- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
One theme of this quest is taking (or having the questers take) a really close look at 'the end justifies the means'.
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The Secrets' Crusade
- Thread starter Snowfire
- Start date
- Original Sci-Fi
There's a difference between "examining the concept" and taking a dive into methods that would likely make the desired end impossible. An examination would involve actually looking at whether those means are plausible to undertake given the outlook of the characters involved, and what likely outcomes would be. Not "I'm okay with this extreme action".
To perform a brief examination of that:
First, "dissecting a Shiplord's soul" would require a (hopefully) dead Shiplord, which would almost certainly imperil the current mission. It might well be something that would likely repulse Amanda due to her Focus, if not actually trigger a violent reaction. And those are just practical reasons not to consider it, not moral reasons.
(And, of course, it is likely to be entirely unnecessary, given the possibility of non-destructive examination, which would be much more acceptable to all parties.)
- Location
- LEO
If the words are worthless and magical force is the deciding factor, then Kichas reaction doesn't make sense. Plus, when Amanda reacted to the reality of the simulation using practice the rest of the team assumed they were blown and prepared to fight. That suggests that everything before that was entirely mundane.
There's going to be a bunch of those soon, and the shiplords are not "rules of war" type people.
I was comparing that one first contact specialist's remark to our current speculation, and hopefully it can be solved the same way we confronted the hijven but if not then options are on the table.
However, whatever is wrong with shiplord society has to be ripped out for peace to be on the table. Hopefully it can be fixed by mundane social engineering, but if not...
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
To expand on what Snowfire said, I will point you to Amanda's character sheet. Specifically, the description of her Diplomacy stat, and another thing:
For Potentials of Amanda's caliber, very little they do is "entirely mundane". It might just be something that helps her find the exactly right words at the proper time, but Practice is a part of her.
- Location
- LEO
I guess our statistical data is getting skewed by only having supersoldiers take the test because I'm comfortable saying that Amanda's plan of action was basic enough that anybody, practice of not, could have come up with it. If the solution to the hijven isn't an open exchange of ideas and rather bringing overwhelming advantages to the table, then that kinda supports the shiplords worldview of ensuring their dominance.
Is there any conceivable subconscious practice use that couldn't be replicated by a normal skilled diplomat and warship crew? I can't see anything in the text I read up till that neutral stunner quickscope that couldn't be replicated mundanely, and even the neural stunner could be swapped out with a technological weapon
... Actually I can see something. She was getting cues from the speaker.
If dealing with the shiplords requires a speech or observation skill that literally doesn't obey the laws of the universe, the lesson Kicha should take is less "the current situation is unhealthy for everybody and must be stopped" and more "we need to be more powerful, like those humans, and things would be alright".
Is there any conceivable subconscious practice use that couldn't be replicated by a normal skilled diplomat and warship crew? I can't see anything in the text I read up till that neutral stunner quickscope that couldn't be replicated mundanely, and even the neural stunner could be swapped out with a technological weapon
... Actually I can see something. She was getting cues from the speaker.
If dealing with the shiplords requires a speech or observation skill that literally doesn't obey the laws of the universe, the lesson Kicha should take is less "the current situation is unhealthy for everybody and must be stopped" and more "we need to be more powerful, like those humans, and things would be alright".
I think there are several points of miscommunication here.
Saying that Amanda's course of action was basic is highly unlikely to be true. For one, it's a complex situation. Finding and enacting that course of action took liberal amounts of not-magic.
Just because something could, in theory, have been arrived at and performed by someone with the right mundane skills, does not mean that it's a basic task. Amanda didn't hack the scenario (except for when she did, but that's not relevant to this) - a Shiplord would have the theoretical capability to reproduce that performance.
And no, Kicha recognized that, whether or not Amanda's ability to "chart a path so perfectly" is not a matter of power, but of insight, wisdom, a different perspective, or some combination thereof.
Kicha's perspective hinges on that it was possible to do better, which suggests that a large part of the Shiplord cultural issues that hinge on the Sorrows is that they believe that it's inevitable for Sorrows-level threats to the galaxy to arise. Which suggests that we may well have two paths towards peace: the first involves the sacrifice of the Consolat and the creation of the Secrets, the second is to convince enough of them that, while the alliance against them is a threat to Shiplord hegemony, it is not a threat to the stars they claim to be the defenders of.
SaltyWaffles
I am dissapoint, son
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Realistically, pre-Practice humanity would have avoided the situation in the first place by having a standing military and prepared contingencies so that if a full-scale galactic war broke out without warning at all, victory would still be assured. Indeed, this is a society with the technology, resources, and expertise to set all of that up well in advance with little in the way of meaningful sacrifice.
Modern-day Shiplords only having something like a dozen War Fleets operational is entirely understandable because a species other than the Shiplords standing up to a War Fleet happened all of twice in history, and in both cases they were advanced, large civilizations that had been allowed to build up and advance freely for a long time before having to face said War Fleets. And now, suddenly, a single-system species that hasn't even gone a century from its first Tribute just all but annihilated an entire War Fleet and every other species in the galaxy is rising up at once with War Fleet countermeasures. And even then, the Shiplords have a bunch of War Fleet ships in storage that it can bring out if truly needed.
Thus, the real answer isn't "find the one approach in this impossible situation to salvage a devastating lack of preparedness or imagination being left to fester until it was far too late", but rather "stop being so stupid and actually use our mastery of space magic, enormous infrastructure, resources, and immortal and dutiful population to have the ability to gear up for galactic-scale war extremely quickly if need be".
Once more, the lack of imagination on the Shiplords' part results in them deciding that the answer to every failure is prevent the possibility of such failures in the future...by forcing any and all levels of burden, suffering, atrocity, and responsibility onto everyone else rather than accept any suffering or responsibility themselves.
- Location
- LEO
Exactly, after the first contact simulation the team simulated the rest of the war, and they came to this similar conclusion. Prove to the hjiven that the shiplords are in fact a galactic power that will fight them by opening up the taps of military hardware to everybody in the shiplords known universe. The results of that action were also positive, in the improved first contact situation and cannon.
SaltyWaffles
I am dissapoint, son
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Er, no, you missed my point. My point is that trying to salvage the situation simulated by the Sorrow is a false test. Because the real point of failure by the Shiplords wasn't the first contact, but rather their severe lack of preparedness for a galactic war breaking out without a LOT of warning, despite the self-imposed responsibility/mandate to protect the galaxy from just such a threat. Even though they had the technology, science, knowledge, resources, industry, infrastructure, population, and political will to do so, they were so arrogant as to believe that they could not run into another galactic power that could seriously challenge them that was more ready for full-scale war than the Shiplords were.
It's a little bit like Neville Chamberlain's dilemma in 1938, where he might have been able to change how the war played out if he had acted differently. But the far bigger mistakes happened repeatedly in the years leading up to the crisis that allowed things to escalate to such a dramatic degree in the first place. Britain and France had squandered their time and advantages for years until the enemy they tried to belatedly prepare to face was even more prepared and had a substantial chance of outright winning, and a very strong chance of causing tremendous damage even if they eventually lost.
In short: the Sorrow simulates the last possible point at which the Shiplords could have mitigated their cumulative, colossal failure--but it was the most difficult and unlikely point at which to do so, not to mention the costliest. If the Shiplords hadn't squandered their time and advantages for so long, they would have been able to face their contact with the Sphere from a position of abundant strength and dramatically reduced the cost and destruction of the war itself.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Whilst you aren't exactly wrong, the relative blind spot present in Shiplord doctrine pre-Sphereic War isn't without precedent. Human polities are notorious for creating the weapons with which to fight the last war, and for pretty much all of Shiplord history up until their encounter with the Sphere, War Fleets in combination with certain…special assets had always been enough.
It is indeed the case that the War Fleets of the Shiplord navy were and remained significantly more deadly than their Hjivin counterparts, but that meant relatively little when the Sphere's mechanism for taking planetary systems involved a total focus on what was inside of the Stellar Exclusion Zone.
The vast majority of lifebearing worlds exist in that zone, and the Sphere's active invasion tactics were brutally utilitarian. Deploy enough Regular Fleet type craft (that the Shiplords largely lacked at the beginning of the war) to simply ignore the winnowing effect of War Fleet fire.
Once beyond the range of the War Fleets, they could dismantle the inner system at their leisure.
Did they take significant casualties from every assault? Yes. Did they care, and did it matter? No, not particularly.
The problem here is multi-facted, and not at all as simple as it appears. The Shiplords had never encountered a polity capable of warfare as the Sphere executed it with an industrial base sufficient to do so against them (the Shiplords). Oh, it could be done with drone fleets or AI-manned craft but they were old hands at turning those sort of forces against themselves.
Doing so with manned craft? At the sort of scale required to succeed? It sounded insane - what sort of polity would just throw away millions of lives like that? Answer: the Sphere.
But it's also…not the actual problem. Or at most only one part of it. The way in which Contact was trained could've allowed for a more aggressively investigative approach to the Sphere, one that might have forced them to realise that the Shiplords truly were as old and powerful as they said. This wasn't a matter of guns ready on the border, it was about perception and ideology.
Would write more but have to drive 8-10 hours now. Please be kind to any errors I might've made rushing this.
It is indeed the case that the War Fleets of the Shiplord navy were and remained significantly more deadly than their Hjivin counterparts, but that meant relatively little when the Sphere's mechanism for taking planetary systems involved a total focus on what was inside of the Stellar Exclusion Zone.
The vast majority of lifebearing worlds exist in that zone, and the Sphere's active invasion tactics were brutally utilitarian. Deploy enough Regular Fleet type craft (that the Shiplords largely lacked at the beginning of the war) to simply ignore the winnowing effect of War Fleet fire.
Once beyond the range of the War Fleets, they could dismantle the inner system at their leisure.
Did they take significant casualties from every assault? Yes. Did they care, and did it matter? No, not particularly.
The problem here is multi-facted, and not at all as simple as it appears. The Shiplords had never encountered a polity capable of warfare as the Sphere executed it with an industrial base sufficient to do so against them (the Shiplords). Oh, it could be done with drone fleets or AI-manned craft but they were old hands at turning those sort of forces against themselves.
Doing so with manned craft? At the sort of scale required to succeed? It sounded insane - what sort of polity would just throw away millions of lives like that? Answer: the Sphere.
But it's also…not the actual problem. Or at most only one part of it. The way in which Contact was trained could've allowed for a more aggressively investigative approach to the Sphere, one that might have forced them to realise that the Shiplords truly were as old and powerful as they said. This wasn't a matter of guns ready on the border, it was about perception and ideology.
Would write more but have to drive 8-10 hours now. Please be kind to any errors I might've made rushing this.
SaltyWaffles
I am dissapoint, son
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Er, human polities being prepared to fight the last war is fine and dandy when you're talking about 20th century human polities who measure their history in centuries with populations and leaders who don't live to see a century at best, with technology, resources, political will, and industry that is quite limited and needs to be rationed across a plethora of serious societal needs where the stakes are life and death.
Shiplord society, even in the centuries leading up to the encounter with the Sphere, was ancient, possessing of insane technology and resources across the board, the skill and industry to ramp up and apply those to build a massive war reserve and rapid-mobilization regime in the event of a full-on galactic war breaking out without warning, combined with the population and political will to push such a measure through with confidence.
Given that Shiplord society was all about discovering, countering, and preventing abuse of Secrets (ESPECIALLY on a massive scale), preparing for such a scenario on a galactic scale with no warning should have been a fairly obvious course of action. Even if they didn't know exactly what kind of military might they would most need, they DID know that they could stockpile a massive amount of military might of various kinds to at least be effective (even if not ideal) in any scenario they could imagine. As an example, the scenario in which the enemy employs vast numbers of cheap combatants across an enormous front is not only easy to imagine, it is easy to envision as a likely enemy tactic for the simple purpose of distraction. War Fleets are extremely powerful, but if you only have a small number of them, then it seems obvious that the easiest counter to such an asset would be to have cheap threats present everywhere at once. The Regular Fleets was the counter that was developed for this, but the fact that such a counter had to be developed after the fact says everything: the Shiplords, in their arrogance and complacence, hadn't envisaged the kind of scenario that was already accounted for and employed on Earth in the 20th century and much earlier. Yes, the Royal Navy at its position of global dominance was backed by the overwhelming might of its numerous ships of the line of battle, but rather than try to cover the world's seas with such fleets, it employed a much greater number of smaller, cheaper, and weaker warships to patrol and be available across the world instead.
The Shiplords falsely equated their mastery over the technology and hegemony over known space with mastery over scale and hegemony over even unknown space. They had the most advanced ships and most advanced industry within known space, but they knew that they were not even remotely close to fully leveraging either their technology or their industry, and just assumed that no one else they might encounter could have developed either the technology or the industry to match them.
EDIT: STill, all that is understandable. What's more egregious is them deciding that the lesson to take away from all that is to be harsher on everyone else and be prepared to fight the threat of the Uninvolved who saved the Shiplords.
EDIT2: Now that I have a minute, I wanted to add that while the Shiplords did learn from some of their mistakes (they have Regular Fleets, they have more contingency plans and reserves, etc), they also made some insane and rather outrageous changes as well, like developing Soulkiller weaponry with the intent of threatening and, if need be, using it against the Uninvolved rather than for the purpose of having a means to fight an enemy that tries to do something vaguely along the lines of what the Hjiven tried to do (something that even the Uninvolved find to be too dangerous to ignore). Being way harsher on the other races--even ones fully willing to listen to the Shiplords--is another inexplicable change because the only ones at fault were the Hjiven, while the other races were either allies or, at worst, helpless against the Sphere without Shiplord protection. This Sorrow is treated as a justification for why First Contact should be done with overwhelming force and uncompromising demands, when the irony is that the reason the Shiplords were in such a bad position in the simulation to start with is because they didn't have the available force prepared to pull that off even if they needed to. And somewhere along the way, First Contact went from "show up with overwhelming force and make commandments to the new species under threat of destruction if they don't comply" to "show up with overwhelming force and commit xenocide, or near-xenocide if they manage to give you a bloody nose before you finish, THEN give commandments...and then return again long before they've even come close to recovering, kick their asses again, make them suffer greatly AGAIN, and keep doing that until they're strong enough to beat the initial force, at which point you alter the commandments a bit but make it clear that you can still destroy them utterly at any time at a whim". (And then psychologically tortue them, bully them, subvert them, and slowly push them towards collective species suicide eventually, as a means of escape from your bullying, only for them to discover that you still have the means to kill them if they ever get uppity, and that their new lifespan is actually relatively short anyway.)
Yeah, there were plenty of lessons from that Sorrow that the Shiplords learned and correctly employed. But the way the Shiplords--even the Hearthguard--talk about it as some kind of foundational justification for all that would follow is utter nonsense that they've somehow convinced themselves of. It also ignores the fact that, with the whole of the galaxy sufficiently explored such that there cannot possibly BE another Hjiven Sphere-like superpower appearing out of nowhere to challenge the Shiplords, rendering such justifications moot.
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I have to disagree with this premise.
Pre-Practice humanity seems all too likely to have fallen into the same trap the Shiplords did, of not having a military that could counter tactics that they thought were insane, without time to activate factories/shipyards/etc, to build up from "peacetime" levels.
- Location
- LEO
I think there's some things we agree on and some we don't. I do agree that the sorrow is a false test, but that falsity is proved by the simulation after the first contact.
I disagree that the moment of contact is the last point where they could have fixed things, as seen here as the team discuss how they'd handle a hijven war started on unfavorable terms.
They come up with a coherent plan mixing diplomacy and warfare tailored to the hijven, and say that it's something shiplords would be incapable of doing. Kicha's reaction seems to support that. Contact was the moment where the war could have been avoided, but even without avoiding a war the situation could have been improved.
The situation was solvable beforehand by proper military planning, in the moment by a correct first contact and afterwards it could have been salvaged by the proper application of military force. The shiplords were incapable of any of those solutions.
I think Kicha's reaction to the human military solution is important, but I don't get exactly how. She's shocked at strategic (vaccum collapse?) weapon use? Is it a kneejerk cultural aversion of "nukes bad" without weighting the alternatives of hijven enslavement?
The problem is that "pre practice humanity" wouldn't be able to to claim galactic hegemony. Local concerns and the recognition of infighting and distrust would end any such plan before it began. The shiplords did, and failed to live up to the title. The human solution, aka multiple polities working largely independently with avenues of communication and cooperation within an overarching body, would have different failure modes but also different advantages. Enough to avoid this situation? Who knows, thats what we have to plan for for the future.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
There is no such thing as a strategic vacuum collapse device. Once one gets properly started, reality is fucked.
What got used by one of the allied species was a Fifth Secret based weapon that was a few steps down the vacuum collapse research line.
That made the entire simulation non-viable. It's why Kicha only presented one of the two simulations you produced. And why it can't be used as a baseline for anything that you expect to actually work.
And again, no. Please stop making me repeat this. War with the Sphere was utterly inevitable. The change made by Contact reacting "perfectly" is that it would've been the Shiplords coming for the Sphere, not the ither way around.
Don't expect anything much more until tomorrow. Still a few hours travel left to go.
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- Location
- LEO
True. I guess what I should have said is that before, during, and after contact choices could have been made to mitigate the war with the sphere, and they weren't taken for some reason. Deaths could have been avoided, not the entire war. They still at three choices managed to go with more death. Unlucky planning can perhaps explain the first mistake of fleet composition, but the contact and war simulation are the product of an alien mind.
What do you mean by non viable? Did the universe end? Did the war continue irregardless? I agree showing the shiplords that they can achieve something by using strategic weapons isn't a convincing argument for us, but in terms of actions that could have been taken against the hijven did it not achieve it's goal of stopping the onslaught? The question is what alien calculus allows shiplords to avoid that particular weapon, but sign off on the amount of death and destruction they have done for millions of years.
I also think it is applicable to our situation. We are not in the position of prewar planning or first contact. We are in the third stage, saving something from the war that is starting across the galaxy. The solution Mir chose to intimidate the hijven with this unknown 5th secret strategic weapon seems mighty close to our "edit the secrets" plan to edit the war. It's an attack that shows our superiority to the shiplords in one domain and that they will pay the price for continuing the war.
I agree with your point that a demonstration attack isn't a good way to end our current war, the underlying problem of why shiplords keep on making inexplicable decisions still exists and needs to be handled.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Okay I'm just done with this.
There was no demonstration attack. Mir did not intend for anything of the kind that happened - that was the sim doing its job. And any use of weapons leading towards vacuum collapse devices being nonviable should be fucking obvious given the existence of the First and Second Sorrows.
And if it isn't I have no idea what story you've been reading.
This is literally in the narrative you've quoted and how you're missing that is completely beyond me.
And this isn't the first time. Or the second. Or even the third. So for the sake of my sanity can you please just stop.
There was no demonstration attack. Mir did not intend for anything of the kind that happened - that was the sim doing its job. And any use of weapons leading towards vacuum collapse devices being nonviable should be fucking obvious given the existence of the First and Second Sorrows.
And if it isn't I have no idea what story you've been reading.
This is literally in the narrative you've quoted and how you're missing that is completely beyond me.
And this isn't the first time. Or the second. Or even the third. So for the sake of my sanity can you please just stop.
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- Location
- Somewhere out there
Anything even remotely close to developing that kind of weaponry would not have been a viable demonstration to show to the Authority, as the response would have been swift and absolute -- the very suggestion that Humanity would even consider researching that tech tree would be our death sentence.
The calculus is "infinity > anything else" -- that is a weapon that, once triggered, can only be stopped through what more or less can be described as "luck and a network of calibrated black holes". If it isn't stopped within the first instants of being detonated, it will inexorably destroy not just the local system, not just the Milky Way, but the entire Laniakea Supercluster of galaxies at minimum. If we're lucky, the expansion of space due to dark energy will mean that the destruction won't be able to catch up with the rest of the universe.
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- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Only if not some genius adds a little First Secret tech into the mix; the false vacuum collapse should 'produce' enough energy for shenanigans.
grimely
Twink Death Sufferer
Alright, finally caught up. I've gone and read through every threadmark including the sidestory and informationals in both threads, and there are two things I'm still confused on and think Amanda and company need to know until they can actually resolve anything.
1) Contact becoming Tribute
2) Tribute's insistence on exterminating any species that cannot destroy at least one vessel in First Contact
The yearning that Amanda gave voice to at the First Battle of Sol, her Word, is still unanswered. We don't really understand.
1) Contact becoming Tribute
2) Tribute's insistence on exterminating any species that cannot destroy at least one vessel in First Contact
The yearning that Amanda gave voice to at the First Battle of Sol, her Word, is still unanswered. We don't really understand.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I suspect the answer is "exceedingly negative, but moderated by the exceptional sanity of Humanity 2.0, which we see throughout the narrative."
I doubt anyone really expected that anything good would happen to the Shiplords' captives, or that they would actually survive.
Thebigpieman
I've got this, I think.
- Location
- United States
We know the answer to this, it was part of the turn following the Second Battle of Sol: