be elevated by touching the edge of reality. Sometimes that isn't a good thing.
Of everything we've made in writing Practice War and Secrets' Crusade, this Sphere remains the one most likely to give me nightmares. Because something like it could happen to humanity, if we're not careful.
Not the same way, perhaps. But close enough. Fiction, it's said, can be elevated by touching the edge of reality. Sometimes that isn't a good thing.
- Location
- .wa.us
It sounds an awful lot like the Hjivin were basically the playbook SEELE in NGE were (clumsily) trying to crib from, when it comes to Instrumentality's end product.
- Location
- Somewhere out there
Entirely by coincidence, I came across a relevant article just today: The powerful and mysterious brain circuitry that makes us love Google, Twitter, and texting.
EDIT: Okay, no, it wasn't by coincidence. You were the one who linked it to me. Whoops. I forgot. XD
EDIT 2: "You may find that having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true." - Spock
Eh... not really? Instrumentality was entirely about dissolving the boundaries between individuals, while the Hjivin sought instead to preserve the useful parts of individuals while discarding the unimportant fluff.
I think a better example would be the Borg, if they had decided to optimize their civilization by bio-hacking every trait they needed into themselves instead of bio-hacking alien races to gain the traits they would bring to the collective.
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- Location
- Peterborough, NH, USA
So, in the interest of keeping the thread from going dormant, I had a thought experiment.
You may be familiar with Island in the Sea of Time events, where a place and time is transplanted to a different area of space-time. It's been a common Crossover vehicle for a while. To the point that I'm adapting this idea from a proposal to combine the 4 settings of 40K, Star Trek, Star Wars, and Stargate. And I do mean settings. The universes have been merged, but the locations of various things didn't quite match up, so the 4 galaxies are arranged in a pattern where they all have an edge that meets up with the other three at a central point, but only overlap in two slices on one side of each circle.
Alternatively, it could all just be mashed together into one super-galaxy, but I think this admittedly more complicated setup is more interesting. Sure, the galaxies will eventually merge the way Andromeda and the Milky Way are supposed to, but that won't be for tens of millennia. Not that long by Shiplord standards perhaps, but still.
The point is, the whole universe of each galaxy was carted along with them. Ignoring any possible issues in higher dimensions from there abruptly being one universe occupying the space of one universe where 4 once were, how might a quadrupling of the universe's total mass-energy affect things? Even in sections of the galaxies that aren't overlapping with either their neighbor or a Dwarf Galaxy, they'd have gone up to 130% of their normal density, while the intergalactic void would be at 40% of it's previous density, as the voids are 10% of the average density of a typical galaxy.
You may be familiar with Island in the Sea of Time events, where a place and time is transplanted to a different area of space-time. It's been a common Crossover vehicle for a while. To the point that I'm adapting this idea from a proposal to combine the 4 settings of 40K, Star Trek, Star Wars, and Stargate. And I do mean settings. The universes have been merged, but the locations of various things didn't quite match up, so the 4 galaxies are arranged in a pattern where they all have an edge that meets up with the other three at a central point, but only overlap in two slices on one side of each circle.
Alternatively, it could all just be mashed together into one super-galaxy, but I think this admittedly more complicated setup is more interesting. Sure, the galaxies will eventually merge the way Andromeda and the Milky Way are supposed to, but that won't be for tens of millennia. Not that long by Shiplord standards perhaps, but still.
The point is, the whole universe of each galaxy was carted along with them. Ignoring any possible issues in higher dimensions from there abruptly being one universe occupying the space of one universe where 4 once were, how might a quadrupling of the universe's total mass-energy affect things? Even in sections of the galaxies that aren't overlapping with either their neighbor or a Dwarf Galaxy, they'd have gone up to 130% of their normal density, while the intergalactic void would be at 40% of it's previous density, as the voids are 10% of the average density of a typical galaxy.
There's no real need to keep the thread from "going dormant", which isn't really a thing anyway - Snowfire will post when words happen, and anyone else can post anything relevant at any point.
As for your idea, may I suggest the proper thread: Quest Idea Thread Idea
SaltyWaffles
I am dissapoint, son
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Okay, so, having thought about it for a while, I'm still left with a few key questions regarding Shiplord methodology and motivation. And it all revolves around the Tribute system.
Nothing we've seen thus far from the Sorrows has really served as the basis for why the Tribute system exists--certainly not the extremely brutal, callous, and relentless nature of it. And, even beyond that, how the Shiplords view the Tribute system and the people carrying it out with a religious-style reverence.
1) The Tribute system did not prove necessary in the past. What failures happened were clearly caused by other, far more important factors that even the Shiplords acknowledge: a lack of preparedness for a full-scale war and a reliance on a modest number of War Fleets to cover far too much ground simulatenously, a lack of insider knowledge on the research and ambitions of other races, an inability to solve the fundamental problem of the Secrets being capable of terrifying misuse, and being unable to establish trust with a species after brutalizing it in First Contact (via Tribute Fleet, no less). In other words, the Tribute System seemed to be a solution in search of a problem...which created more problems itself.
2) The idea that the Tribute System is designed to "toughen up" a race and make it eternally prepared for galactic war clearly never held up. Tribute Fleets devastate their victims by design, heavily curtail the potential and growth of their victims (hard to build up to anything when it's routinely getting wrecked by beings clearly vastly superior to you), and make them hate you so much that they would sometimes rather all die as a final act of spite. And when winning "freedom" from the system, there no longer seems to be any incentive to be prepared and militant anymore, and the despair and impotent rage just makes them incredibly unlikely to help in any kind of galactic war. Furthermore, by encouraging races to go Uninvolved (and then doing everything they could to make sure they stayed Uninvolved), the Shiplords would quickly remove any potential for assistance or growth anyway.
3) That Tribute Fleets would exterminate species that didn't try fighting back because they didn't fight back is nonsensical even by Shiplord logic. Since the Shiplord modus operandi essentially achieves the same result (render a species impotent, unable and unwilling to have agency, encourage them to commit mass suicide, then ensure the resulting being knows that it will get killed if it tries to actually do anything before it dies a natural death anyway), and the Shiplords literally only trust themselves to guard against any kind of galactic or existential threat, why the hell would they care if a fledgling species didn't try to put up a fight in First Contact? Hell, they already use extremely amoral and shady means to sabotage fledgling species' attempts to build themselves back up and put up a better fight than last time, and their reflexive response to humanity succeeding in progressing in their system (defeating the Tribute Fleet, then defeating a Regular Fleet, while not using the Second Secret or abusing the other Secrets in ways they could observe) was to sortie a War Fleet and star-killer to xenocide humanity. So they won't suffer a species to live that doesn't fight back but also won't suffer a species to live that fights back better than usual? There is no ideal or principle here. No grand strategy. Just a system designed to cripple every species encountered physically and psychologically until they collectively commit suicide in despair, with a ready response of overwhelming, xenocidal force for any species that manages to overcome that so that the Shiplords can wallow in self-pity for their own self-inflicted disasters for eternity, unchallenged in their absolute hegemony of the galaxy. The Shiplords do not at all seem to be too stupid to realize this, so that leaves the question of why they are unable to understand the obvious conclusions literally everyone else would reach. Did they accidentally do something to their own souls that made them somehow unable to understand the obvious and unable to recognize the bizarre nature of their own inability to understand?
4) While the Shiplords' judgement in many things is...extremely poor, the one thing that baffles me the most is how they have an entire Sorrow where the blatant moral of the tragedy is that the Tribute System completely poisons the well for any potential for trust between the Shiplords and their victims. The end result is that the Shiplords' warnings will either be rejected or distrusted, even if the clear and known result for the victims if their own extermination. How in the hell can the Shiplords not understand the basic idea that near-genociding a species upon First Contact directly results in them not trusting anything you say or heeding your teachings/warnings? They always start every single relationship/chain of events with a staggering display of mass murder and destruction with barely any explanation (it's more of a series of threats without explanation). How can they not understand that their subsequent options for any given scenario are thus "more mass murder/destruction" or "more threats of mass murder and destruction"?
As an aside, I can't help but notice the irony of how the Shiplords' own actions have made the possibility of solving the crisis peacefully infinitely harder because all of their actions and beliefs have created the inevitable situation where everyone else in the galaxy fucking hates the Shiplords so much and does not trust them in the slightest that the only sane and rational actions for everyone else to take (crippling the Shiplord communications network, massive and immediate mobilization of everything, striking hard and fast at as many targets as possible, mitigating the effectiveness of War Fleets and Shiplord infiltrators, getting the Uninvolved as involved as possible ASAP, delving into as many Secrets as possible as fast as possible) are the very same ones that prevent humanity from convincing the Shiplords to back down. In effect, by sending a War Fleet and star-killer at humanity immediately after humanity drove off a Regular Fleet from their home system, the Shiplords ensured that they were going to cause another full-scale galactic war, leaving everyone else with no choice.
Nothing we've seen thus far from the Sorrows has really served as the basis for why the Tribute system exists--certainly not the extremely brutal, callous, and relentless nature of it. And, even beyond that, how the Shiplords view the Tribute system and the people carrying it out with a religious-style reverence.
1) The Tribute system did not prove necessary in the past. What failures happened were clearly caused by other, far more important factors that even the Shiplords acknowledge: a lack of preparedness for a full-scale war and a reliance on a modest number of War Fleets to cover far too much ground simulatenously, a lack of insider knowledge on the research and ambitions of other races, an inability to solve the fundamental problem of the Secrets being capable of terrifying misuse, and being unable to establish trust with a species after brutalizing it in First Contact (via Tribute Fleet, no less). In other words, the Tribute System seemed to be a solution in search of a problem...which created more problems itself.
2) The idea that the Tribute System is designed to "toughen up" a race and make it eternally prepared for galactic war clearly never held up. Tribute Fleets devastate their victims by design, heavily curtail the potential and growth of their victims (hard to build up to anything when it's routinely getting wrecked by beings clearly vastly superior to you), and make them hate you so much that they would sometimes rather all die as a final act of spite. And when winning "freedom" from the system, there no longer seems to be any incentive to be prepared and militant anymore, and the despair and impotent rage just makes them incredibly unlikely to help in any kind of galactic war. Furthermore, by encouraging races to go Uninvolved (and then doing everything they could to make sure they stayed Uninvolved), the Shiplords would quickly remove any potential for assistance or growth anyway.
3) That Tribute Fleets would exterminate species that didn't try fighting back because they didn't fight back is nonsensical even by Shiplord logic. Since the Shiplord modus operandi essentially achieves the same result (render a species impotent, unable and unwilling to have agency, encourage them to commit mass suicide, then ensure the resulting being knows that it will get killed if it tries to actually do anything before it dies a natural death anyway), and the Shiplords literally only trust themselves to guard against any kind of galactic or existential threat, why the hell would they care if a fledgling species didn't try to put up a fight in First Contact? Hell, they already use extremely amoral and shady means to sabotage fledgling species' attempts to build themselves back up and put up a better fight than last time, and their reflexive response to humanity succeeding in progressing in their system (defeating the Tribute Fleet, then defeating a Regular Fleet, while not using the Second Secret or abusing the other Secrets in ways they could observe) was to sortie a War Fleet and star-killer to xenocide humanity. So they won't suffer a species to live that doesn't fight back but also won't suffer a species to live that fights back better than usual? There is no ideal or principle here. No grand strategy. Just a system designed to cripple every species encountered physically and psychologically until they collectively commit suicide in despair, with a ready response of overwhelming, xenocidal force for any species that manages to overcome that so that the Shiplords can wallow in self-pity for their own self-inflicted disasters for eternity, unchallenged in their absolute hegemony of the galaxy. The Shiplords do not at all seem to be too stupid to realize this, so that leaves the question of why they are unable to understand the obvious conclusions literally everyone else would reach. Did they accidentally do something to their own souls that made them somehow unable to understand the obvious and unable to recognize the bizarre nature of their own inability to understand?
4) While the Shiplords' judgement in many things is...extremely poor, the one thing that baffles me the most is how they have an entire Sorrow where the blatant moral of the tragedy is that the Tribute System completely poisons the well for any potential for trust between the Shiplords and their victims. The end result is that the Shiplords' warnings will either be rejected or distrusted, even if the clear and known result for the victims if their own extermination. How in the hell can the Shiplords not understand the basic idea that near-genociding a species upon First Contact directly results in them not trusting anything you say or heeding your teachings/warnings? They always start every single relationship/chain of events with a staggering display of mass murder and destruction with barely any explanation (it's more of a series of threats without explanation). How can they not understand that their subsequent options for any given scenario are thus "more mass murder/destruction" or "more threats of mass murder and destruction"?
As an aside, I can't help but notice the irony of how the Shiplords' own actions have made the possibility of solving the crisis peacefully infinitely harder because all of their actions and beliefs have created the inevitable situation where everyone else in the galaxy fucking hates the Shiplords so much and does not trust them in the slightest that the only sane and rational actions for everyone else to take (crippling the Shiplord communications network, massive and immediate mobilization of everything, striking hard and fast at as many targets as possible, mitigating the effectiveness of War Fleets and Shiplord infiltrators, getting the Uninvolved as involved as possible ASAP, delving into as many Secrets as possible as fast as possible) are the very same ones that prevent humanity from convincing the Shiplords to back down. In effect, by sending a War Fleet and star-killer at humanity immediately after humanity drove off a Regular Fleet from their home system, the Shiplords ensured that they were going to cause another full-scale galactic war, leaving everyone else with no choice.
- Location
- LEO
I've been thinking about this line. Why do you think the races of the galaxy would care about this distinction you are making? Why would they make a distinction between low level Hjiven atrocities and high level Hjiven atrocities? I certainly don't, any nation that starts doing Hjiven stuff should be stopped, and the people responsible tried for crimes against the galaxy.
I don't care that the shiplords didn't use all the tools at their disposal to create soul abominations. They used some of the tools at their disposal and the tribute fleets are now soul abominations. That's good enough for me.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
I'm not sure all, most or any of them would.
But I know Amanda does, because she's seen and felt what the Hjivin did, right there in her soul. She's seen and felt what the Shiplord have done with their Tribute Fleets, in a similar manner. The reason I've been hammering on this so much is due to how the viewpoint character of the quest feels about it, and there's a vast gulf of scale between how the two feel to her.
Edit: And yes, this matters, because I parse any votes you make in this quest through the lens of Amanda's personality, beliefs and biases.
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SaltyWaffles
I am dissapoint, son
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That's fair, but at the end of the day, Amanda has to convince everyone else to go along with her choices if she wants to achieve peace. If everyone else doesn't find the distinction to be significant enough to radically change their minds, then it doesn't matter what her perspective/views/beliefs are. And to be honest, "we aren't nearly as bad as the worst possible thing ever" is not much of an excuse for "still mind-bogglingly bad in a way that even their long-time victims don't understand". The Shiplords are fucking monsters, and the only things detracting from that are that they exterminate anything worse than them with extreme prejudice and that they might have something seriously wrong with their souls that prevents them from realizing the obvious ways to not be so monstrous and also from realizing that they have such a blatant gap in their understanding.
However sympathetic the Hearthguard and their ilk are, and however much Amanda sympathizes with broken people, she still faces the grim reality of a full-scale galactic war that has immediately kicked into high-gear and literally only maybe humanity willing to listen to her pleas to pause their desperate attempts to have a chance at victory in the face of a monstrous enemy that they all hate beyond words. So she has to convince the Shiplords to not escalate and essentially let the other races start seriously degrading the Shiplords' starting position in the war at a rapid pace (which completely clashes with the lessons learned the hard way from the War of the Sphere, so...fat chance of that) so that Amanda can start diagnosing the incredibly complex problem with the fundamental structure of the Secrets and maybe convince the Shiplords that she can fix them.
The fundamental problem is that the chance for de-escalation before full-blown galactic war was lost the moment the Shiplords deployed a War Fleet and star-killer to Sol with the intent of xenociding humanity. Which, ironically, was before SC even started. The Shiplords made peace without a horrific war impossible before it even started, with the only question being if humanity can somehow stop the war before it escalates too much. But that would require Amanda to make progress with the Secrets problem almost immersion-breakingly fast/easily. The Hearthguard failed in their mission a long time ago because they never thought of bringing members of other races to the Sorrows so that they could reveal the blatantly obvious lessons that the Shiplords seem fundamentally unable to recognize. Lessons like "near-xenociding and mass destroying a species and everything they've built as standard procedure for First Contact is stupid and ensures hostility forever, so of course they usually don't listen to your warnings or trust your offers/teachings", "you can't find a better way because you've had only yourselves and one other group ever even look at the problem, so of course you'll always fail because you refuse to ever try anything else", "exterminating pacifist races on First Contact is pointless and just makes everyone else hate and fear you even more for literally no gain on your part", "failing to understand the psychology and culture of other races while also failing to get the help of races better suited to the task is a great way to create misunderstandings and disasters because duh", "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting things to change", "you suck at diplomacy, you failed to be prepared for a full-scale galactic war once, and now you make everyone else pay the price for a problem that no longer exists so that you can compound your sin endlessly? What?", and "maybe if you didn't make every other race utterly hate, fear, and distrust you upon First Contact, they would actually listen to your severe warnings about the dangers of misusing Secrets and even help you prevent such misuse".
If Amanda ever uses her abilities to somehow fix the souls of the Shiplords so that they can finally understand the very obvious ways they have been utterly fucking up for so damn long and committing a mind-numbingly long list of inexcusable atrocities for nothing, I'd be shocked if they didn't commit suicide en masse out of sheer guilt and self-loathing. And probably not in the going Uninvolved way, either. Not fixing them would still leave a massively advanced and powerful race that is somehow incapable of addressing their own staggering arrogance, myopia, and lack of remorse (remorse directed at their own actions rather than lament at a situation that seemingly leaves them with no possible better solution to find...while also guaranteeing via overwhelming force and terror that no one else ever gets a chance to even try offering a better solution).
- Location
- LEO
Alright, she puts a massive difference between these two separate issues. I can agree, and draw real world parallels. One could argue that something like the native american genocides are lesser than the holocaust, or something like that.
How does that change how she acts in response to that scale of atrocity? If Amanda walked in on the Hjiven doing Hjiven things, her response would be to stop them from doing it, aid the victims in whatever way she could, and then stop it from happening again by removing the root problem.
The shiplords are doing Hjiven things (if ~only~ at low level), and Amanda has walked in on them. It seems to me that the plan of action is the same, for the same underlying motivation, aka "stop doing Hjiven things".
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I guess the difference Amanda sees is: By the time the Hjiven did their thing, the options were reduced to 'remove them permanently' because they engineered(*) themselves so much that 'talk them out of it' wasn't an option anymore. The SL aren't yet so far down that road that talking isn't possible anymore. Just very hard.
(*) I summarize social engineering and bioengineering
- Location
- LEO
Well, yeah, but that's step 3, root out the cause. Those attacks would be different for Hjiven vs shiplords, but the issue she has with both Hjiven and Shiplords are the same.
And the real doozy of a question for this is what different does your average shiplord see between what they do and the Hjiven? Or are they completely blind to the soul abominations tribute fleets are due to lacking soul science?
You are assuming that the tribute fleets are soul abominations, but have no evidence other than Amanda's (and other Restorer-focused Practice-wielders') reaction. Which does not constitute proof.
- Location
- LEO
I don't get your point? What do you think a soul abomination is? Are you reserving the term for the very highest end of what the Hjiven were trying for? Because if that's the bar for the term soul abomination I agree, the shiplords haven't reached that level yet.
The thing is, the tribute fleet was so fucked up it almost caused Amanda to loose control, that's the bar I'm using for soul abomination. Do we need to agree to a separate term for this "lesser offense"?
It's not like one gets to go around making tribute fleet scale soul abominations for free, and we'll only step in when you're building Hjiven scale ones.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Looking with deliberate and significant focus at a Mendicament class caused an entirely unprepared for this Amanda to lose control when mainlining the collective will and power of humanity and therefore being far less capable of exerting control leaving entirely aside her lack of proper training for such situations at the time.
The barest touch of simulated Hjivin biogoop was enough to break a far more trained and aware control in a situation where she knew it could risk the entire mission and when it was only her power and soul she had to deal with.
I get what you're trying to say here - and I'll have a larger reply to other issues raised above - but the separation does in fact matter. And Amanda occupies of a position of sufficient influence and trust that when it comes to explaining this? Humanity is going to listen.
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- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That means she may be able to get Humanity to accept that talking to the SL and coming to a solution this way maaaayyyyy work - it will still be a struggle because of the whole Week of Sorrows thing and the recent genocide attempt by War Fleet - but how about the other races? The amount of ill will the SL have banked so far may very well vastly exceed the good will Humanity is credited with. To put it in other words: "You may get them to talk, but we want them dead."
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Except the end of that road is reducing the galaxy to a burnt out shell of itself - and your allies know this. And doing so might not even kill the Shiplords, only reduce them to the point that they'll never be able to hold galactic hegemony again...so long as you keep an eye on them forever.
There are extremely valid reasons for why humanity jumped at the chance offered by Tahkel's interaction with Amanda. Not wanting to set the entire galaxy on fire to the tune of anywhere from a third to half its habitable worlds and systems reduced to ash is kinda the biggest one. And again, your allies know this. Do remember that the only reason they're even willing to consider rebellion is that you handed them a hardcopy only intel report detailing how it was possible for the Shiplords to be defeated if everyone rose up against them at once. And given Amanda being Amanda, you can be damn sure she made very clear the likely costs of the action.
At the time it was the only possible option. If there's another one out there, well, the willingness of humanity to dedicate so many massively important resources to this mission without question should be a good indicator of how considerable that is.
More about this and replies to larger posts above later. Gotta get morning tasks out of the way first.
- Location
- Queensland, Australia
In other words, the current situation is Star Wars: Return of the Jedi except the Rebellion know that the Death Star is operational and a trap, with a major Imperial fleet stationed nearby to keep the attacking force penned inside range. On the other hand, the defensive systems of the Death Star are still very much incomplete leaving it open to destruction if they can distract the Imperials long enough to bring down the shields and get a strike force into the reactor chamber at it's heart. It's just going to be extremely bloody doing so, if less so than allowing the Death Star to become fully operational and probably blow up a half dozen planets before they destroy it by sacrificing all their fleets, if they even achieve that much.
But now they've been told that there's a chance that they'll be able to flip Darth Vader to their side provided they go on a quest to find the needed insights into his character and history. Which, whilst leaving goddamn Darth Vader alive, at least means that the Emperor is still dead, the sort-of second in command will be working with you provided he survives killing the Emperor and either way, the Empire's going to have some severe internal struggles going on which will greatly ease the process of actually official holding territory and defending it well enough to stop being the Rebellion and become the New Republic.
Damn does it suck that Darth Vader is going to probably live by all impressions but they will still have restored the Republic and curbed the worst excesses of the Empire.
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- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
By the way - as I remember you having described the SL's development, is there already a minority of SLs promoting the idea of sterilizing the galaxy to safeguard life in the rest of the universe? That would be a possible endpoint of the road they've been traveling on for a time now; I realize it runs counter to their preferred development plan for other races - first FTL, tribute fleet, surveillance, PTSDed Uninvolved, but by now the SL are already used to the 'sacrifices must be made' mindset. So?
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Interestingly, no. Not even slightly.
- Location
- LEO
I think the better comparison would be Leia trying to get proof of the death star to the Imperial Senate so they could act in opposition, without the possibility of Palpatine dissolving it. Star wars would be a very different story if the existence of the death star galvanized a block in opposition to the tarkin doctrine and they teamed up with the resistance.
The fulcrum would be to what extent shiplords are willing to accept an alternative arrangement, vs the factions that are fine with killing trillions for no good reason.
- Location
- Peterborough, NH, USA
It reminds me of the end of Re: Creators, where Military Uniform Princess was presented with a Creation of her author, and (successfully) prevented her from committing suicide, which is what set off her rage against the 'Land of the Gods' in the first place. This was done not because anyone was particularly interested in helping her(the MC was basically the only one who gave the slightest of craps after all the shit she'd pulled, and that was more down to his relationship with the lady who created MUP), but because her Fanfic powers had made her so ridiculously overpowered that there wasn't an actual solution besides this. They'd already tried ganging up on her in a Smash Bros. style Battle Royale with her in the same position as Darkon as the 'Original Character Big Bad', it just made her more popular(despite her being a fairly stereotypical villain going up against a bunch of popular characters) and allowed a wider audience to start making up powers for her. So the cast just gave her what she actually wanted, since the alternative was the world being destroyed.