The Secrets' Crusade

[Coda]

These five Sorrows are meant to show us the core of the Shiplord belief structure

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I think this is a bit of a misunderstanding of the Sorrows, to be completely honest. It isn't so much meant to show us the core of their belief structure as it is meant to guide us to what we need to know to be able to change their actions -- and importantly, change them without causing more damage to the galaxy than the Shiplords would have done if left to their own devices. It isn't meant to spell out exactly how they got to where they are, but rather to show snapshots along the way to show how their irrationality progressed over the ages.

I said it much earlier in the quest (or maybe it was even during PW?) but I think it bears repeating -- the Shiplords appear to consider themselves to be martyrs, sacrificing not just their lives but their innocence to do what has to be done. They don't find joy in it, but they feel a fierce sense of duty. Their approach is absolutely excessive, but they've convinced themselves that there's no other way... but they desperately wish there was.

 

[Mossconfig]

They don't find joy in it, but they feel a fierce sense of duty. Their approach is absolutely excessive, but they've convinced themselves that there's no other way... but they desperately wish there was.

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I think all this circling is going nowhere untill we have an average shiplord in our hands and see how they react to us unloading both barrels at them. We can speculate all we want, we won't know till we do some "market research".

 

[Coda]

I think all this circling is going nowhere untill we have an average shiplord in our hands and see how they react to us unloading both barrels at them. We can speculate all we want, we won't know till we do some "market research".

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Now, that attitude is doing you no favors at all. That isn't what you say when you want to try to understand the story you're reading. That's what you say when you actively reject the story being told and... I don't know, want to enact a revenge fantasy? (Especially when your own side has told you that would be monumentally destructive to allies, enemies, and innocents alike?)

I can't comprehend how you can even begin to think it's okay to grab a noncombatant and threaten them (or worse) with violence to check your theories.

And even disregarding the wickedness that would entail, it wouldn't even work! Shooting at a noncombatant civilian is not going to give you unbiased, representative information about the population as a whole!

EDIT: Oops. I failed to parse an idiom. Retracted!

 

[Silverking]

Well, if everything goes as planned, the Shiplord government won't know we're here until after we've found and "solved" the Consolat's notes, which would culturally compel the Shiplords to offer us a seat at the negotiation table and TALK TO US, which was the aim of this mission in the first place.

 

[Mossconfig]

Shooting at a noncombatant civilian

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Giving somebody "both barrels" is a euphemism for a conversational hard hitter, a harsh critique. I'm not saying literally shoot them, I'm saying we should see how average shiplords react to being confronted with all the issues we have with them. Will them be moved to action to repudiate their past actions? Will they continue their self pity loops?

 

[Coda]

Giving somebody "both barrels" is a euphemism for a conversational hard hitter, a harsh critique. I'm not saying literally shoot them, I'm saying we should see how average shiplords react to being confronted with all the issues we have with them. Will them be moved to action to repudiate their past actions? Will they continue their self pity loops?

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Oh. That... makes a big difference to how that gets interpreted. ^^()

But if what the Hearthguard -- especially Kicha -- have said is true... We could probably get the typical Shiplord to break down in tears, but it doesn't seem likely that most civilian Shiplords are going to be willing to take any chances on changing strategies unless you can show them an alternative that looks like it might actually work.

 

[Mossconfig]

willing to take any chances on changing strategies unless you can show them an alternative that looks like it might actually work.

Click to shrink...

Which brings back to some discussion we were having a few pages ago, about demonstrating the ability to manipulate secrets, like making all products of nanotechnology become pink, would be a funny way to knock the pillars out from under shiplord society.

The problem is what percentages of shiplord society are willing to change, what portions aren't and what they are willing to give up once we prove that their megadeaths have been entirely in vain?

Those are not questions that can be answered by us going in circles over the same cherry picked examples. What we need is a montage and or statistical data.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Now, that attitude is doing you no favors at all. That isn't what you say when you want to try to understand the story you're reading. That's what you say when you actively reject the story being told and... I don't know, want to enact a revenge fantasy? (Especially when your own side has told you that would be monumentally destructive to allies, enemies, and innocents alike?)

I can't comprehend how you can even begin to think it's okay to grab a noncombatant and threaten them (or worse) with violence to check your theories.

And even disregarding the wickedness that would entail, it wouldn't even work! Shooting at a noncombatant civilian is not going to give you unbiased, representative information about the population as a whole!

Click to shrink...

The (valid) point Moss is making here is that there's a big X-factor in our OOC understanding of the Shiplord mentality. Because it is, you must admit, very alien for these aeon-old beings to so consistently respond to every crisis, every setback, every sign that something about their approach leads to disaster, by doing the same damn thing over and over. And 'the same thing,' it must be repeated, is "The Shiplords choose to further maximize their xenophobia, murderousness, and refusal to communicate clearly."

And the Shiplords then tell themselves, so firmly that we are repeatedly told that a majority of them seriously believe this, and have not revisited this opinion, that...

"This is the only way."

I hope you can agree that a mind that thinks that way is, to put it mildly, somewhat foreign to the experience either of we here on SV, or to Humanity 2.0. I would be deeply worried if I met someone who thought that way in real life.

...

The only Shiplords we've had a meaningful conversation with are the Hearthguard, and yes they are atypical Shiplords, but by that very fact, our conversations with them may not provide much insight into how the Shiplords will choose to react to the novel situation we are presenting them.

GIven the precedents, there is a worrying possibility, one that cannot be easily dismissed by most of us quest participants (except, apparently, for the QM and the beta readers) that the Shiplords might do "the same thing we do every millennium," and choose to further maximize their xenophobia, murderousness, and refusal to communicate clearly.

We hope not. We really, really hope not. I'm pretty sure Moss hopes not, too, and has no desire to roleplay the start of an apocalyptic galactic mega-war.

But the mindset of the typical median Shiplord seems very, very strange, and one of the most naively 'obvious' interpretations that fits the observed facts ('the median Shiplord is so ideologically committed to eternal xenophobia, genocide, and absurdly stubborn refusal to communicate clearly that they simply cannot reconsider for any reason') is at least hard to dismiss out of hand.

Except, apparently for the QM and the beta readers, but this leads to a bit of a "show, don't tell" problem.

Well, if everything goes as planned, the Shiplord government won't know we're here until after we've found and "solved" the Consolat's notes, which would culturally compel the Shiplords to offer us a seat at the negotiation table and TALK TO US, which was the aim of this mission in the first place.

Click to shrink...

We hope.

It's just... it's disturbingly easy to imagine a statistical majority of Shiplords (including, by longstanding self-selection, those who crew the battlefleets and are most directly involved/complicit in the Shiplord mega-genocide scheme) going "Nope! Eternal xenophobia, mega-genocide, and absurdly stubborn refusal to communicate clearly it's always been, and so must it always be!"

We're told that things don't have to be this way.

Told.

 

[Mossconfig]

We're told that things don't have to be this way.

Click to shrink...

One of the interesting things that was dropped was that there are large portions of shiplord society who went into stasis. Just as the crews of the tribute fleets will self select for those with the most bloodthirsty personality, the sleepers would self select for those with the greatest aversion to bloodshed.

Hopefully that's a demographic that is perfect to be targeted and roused to action. We need to verify their existence, then figure out the best way to wake them up and get them on our side. There are options and work to do, but right now we are information locked.

 

[SaltyWaffles]

It should be noted that this is completely false. In fact, the only two times that Amanda, and, by proxy, the rest of Humanity, communicated with the Shiplords, these were the messages sent:

• I just want to Understand.
  • Shiplord response: We're not going to tell you why we're slaughtering you, but, because of all the things we know that we won't tell you, we know you'll thank us for it eventually.
• Why the Tribute Fleets? Why do you insist on killing us with no explanation?
  • Shiplord response: We're still not going to tell you anything, and we'll be back to finish you off soon.

I'm not sure how either of those two messages could be construed as a sign of aggression, let alone a committment to out-sized escalation and total war; all of that is happening solely on the Shiplord side.

It's WOG statements like this that make me think that going to the Sorrows specifically was somewhat counter-productive, or at least has given us readers a very skewed view of Shiplord history and society.

These five Sorrows are meant to show us the core of the Shiplord belief structure, the five "core memories" that make up the trajectory of current Shiplord society. What have we found?

• Two (First and Third) instances where the universe was almost destroyed, and the Shiplords managed to barely not bungle them entirely, but it was really close and in response the Shiplords decided to become more militant and unreasonable,
• Two (Fourth and Fifth) instances where the Shiplords did bungle badly. As a result two ultimately harmless species were destroyed, and in response the Shiplords... decided to become more militant and unreasonable,
• One (Second) instance where the Shiplords managed, at nearly the last possible second, to not bungle things too badly, and saved a species from destruction. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is the one Sorrow that the Shiplords have gone to extreme lengths to repudiate in its entirety, seems to have the least influence over them in the modern era, and in response the Shiplords decided to become more militant and unreasonable.

What haven't we seen? We haven't seen a single instance where the Shiplords actually unequivocally did the right thing, made the correct call. We haven't seen any instances where the Shiplords were right to escalate like they do. All we've ever seen, over and over, is instances where the Shiplords make rash calls, right or wrong, caused a tragedy, and then, on reflecting on their actions, resolve to do worse next time. More aggression; less analysis; more isolationism; less diplomacy; every time.

You insist in these discussions that we view the Shiplords as tragic figures, and that there's redeeming qualities to and mitigating factors for some of them, but so far all we've really seen is a pack of monsters behaving monstrously, and doubling down on their monstrosity in response to stimuli that by all rights should be doing the exact opposite. Is it any wonder that most of us are barely able to discern much difference between the Shiplords and the Hijivians? Sure, in the abstract the Hijivians are much worse, but it's coming off like you're telling us that we can totally make peace with the Shiplords, because sure they're unrepentant mass murderers but at least they're not mutilating the bodies and teabagging the corpses.

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I want to thank you for putting my feelings and thoughts into one cohesive, succinct post. It's pretty much exactly what my view on the Shiplords are.

In fairness, we have seen a few instances (at the Sorrows) where we're at least told that the Shiplords visiting do genuinely feel awful about how these tragedies played out and how they wish there was a better way. However, this only creates a disconnect between the impression I feel like Snowfire intends for us to have and the impression that is actually given by everything the Shiplords actually do and how literally none of the Sorrows have given any indication whatsoever why the Tribute System exists or has been adhered to and even worsened over time despite the fact that the Tribute System not only directly caused one of the Sorrows, it has caused the current full-scale galactic war erupting right now. And we still have not heard a single explanation for why the Tribute System exists as it does. We are well past the point where we can attribute this to knowing nothing about Shiplord history or culture--we've visited every Sorrow, spoken openly and sincerely to multiple Hearthguard members (including one of the oldest Shiplords still active) who already knew they were talking to humans seeking answers, and still there has not been any attempt at an answer. The closest thing we've gotten was merely the wording of how the Shiplords refer to it internally back when the Hearthguard didn't know we were humans: "the lesson of pain". Of course, even that wording makes zero sense due to the fact that it's a routine occurrance where the Shiplords just straight-up exterminate an entire species upon First Contact because they didn't fight back effectively enough--in one case we got to see explicitly, it was due to simple luck of their weaponry being innately less effective against the particular nature of Tribute ships. The obvious question, then, is how in the world a "lesson of pain" is supposed to work when your "lesson" involves teaching someone by shooting them in the brain with a cannon the first time you meet them and then grinding up their corpse with tank treads.

Yes, there is still a mystery in Origin about what, exactly, the fundamental problem that the Lament were unable to solve is. But given how those secrets seem largely unknown to the average Shiplord anyway, it still does not make any sense at all why the Shiplords seem to be largely in support of the Tribute System despite the only possible justification left for such endless and inexcusable atrocity being either too unimportant to even mention in any of the Sorrows or literally a case of those Shiplords in the know saying "dude trust me bro" to the bulk of Shiplord society and the democratic governance collectively going "okay sure bro, we'll just feel kinda bad about the enormous pile of xenocides going on for the rest of eternity, good luck".

Every Shiplord who ever visits the Second Sorrow stares the blatant contradiction between any possible justification for the Tribute System and the physical reality of it being bullshit in the face and then goes on and expresses their support for continued xenocide.

That is, uh, well. Let's just say that Amanda managed to help the Adamant's crew overcome the sheer, righteous fury over the utterly blatant hypocrisy and living, physical proof that any possible excuse the Shiplords have for their unending atrocities is total bullshit not because the Hearthguard was able to offer any kind of reasonable or understandable explanation, but because she successfully reminded the crew that it mattered more that the well-being and lives of all of the non-Shiplords peace would be saved than exacting revenge or justice against the Shiplords at enormous cost. And that they had to be better than the Shiplords even pretended to be.

In other words, Amanda and the Adamant's crew is able to move past it by more or less remembering that they care about the non-Shiplord lives that actually have value and that making the Shiplords pay/too weak to threaten everyone else ever again would harm the people who actually have value--the non-Shiplords. They psychologically overcome the deserved hatred and rage by just automatically stereotyping the Shiplords as people who should not be held to any kind of moral, logical, or ethical standard, because they should expect the Shiplords to utterly fail those standards by default unless specific individuals prove otherwise (on a case-by-case basis).

The arguments about why seeking peace with the Shiplords is preferable to breaking their power and hegemony over the knee by war/force are all about the cost to everyone and everything else. How many non-Shiplords would die; how many planets and stars would be destroyed, how much the non-Shiplords would suffer. What I'm not seeing, even from Amanda, is that peace should be sought because of all the Shiplords that would die in war. I'm sure that everyone can agree that the Shiplord children and such are inherently innocent and deserving of sympathy, and that certain subgroups (Hearthguard, for example) have proven themselves through action, feeling, and effort to actually try to stop the Tribute System, but the bulk of Shiplords seem to fall under the "the best I can say about them is that I couldn't care if they live or die, so long as they don't harm anyone else ever again, because I'm just going to devote all of my effort and emotion towards the people who actually matter" mentality for non-Shiplords. Even Amanda seems little better than this, which should say...well, more than I can put into words.

The Shiplords think of themselves as "hard men making hard decisions but still feeling kinda sad about it" when the reality is that they're just horrifying monsters that have precious few standards and a set of vague rules that they only sometimes tell anyone about and only sometimes actually follow, with the only consistent guarantee being that they will not tolerate anyone even potentially challenging their stranglehold over the galaxy under any circumstances whatsoever (even if, for example, they shared the same goals and ideals). Humanity having the audacity to...literally just exist even while abiding by every rule the Shiplords laid out to them caused the Shiplords to immediately press the "xenocide with extreme prejudice" button simply because humanity was unusually good at defending itself. There was no attempt at diplomacy, negotiation, communication, quarantine, ultimatum, or even just "stop short of xenocide like with the Gysians" at any point. Simply put, the priorities of the Shiplords are clear, regardless of what they claim, and it's clear that protecting the universe/galaxy from Secrets abuse is not at the top of their list. They stopped trying to prioritize that a long time ago, and it's almost insulting that they keep pretending that they prioritize that above all else.

I'm reminded of the iconic exchange from Homeworld: Cataclysm, where the captain of the main ship runs to the Bentusi (an ancient, very powerful, and ageless race who have long been the final word on protecting the galaxy from existential threats) for help against a terrifying parasitic alien plague (a lot like the Flood from Halo), only to find that the Bentusi are fleeing the galaxy en masse in terror because the Beast (the parasitic plague-race) are actually really scary to the Bentusi, and the captain tries to force the Bentusi to stay and help by destroying the gate allowing the Bentusi ships to jump out of the galaxy. Logically, the Bentusi slaughter the Hiigarans that are trying to stop them with their overwhelmingly superior technology and firepower, and the Bentusi implore the Hiigarans to stop throwing their lives away--the Bentusi are not monsters and only wish to stop the Hiigarans from getting in their way. The captain then drills right through their hypocrisy by pointing out that the Bentusi are acting no different from the Beast, slaughtering them all simply because they're in their way, and if the Hiigarans and the rest of the people in the galaxy are going to die to the Beast if they lose, what difference does it make if they die to the Bentusi in an attempt to stop them from leaving with the only hope the galaxy has left? He sums it up with a scathing line: "You're worse than the Beast! At least the Beast doesn't pretend to be righteous!"

The Shiplords give me the same kind of feeling. Sure, they aren't as horrifyingly bad and malignant as the Hjiven Sphere, but that doesn't really have much practical meaning to everyone else in the galaxy. Whether it's to the Shiplords or to the Hjiven, they all end up killed or driven to suicide anyway.

The Shiplords are like genocide via guns or lethal injection (after a miserable stay on death row), while the Hjiven are like genocide via bioweapon. Yes, one is worse than the other, but that's not going to earn any sympathy from the people still being systematically wiped out (or tormented into mass suicide) for no justifiable reason.

If the Consolat were still around, I can't even imagine how ashamed and disappointed they'd be in the Shiplords. They may have started out as paragons, but their fall into monsters was less tragic and more baffling and outrageous.

 

[Lightwhispers]

We hope.

It's just... it's disturbingly easy to imagine a statistical majority of Shiplords (including, by longstanding self-selection, those who crew the battlefleets and are most directly involved/complicit in the Shiplord mega-genocide scheme) going "Nope! Eternal xenophobia, mega-genocide, and absurdly stubborn refusal to communicate clearly it's always been, and so must it always be!"

We're told that things don't have to be this way.

Told.

Click to shrink...

The problem I keep having with this discussion is that it seems to be between people who want to punish the Shiplords even if it means petadeaths and a third of the galaxy becoming ashes or worse, and people saying "hey, it's worth finding a way to persuade them otherwise even if it means they don't meet what you feel is Appropriate Punishment".
..okay, no, that was the last discussion. The current one is "I don't see how the Shiplords can be convinced to change their minds, despite not knowing the whole story", against "Yes, you don't know the whole story." Which I see no point in getting engaged in.

 

[SaltyWaffles]

The problem I keep having with this discussion is that it seems to be between people who want to punish the Shiplords even if it means petadeaths and a third of the galaxy becoming ashes or worse, and people saying "hey, it's worth finding a way to persuade them otherwise even if it means they don't meet what you feel is Appropriate Punishment".
..okay, no, that was the last discussion. The current one is "I don't see how the Shiplords can be convinced to change their minds, despite not knowing the whole story", against "Yes, you don't know the whole story." Which I see no point in getting engaged in.

Click to shrink...

More like we're in agreement with Amanda's argument back when the Adamant arrived at the Second Sorrow: "Yes, this means that the Shiplords have zero excuse or justification for all the xenocide and mass murder shit they do, and the bulk of Shiplord individuals see this and clearly know that it's bullshit and support it anyway, but we're still going to try our hardest to find a way to convince the Shiplords to stop because the non-Shiplords and the meager minority of Shiplords who don't agree with this atrocity (but won't actually take a stand against it or do anything about it in any way) actually matter and we don't want them (and the planets they live on/stars they live by) to suffer any more than they have to."

In other words, yes, seeking a way for peace is still overwhelmingly and objectively the vastly better path, and it's for the same reasons Amanda has already explicitly laid out and the crew of the Adamant clearly agree with. But none of those reasons include sympathy for the Shiplords or any kind of acceptance whatsoever for the methods and excuses the Shiplords half-heartedly vaguely allude to (at best) or refuse to talk about (the typical outcome). Of course, it's possible that there is some kind of accidental soul-mutilation the Shiplords have inflicted on themselves that has really fucked with their ability to recognize the absurdity of their atrocities and their ability to recognize their bizarre inability. But while that would somewhat absolve them from many of their sins, it would be pretty hard for any author to make them sympathetic even with that. Snowfire is one of the authors I think could pull it off, but they've got their work cut out for them.

*About the "we don't know the whole story" thing: it's true that we don't know the whole story, but when talking about the level and scale of atrocity here over such a long period of time, any civilization that claims to be what the Shiplords are should damn well start presenting some seriously thought-provoking reasons for adhering to such atrocity so adamantly. And yet, everything we've found so far has pointed in the opposite direction: that the Shiplords have every reason to not adhere to such atrocity so adamantly and instead actively seek possibilities for better ways/a solution, and clearly don't like constantly doing the atrocity, but they seem to make it as difficult and unlikely as possible for anyone to ever have any chance whatsoever to help with the problem or offer alternatives. They strongly wish there was another way, but every time they're given a chance to actually do anything to further that wish or express such feelings to the victims of their atrocity, they will stubbornly refuse to do so. We don't have the whole story, but we've got a hefty amount of critical chunks of it and have given some of the most qualified Shiplords (who also know we're human and want to know the answers) the chance to explain themselves, and they pretty much don't even try, or they just direct us at another part of the story with barely any hint at all. Well, we've gone through every Sorrow. Now, only Origin remains--they haven't offered anywhere else for us to get answers. Even The Last Memory was a situation in which we were able to use Practice to eke out more information than we were expected to get from the Sorrow otherwise. So, this means that the Hearthguard don't want to even try explaining to humanity, which just had a Regular Fleet and then a War Fleet+Lumen at its only system with the intent of xenocide with extreme prejudice despite having broken no rules all within the space of a few years, why the hell the Shiplords adamantly insist on doing the one thing humanity and all other species in the galaxy are most outraged about. This suggests that even the Hearthguard is just...completely out of touch with the reality of what life is like for literally everyone in the galaxy that isn't a Shiplord. Yes, it's understandable that they are more focused on pointing the Adamant's crew towards the key locations necessary for potentially solving the Origin problem. But it's less understandable that they don't think that said crew would really appreciate even the barest hint of a reason or answer as to why they did the whole Tribute thing in the first place and why they do that to everyone. And it's honestly kind of bizarre. Given Kicha's very weird reaction to being asked if she actually listened to what the Uninvolved Avatar said to them after wiping out the Hjiven, I suspect that there is something weird and messed up with their souls that only becomes truly obvious if you can get the chance to really pick at their hypocrisy/myopia...but such chances are pretty much unheard of because the Shiplords have always had the overwhelming force and capability necessary to refuse such communication or exterminate anyone who might ever think to try.

 

[Mossconfig]

Yes, you don't know the whole story."

Click to shrink...

The reason we're bringing up that we "cannot see peaceful resolutions" is because we in fact want to see those peaceful routes. The big issue I for one have is that I can't see following more sorrows gaining that information, we need a broader slice of the pie.

This is also your about how shiplords would react to the possibility of punishment for their many crimes. We simply do not know how many will view said punishment as an unbearable burden and choose to fight to the last star in the galaxy. We don't know how many will view handing over a handful of the worst offenders for punishment as an acceptable price to get the most soul experienced species (humans) to work on fixing the secrets.

We now know what they do and why they did it, now we need to know how that's shaped their society and what that means for our plans.

 

[Simon_Jester]

The problem I keep having with this discussion is that it seems to be between people who want to punish the Shiplords even if it means petadeaths and a third of the galaxy becoming ashes or worse, and people saying "hey, it's worth finding a way to persuade them otherwise even if it means they don't meet what you feel is Appropriate Punishment".

Click to shrink...

I don't know anything about that last discussion and don't remember who the "punish the Shiplords" faction was. I was never part of the "Punish the Shiplords at all costs" faction, and frankly consider an attempt to equate me with it, even if it's immediately walked back, to be...

Very questionable as a debating move, I will put it mildly.

..okay, no, that was the last discussion. The current one is "I don't see how the Shiplords can be convinced to change their minds, despite not knowing the whole story", against "Yes, you don't know the whole story." Which I see no point in getting engaged in.

Click to shrink...

I think there is a recurring desire to communicate something to Snowfire about the reception his work is getting here.

Since they are the setting's overwhelmingly greatest antagonist, a lot of the reception of The Practice War and The Secrets Crusade hinges on the characterization of the Shiplords- here meaning the bulk of the Shiplords, not literally every single member of the Shiplord species down to the babes in their cradles and and the ones who have been stuck on the back shelf of the freezer for five million years and the most dissentingest dissenters that ever dissented.

And Snowfire seems, OOC, to invest a lot of time and emotional energy into telling us that the Shiplords- and again, I mean the bulk of the Shiplords -are 'tragic.' There is the implication that their actions are in some sense relatable or would all start to make a twisted kind of sense if viewed in the right light.

And this just sits very ill with everything else in the plot and characterization. And we've been getting more and more information on exactly what the Shiplords have and haven't done over the years... And it keeps building up and building up to "wow, they really, REALLY have gone out of their way to be total assholes and teach a "lesson of pain" to everyone forever through mega-genocide." Nothing we've seen contradicts that characterization of the Shiplords- and again, I mean the bulk of the Shiplords. Nothing really even explains what the "lesson of pain" is or why the Shiplords think it's so important. Even other Shiplords who are very knowledgeable of how the Tribute system emerged don't seem to want to tell us why, or cannot tell us. The justifications given just... make no goddamn sense.

...

So yes, clearly "we don't know the whole story." But there's a point at which presenting a long list of facts that inspire the reader to believe X while assuring them that the opposite of X is true makes the reader paranoid, or simply breaks their suspension of disbelief and engagement in the narrative.

And I think The Secrets Crusade is starting to strain its cognitive dissonance to near that point, because the load of cognitive dissonance the Shiplords themselves are working under is just... so ridiculously huge, it's hard to even describe.

So to some extent this is a "canary in the coal mine" thing. The serial format of the work means that we've spent literally three years building up to this point in this quest and three more in the previous quest. Many important points about Shiplord society and behavior have been repeatedly reinforced, piled up, made heavy and powerful.

And the sheer weight of strain being piled onto "believe me, the Shiplords have a reason to be the way they are, and it's understandable and tragic, not just them responding to bad events by being utterly horrible themselves for no good reason, it really is, all will be made clear" is causing that particular bridge to creak.

If we didn't have, collectively, tremendous (deserved) respect for Snowfire's authorship, I honestly think it would have broken through long since. As it is, the bulk of us still have that trust, but... there's a creaking noise, and I'm not sure people who are as close to the project as Snowfire and teh beta readers really hear it for what it is.

Which is why they misinterpret it as "the people who are dwelling on just how horrible the Shiplords are and how peace seems impossible must want galactic mega-genocide in a war with them, no matter the cost!"

Which is just... no, that's not it.

 

[Queen Kit]

I just wanted to drop in and throw out my personal view on the shiplord story as I see it. I'll admit I haven't gone through in a bit to read just the story text outside of word of QM.
-
These two definitions I found being close to my primary definition/ understanding of the tragedy genre.
1. a serious drama typically describing a conflict between the protagonist and a superior force (such as destiny) and having a sorrowful or disastrous conclusion that elicits pity or terror
2. A drama or literary work in which the main character is brought to ruin or suffers extreme sorrow, especially as a consequence of a tragic flaw, moral weakness, or inability to cope with unfavorable circumstances.
-
To be fair I also think it could be interesting for for the story to see more of a history snippet or montage of the actual decisions and rules that have built to the tribute system as it exists today. But even without that I believe, looking at shiplords as a protagonist, that their story does fit the general trajectory of tragedy.
-
They started off a good people.
In a disastrous event their friends died in a single moment leaving them with the potentially unfinished result of years of science or philosophical study. This result as it stands could destroy everything. As the only ones who knew the will of the creator and the ones that this creation had been attempted for, they made themselves stewards of this creation.

And they did okay. They were teachers.
But then they failed. Something went wrong.
And they failed.
(Not all of them "big enough" to memorialize)
And they changed what they were doing and made it worse.
Then they failed again.
So they changed again.
But it was worse.

Because every change came from a deep grief. A grief that may have been tinged with anger at having been left. With anger that other people would see this beautiful gift and choose to turn it into a monster.

And they fell down a road where they fell more and more to reacting with that anger. They didn't let anyone else help. Because it is hard to reach out when you are in pain. Because it is hard to reach out when you feel that this responsibility belongs on your shoulders.

Because the fact that there isn't anyone else there to shoulder it (your friends) feels like its your fault maybe, because they did this for you.
They died because of you.
So you have to step up.
(At least the galaxy hasn't been removed from existance)

Trauma isn't rational and making that first step to get help is not an easy one. They didn't have a councilor when their grief and trauma was young.

They seem aware how deeply they are failing. They can't see a way out. They are stuck because they can not see a way to change that will effectively achieve the goal they have already been failing to achieve without the world blowing up. Which is a worse failure state than the current failure state.

I'm not sure how large the hearthguard are or how much of the rest of their society is in that view even if not a member. However they show that there are some unknown amount of shiplords who have not given up. They are trying to look for a way to change from this failure state to an actual success. They have been for decades. Unfortunately they are bound by their own system of education in how they've learned to problem solve, they haven't been able to think outside that box.

(Students they had taught in the past were also taught that system. And their society doesn't exactly let them reach put to others anymore now that they aren't setting out that particular education. That is part of where they just stopped permitting anyone there to be a teacher.)

The hearthguard can scream, "You have to change this is wrong", as much as they want to. If they can't answer everyone else when they ask, "Change How?"... They won't be able to get society to take that step.

 

[strauss]

Despite keeping up with thread haven't really posted much this entire thread, I follow too many quests at once so I sorta burned out on participating in quest discussions in general as there is always a dumpster fire ongoing in one, but I feel like this might be one worth enough for me to to try tipping in and hopefully making things better at least.

Then I spent a while writing and rewriting, ended with a massive post pattern recognition indicates is at best not going to accomplish anything and probably just make things worse, so fuck with it and decided to simplify:

TL;DR: We have spent years getting background information for a course of action decided on years ago which doesn't say anything OOC about the decision and we are still waiting to get the results of it, so discussion on the exact same topics keeps repeating over and over and each time many involved get annoyed over it easier and promptly answer while annoyed so discussion gets worse.

The actual two sides here are 'wow this is all interesting information we are learning tiny piece by piece' and 'Does this answer either of the goals we started this with("What to do to make the war less bad?" and "What is the reasoning behind the contradictory and utterly nonsensical Tribute Cycle?")? No again? Fetch quest has unknown number of steps remaining still? Okay'.

That is the main issue and it makes a small issue bigger. That there is seemingly an expectation of massive sympathy and understanding for the Shiplords, when so far it seems like the current evil monsters became so because aside from the very first step which the Consolat forced on them every time they deliberately chose to be worse and actively pursed it. Which every time anyone says anything remotely on this topic is immediately twisted to mean 'no holds barred galactic war' despite us starting looking for alternatives to save our alliance from the death toll not anything to do with the Shiplords.

 

[Snowfire]

And I think I'm fixing on the the fundamental disconnect here, and it's one that I've messed up on my side some too. I'm not trying to make you sympathetic towards the Shiplord society as it exists today. That's not the point. I admit that I quite simply cannot understand the intent of parties to say they're exactly the same as the Gysians at all, but that's not really here nor there.

I will, however, look to remind you of the relatively few Shiplord PoV sections I've written. The Beacon's Light interlude was written at the very end of Practice War, as a follow-up to Define Overdue. And then we have the more recent Unexpected Communiques interlude in the Sidestory tab. If you want some of a Shiplord PoV to work with, that's where I'd start.

Re-reading these interludes could actually be rather helpful given all the current discussion, as it gives a far more on-the-ground Shiplord perspective which some people might find useful. As I hope the next update will be, once I'm able to get it to you all.

 

[Lightwhispers]

Since they are the setting's overwhelmingly greatest antagonist, a lot of the reception of The Practice War and The Secrets Crusade hinges on the characterization of the Shiplords- here meaning the bulk of the Shiplords, not literally every single member of the Shiplord species down to the babes in their cradles and and the ones who have been stuck on the back shelf of the freezer for five million years and the most dissentingest dissenters that ever dissented.

And Snowfire seems, OOC, to invest a lot of time and emotional energy into telling us that the Shiplords- and again, I mean the bulk of the Shiplords -are 'tragic.' There is the implication that their actions are in some sense relatable or would all start to make a twisted kind of sense if viewed in the right light.

And this just sits very ill with everything else in the plot and characterization. And we've been getting more and more information on exactly what the Shiplords have and haven't done over the years... And it keeps building up and building up to "wow, they really, REALLY have gone out of their way to be total assholes and teach a "lesson of pain" to everyone forever through mega-genocide." Nothing we've seen contradicts that characterization of the Shiplords- and again, I mean the bulk of the Shiplords. Nothing really even explains what the "lesson of pain" is or why the Shiplords think it's so important. Even other Shiplords who are very knowledgeable of how the Tribute system emerged don't seem to want to tell us why, or cannot tell us. The justifications given just... make no goddamn sense.

Click to shrink...

There is no dispute to the idea that the Shiplords (as a polity) are villains, and behaving in a way that cannot be rationally justified.
The dispute, as I see it, is that the lack (so far) of rational justification means there is no justification. The Shiplords are tragic villains, and one of the frequent qualities of that category is that they started out as good people, but descended into villainy through a series of steps. And we have yet to see what all of those steps were.

They can be sympathetic while still being recognized as behaving monstrously.
And, in order to find out how to get the Shiplords to change, we (or at least, Amanda and co) need to empathize enough with the Shiplords to understand their mentality and find a way to change the paradigm they are stuck in.

 

[Simon_Jester]

And I think I'm fixing on the the fundamental disconnect here, and it's one that I've messed up on my side some too. I'm not trying to make you sympathetic towards the Shiplord society as it exists today. That's not the point. I admit that I quite simply cannot understand the intent of parties to say they're exactly the same as the Gysians at all, but that's not really here nor there.

Click to shrink...

Suffice to say that the Gysians and the Shiplords are both terrible enough that some people's Evil-O-Meter just maxes out and the needle slams up against the stop peg on the right side of the dial.

Also, as noted, a lack of familiarity with some of the details of what the Gysians got up to, which made it at least seem like the horrific stuff the Gysians were doing with the Second Secret was loosely on par with what the Shiplords do to create the nanogoo that repairs their ships.

There is no dispute to the idea that the Shiplords (as a polity) are villains, and behaving in a way that cannot be rationally justified.
The dispute, as I see it, is that the lack (so far) of rational justification means there is no justification. The Shiplords are tragic villains, and one of the frequent qualities of that category is that they started out as good people, but descended into villainy through a series of steps. And we have yet to see what all of those steps were.

They can be sympathetic while still being recognized as behaving monstrously.
And, in order to find out how to get the Shiplords to change, we (or at least, Amanda and co) need to empathize enough with the Shiplords to understand their mentality and find a way to change the paradigm they are stuck in.

Click to shrink...

As noted, the problem is just the sheer number of steps we've seen where the Shiplords took steps towards villainy (or amplifying existing villainy) in ways that it is really, really hard to grasp as "all making sense from the right point of view."

There's a "show, don't tell" problem at work here. Because we've seen the Shiplords make choices that are not merely tragic descents towards villainy, but raving gibbering madlad ultra-villainy that actively compromises their own alleged goals, time and time again. So just repeating "it's a tragedy" starts to fall kind of flat, because we've spent so long gathering so many pieces of the puzzle that it's getting harder and harder to imagine a way that the last few pieces of the puzzle could explain all the rest in a sympathetic manner.

It's unsurprising that multiple people have converged on the speculation that the Shiplords have suffered some kind of crippling soul/mind damage that prevents much of the species from doing any introspection or rationally evaluating the effectiveness of their own actions. Because that sort of collective racial lobotomy honestly does start to feel like the "logical" explanation. The only remaining explanation that could explain this and still validate the "they'd be sympathetic if only you understood" angle.

...

It probably doesn't help that the several years since this story first emerged in The Practice War have probably eroded some of the audience's ability to feel sympathy for people who behave monstrously, in fiction and in reality.

 

[Lightwhispers]

Suffice to say that the Gysians and the Shiplords are both terrible enough that some people's Evil-O-Meter just maxes out and the needle slams up against the stop peg on the right side of the dial.

Also, as noted, a lack of familiarity with some of the details of what the Gysians got up to, which made it at least seem like the horrific stuff the Gysians were doing with the Second Secret was loosely on par with what the Shiplords do to create the nanogoo that repairs their ships.


As noted, the problem is just the sheer number of steps we've seen where the Shiplords took steps towards villainy (or amplifying existing villainy) in ways that it is really, really hard to grasp as "all making sense from the right point of view."

There's a "show, don't tell" problem at work here. Because we've seen the Shiplords make choices that are not merely tragic descents towards villainy, but raving gibbering madlad ultra-villainy that actively compromises their own alleged goals, time and time again. So just repeating "it's a tragedy" starts to fall kind of flat, because we've spent so long gathering so many pieces of the puzzle that it's getting harder and harder to imagine a way that the last few pieces of the puzzle could explain all the rest in a sympathetic manner.

It's unsurprising that multiple people have converged on the speculation that the Shiplords have suffered some kind of crippling soul/mind damage that prevents much of the species from doing any introspection or rationally evaluating the effectiveness of their own actions. Because that sort of collective racial lobotomy honestly does start to feel like the "logical" explanation. The only remaining explanation that could explain this and still validate the "they'd be sympathetic if only you understood" angle.

...

It probably doesn't help that the several years since this story first emerged in The Practice War have probably eroded some of the audience's ability to feel sympathy for people who behave monstrously, in fiction and in reality.

Click to shrink...

Sympathy was perhaps not the right word. My point here, is that being able to empathize with the Shiplords is, while probably not something people here want to do, necessary for Amanda's mission to succeed.
Because understanding their mindset and motivation is exactly what we need to do.

And I dispute that their "raving gibbering madlad ultra-villainy" is actually significantly more counterproductive and cruel, adjusting for scale, than a fair number of things we've seen in our history on Earth.
I wonder what the Shiplord economy looks like, and how many of them benefit from staying on what is pretty much a permanent war footing?

 

[Torgamous]

I'm not trying to make you sympathetic towards the Shiplord society as it exists today. That's not the point.

Click to shrink...

So where does stuff like this come from?

"Do you think we'd do any better, after a few million years?" She took another breath, then another and slowly the shuddering faded.

Click to shrink...

But your problem here is quite simple: how do you make it stick? The Shiplords spent a long time trying to answer that question. Look where it got them.

Click to shrink...

What message is supposed to be taken from these if not "the Shiplord society as it exists today is something we'd have a hard time doing better than"?

Is that message supposed to somehow coexist with them being unsympathetic?

How does it coexist with the Shiplords' actions being a result of their very specific experience with the Consolat? The obvious answer to "do you think we'd do better" is "yes, because we don't have their very specific reaction to their very specific tragic backstory". I haven't seen any reason that we couldn't do better if the Shiplords were to leave and let us fix the problems they've created.

I get that the Shiplords are doing the best that they can, but from everything we've seen the operative word in that phrase is "they," not "best". That the best that they can isn't the best that anyone else possibly could, because they've locked themselves so hard in their trauma that they can go a million years without seeing even the very easy ways to do better.

Which is fine, except that people saying that the best they can do is in fact the best that anyone can do, and that being nicer than them in any way would endanger the universe, doesn't get the same reaction from you as people comparing them to the Sphere.

And sometimes it does sound like you're also saying that the best they can do is in fact the best that anyone can do.

You say that their actions are unjustifiable and a result of trauma, then you say stuff like those quotes that I really don't know how to interpret any way other than that their actions are justifiable because even people without their trauma would do them

I don't get it. I don't understand. And trying to understand isn't fun anymore, it's just frustrating.

 

[Mossconfig]

stuff the Gysians were doing with the Second Secret w

Click to shrink...

Hjiven, not Gysian. And its similar enough for all the important metrics save scale. It's a crime to tack onto the shiplords long list.

And I dispute that their "raving gibbering madlad ultra-villainy" is actually significantly more counterproductive and cruel, adjusting for scale, than a fair number of things we've seen in our history on Earth.

Click to shrink...

Yes, if you cherry pick the absolute worst of humanity you can find some things that we did that were worse than the shiplords. The thing is that we try and do better. Adolf Alois Hitler viewed gas weapons as too evil to widely employ. The cold war was humans succeeding in keeping the world from slipping off the ledge to total nuclear war. Our modern world has failures for sure, but every day people work their hardest to make that world worth living in.

The shiplords demonstrably don't. It's as if the USA decided to try and tackle the problem of nuclear proliferation, and the best way that the USA it could achieve those aims is by reenacting the Native American genocides against the rest of the world. It would work, you can say that for the plan.

Edit: it's tragic in the sense that Hindenburg gave the chancellorship to Hitler, but in the same sense that tradgedy is worthless unless it can help us stop the incoming war machine.

 

[TheEyes]

And the sheer weight of strain being piled onto "believe me, the Shiplords have a reason to be the way they are, and it's understandable and tragic, not just them responding to bad events by being utterly horrible themselves for no good reason, it really is, all will be made clear" is causing that particular bridge to creak.

If we didn't have, collectively, tremendous (deserved) respect for Snowfire's authorship, I honestly think it would have broken through long since. As it is, the bulk of us still have that trust, but... there's a creaking noise, and I'm not sure people who are as close to the project as Snowfire and teh beta readers really hear it for what it is.

Which is why they misinterpret it as "the people who are dwelling on just how horrible the Shiplords are and how peace seems impossible must want galactic mega-genocide in a war with them, no matter the cost!"

Which is just... no, that's not it.

Click to shrink...

And there's another reason that some of us are very wary about the "lesson of pain / Week of Sorrows" cause: because we just did get an anticlimactic and arguably unsatisfying answer to another very long running question. For literal years there's been a lot of speculation about the "Do not go beyond your star / Do not linger in the space between stars" stricture, because it seemed like such a lynch pin, something that could well explain the Shiplords' otherwise incomprehensible actions. After all, that stricture would indicate that there is some incredible danger lurking between stars, a trap for young / inexperienced races, and, should it exist it would explain why the Shiplords needed to hammer it home with such urgency and power.

I noted quite some time back that the stars have looked incredibly, one would even say suspiciously, inviting, with no visible hints of what we now know to be incredibly massive conflicts involving star-killers, stellar collectors, star-lifters, and other huge stellar-scale megastructures going to war against one another, something that ought to have been visible even to 20th century astronomers. Really the only way that I could see that making sense, that astronomers would be unable to see the aftermath of these galaxy-shaking events, is if something is carefully wallpapering over the galaxy, making every star system look empty, inviting, and above all alone to every other, in order to entice unwary travelers into making casual forays into the blackness of interstellar space. There were even two interludes a long while back that could well have been from the perspective of these Void Presences

And then we asked Entara about it at the Second Sorrow, and found out that it was a red herring this whole time, that there was no deeper reason for the stricture other than the Shiplords wanting to fence in their victims. The answer itself is almost flippant, even condescending, in its dismissal of the concerns of the posters:

"When a Tribute Fleet passes down the Shiplord directives, they include a warning at the end, something of the Directives but not itself a promise of genocide if broken," you said. The others nodded, and you continued. "It warns of peril to any who look or linger in the spaces between stars. Why?"

"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."

"Well that's...supremely disappointing," Vega said. Entara shrugged helplessly, using the human motion deliberately. It was comforting, but only so much so given how limited you felt on questions. This Sorrow had gone very quickly, no days of time, but every one of them took almost a week to move to and from the Stellar Exclusion Zone. And each week past meant another week that Earth might fall in.

"I'm sorry, truly," your guide said.

Click to shrink...

In some ways I get it: if there never was meant to be a "good" explanation for this stricture then pretty much the best that can be done is ripping the band-aid off like this, but after literal years of speculation it is pretty uniquely unsatisfying to find out that this whole mystery was always meant to be a nothing-burger. And now I'm anxious that the explanation for the Week of Sorrows / lesson of pain is going to be similarly anticlimactic, when in many ways this explanation is a lot more important, as it cuts to the core of the inciting incident that started both Quests and forms part of the bedrock of our understanding of the Shiplords as evil, potentially intractable enemies.

 

[Simon_Jester]

I noted quite some time back that the stars have looked incredibly, one would even say suspiciously, inviting, with no visible hints of what we now know to be incredibly massive conflicts involving star-killers, stellar collectors, star-lifters, and other huge stellar-scale megastructures going to war against one another, something that ought to have been visible even to 20th century astronomer

Click to shrink...

Well, all the really big interstellar wars were so long ago that the light has long since passed outside the galaxy. All that would be visible would be the remnants, and those would be harder to identify as such. I doubt the Shiplords even feel the need to make a sun go nova very often these days, and the only really impressive megastructures they tolerate are their own... which are likely to be many thousands of light years from Earth, perhaps in places 20th century astronomers simply cannot see clearly.

Also, intelligent species are likely to be thousands of light years apart, outside the range of good, easy astronomical observation in detail.

Unless I'm missing something.

And then we asked Entara about it at the Second Sorrow, and found out that it was a red herring this whole time, that there was no deeper reason for the stricture other than the Shiplords wanting to fence in their victims. The answer itself is almost flippant, even condescending, in its dismissal of the concerns of the posters:

In some ways I get it; if there never was meant to be a "good" explanation for this stricture then that's pretty much the best that can be done but rip the band-aid off like this, but after literal years of speculation it is pretty uniquely unsatisfying to find out that this whole mystery was always meant to be a nothing-burger the whole time, and it just makes me more anxious that the explanation for the Week of Sorrows / lesson of pain is going to be similarly anticlimactic, when in many ways this explanation is a lot more important, as it cuts to the core of the inciting incident that started both Quests.

Click to shrink...

To be fair, all along some of us were speculating that the real reason for that restriction was... it makes tributary species easier to find and easier to contain.

But I get the sentiment. A mystery we'd been pondering for a long time turned out to be a nothingburger, and a nothingburger that made the Shiplords look worse and more disagreeable. The same thing has been happening to some other mysteries.

For instance, we used to speculate that the Shiplords engineer the galaxy to create Uninvolved because they are knowingly relying on the Uninvolved to keep some threat at bay and effectively sacrificing whole species' development is part of the process. We now know that is almost the opposite of true; the Uninvolved are seen by the Shiplords as a threat to be prepared against, precisely because the Uninvolved already intervened to do the Shiplords' own damn job for them by destroying the Hjivin.

Quite a few of the mysteries we've seen answered has made the Shiplord hegemony seem less like a darkly tragic thing that 'really is the only way' and 'is the best they can do,' and more like a twisted, tawdry thing that makes most of its decisions purely for the sake of getting to go on making those identical decisions.

 

[MTB]

I can construct an explanation that satisfies myself, going 'the SL found that 'traumatizing emergent races, keeping them under surveillance and shepherding them to become Uninvolved that definitely won't mess in the here and now' worked and that the current Tribute system is the end result. What really doesn't fit into this explanation is the 'and we kill off the races that don't manage to at least destroy one tribute fleet ship in the first encounter'. So, I'm currently on a 'wait and see' approach.