The Secrets' Crusade
- Thread starter Snowfire
- Start date
- Original Sci-Fi
More than a little disappointed that we're leaving the Fourth without finding any answer to the big question of why Tribute Fleets exist. If there were ever going to be an answer to that question it would be here, at the Fourth Sorrow; it's too bad we're unlikely to see one before the end now. Then again, it's not really like a satisfactory answer to such a question is even really fundamentally possible, not one that any species subjected to the Tribute cycle would ever consider justified at any rate, so it makes sense that it would be skipped.
The answer to the Third Sorrow reveals, to all of Shiplord society, that the fault is not in the stars, but themselves, that they are wrong, that they have been wrong, for millions of years. It's a shot across the bow of their entire society, and, like many people confronted with the certain knowledge that their entire life up to now has been a lie, they are predictably reacting with denying the change that this new knowledge demands, up to and including violently.
[X] Talk with Sidra - your Unison Platform has not been themself since the Third Sorrow, and perhaps before. Something's wrong, and you've been putting off this conversation for weeks. There probably won't be time at the Consolat Origin. See to it now.
That's the Shiplords' justification for their current actions, but frankly speaking they were at war with Humanity the moment they were discovered. The Shiplords have never stopped being at war, not since the Fourth Sorrow; that's when they dismantled their First Contact fleets, their diplomatic fleets, and replaced them with Tribute Fleets. They're in a war of extinction with all life in the galaxy that isn't themselves, and the only reason they have any shot at not succeeding is that the Dragons, by a lucky chance, managed to stumble on a power that goes beyond Secrets.
An answer, to the Shiplords? Humanity's justification for war is that the Shiplords, or at least the Admiralty, have stopped asking questions. They don't want to apprehend the pilgrims who answered the Third Sorrow's big riddle because they want to know anything about their reasoning; if they were that interested then Kicha would be helping them. No; they want to apprehend "the pilgrims" because they want to silence them, because this answer calls into question their whole regime.
The answer to the Third Sorrow reveals, to all of Shiplord society, that the fault is not in the stars, but themselves, that they are wrong, that they have been wrong, for millions of years. It's a shot across the bow of their entire society, and, like many people confronted with the certain knowledge that their entire life up to now has been a lie, they are predictably reacting with denying the change that this new knowledge demands, up to and including violently.
[X] Talk with Sidra - your Unison Platform has not been themself since the Third Sorrow, and perhaps before. Something's wrong, and you've been putting off this conversation for weeks. There probably won't be time at the Consolat Origin. See to it now.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Errr….no.
They want to find you so you can help them understand how you did it. The problem is that you're not Shiplords, and going to meet the Authority would inevitably reveal that. This is in the update as why Kicha warned you.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
You might survive long enough to address them about what you did at the Third. The problem is that that just isn't enough on its own.
It's not impossible that the Hearthguard could gather enough support within the Authority to keep you alive after that, but they're long odds and would mean months to years of time stuck as very comfortable prisoners of the Authority.
Which would also mean no going to the Origin to find what the Consolat left there, at least for a while, which every member of the Adamant's command staff agrees must be important. The Teel'sanha's gestalt put a lot of effort into making sure the message that the Last Memory showed you would survive. They wouldn't have done that if it wasn't important.
And all that time you'd be stuck at the Authority, the Shiplord's military would be prosecuting the war that's kicked off. Which humanity would be left fighting without four of its strongest strategic assets.
In short: it's too much of a gamble right now. You're expecting those probabilities to change after you've investigated the Origin.
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- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That would also mean the Adamant's crew gets the status 'hostages'.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
This is…hazy due to relative inexperience with Shiplord governance. Best guess is that if the Hearthguard managed to keep you alive, which isn't certain, they'd probably be able to wring out a concession to not use your status against humanity.
So still hostages, but not in the way of "Do what we say or we execute them." Leaving aside how ferociously difficult actually pulling that off would be given, well: Amanda and her Heartcircle.
Wait, really? That's surprising to me, because my understanding is that the existence of Tribute Fleets at all seemed a pretty clear indication that the Authority side of the Shiplord political scene is generally and genuinely no longer interested in pursuing the question that the Third Sorrow proposes. That is, it was my understanding that, to the Authority, the Tribute Fleets are the answer to how to prevent another threat on the levels of the Hijivian: force every other species the Shiplords come into contact with to develop in similar ways, and then soft contain them until the species commits collective suicide.
This response is a pretty clear indication that I'm pretty far off in my understanding of the Authority's beliefs, because if I were right about what Tributes are and why they exist, the Authority would be doing everything it could to minimize, contain, and ultimately deny and bury any mention of an alternate solution to the Hijivian question, similar to the way that the Catholic Church predictably reacted with excommunication and ultimately violence when Martin Luther published his 95 Theses. That makes it a lot harder to decide what ultimately needs to be done about the Shiplords, because there's a clear mismatch between what I had thought their beliefs and political positions were and what they actually are.
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One, they can't bury it, because I'm pretty sure the Hearthguard made it completely public. Second, the Hearthguard's absolutely public threat of "change course or else" is likely prompting their decision to ask us. Their beliefs are what you've thought they are, but to paraphrase Dr. Johnson, the prospect of civil war concentrates the mind wonderfully.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
So...I started writing a reply to this and it turned into this. I hope it helps? Might Informational threadmark it, not sure.
The Shiplord Authority
The Shiplord Authority is the nexus of Shiplord civilization, and though currently poorly understood by humanity, there are certain elements of its structure that are very clear. First of all, the Authority is, despite its name, an elected body. Though further examination of Shiplord cultural files remains a requirement, the Authority appears to be the best solution that Shiplord society has been able to produce when taking into account how the bandwidth limitations of Interstellar Lagless makes true e-democracy impossible.
The Authority is an enormously distributed organisation, with highly protected lines of communication designed to remove the ability of elected representatives to ignore those who elected them. The Authority chamber on the Shiplord homeworld possesses well over a thousand delegates, each supported by local representatives within their voting districts. These provide a direct link from the delegate to their home district, and the structure continues down to ground level electees voted on by communities and neighbourhoods.
In simple terms, delegates are supported and advised by their district representatives, who are supported and advised by municipal electees, and so on until it reaches the level of community councillors. Voting districts at every level are determined and constantly reassessed by governmental AIs. Given the relatively static level of Shiplord population, remarkably stable for a civilisation that acts in many ways as an imperial authority over the galaxy, these changes are usually minimal across the length of a pre-Secrets human lifespan.
Issues pass dynamically up and down the levels of Authority governance dependent on their requirements, projected effects and scale. In this way, Authority delegates can pass more precise decisions over implementation of a project down the chain, and can act as impartial moderators for matters when the delegates of their constituency find themselves struggling to reach a compromise.
Sufficient pressure from supporting delegates is designed to filter upwards, forcing a response from electees until the matter reaches an appropriate level of responsibility for it to be properly addressed. Although larger issues are typically decided upon by elected members of the Authority, a sufficient plurality of the affected electorate can institute a public debate and referendum.
This ability to directly influence policy extends all the way to the highest levels of Shiplord governance, with enough examples of polity-scale plebiscites present in available records to make this more than simple theatre. The vote to approve the development of the progenitors of the modern Lumen-class was one. As constituency management, governmental AIs are involved in an oversight role for mass debates and their subsequent votes.
It should be noted that whilst a significant majority of the Authority supports the current status quo, large sections of that coalition of factions do so only because there seems no other (from their perspective) way out of the current state of affairs. This can absolutely be called their failing, but it is also a ray of hope to humanity and the other races who have aligned with you. These are the groups that Kicha hopes to stir from apathy with the simulation you gave her, and a surface level analysis of factions within the Authority has borne out that the possibility of success does exist.
Deeper analysis is complicated by a lack of available time and resources to assign to a full sociological study, however it's fair to assume that Kicha knew what she was talking about when telling you how important the simulation created at the Third Sorrow could prove.
The presence of ardent supporters of the current form of Shiplord hegemony should not, and indeed cannot, be denied. These delegates are the loudest voices for immediate and devastating responses to humanity's rebellion against the Shiplords. They are also not a majority.
The Authority's response to Kicha's broadcast, one made to the entirety of Shiplord civilization, appears to have been one of confusion and extremely focused curiosity. Kicha's messages warned you to leave not because the ships sent out to search for you would be trying to kill you, but because they would escort you straight to the Authority to talk with them about the simulation and how you successfully created it. This would inevitably reveal the reality of you not being Shiplords, with predictable results.
From the perspective of the majority of Shiplord civilisation, the Tribute Fleet system isn't the preferred result. It's just the only one that's been proven to actually work by the simple expedient of escalating to genocide when a younger race refuses to listen to them. It is a moral abomination, and conversations with the younger Shiplords at the Fourth Sorrow implied significant levels of opposition to its existence. But even those struggled with the question of "But then what?"
Kicha's goal is to use your simulation to force the Authority to consider that the so-called solution of the Tribute Fleets was based on faulty logic, with the full weight of the Hearthguard's hoarded political capital behind it. Where that road will lead...you can't be sure. It just probably wouldn't be helped by a bunch of humans showing up as the ones who came up with that simulation.
Or perhaps more correctly, not yet.
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Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Destroying the core worlds of the Shiplord polity would require you to wipe out a significant section of space around the galactic core. They're a fully mature FTL civilisation that has had millions of years to secure their space and build their worlds. They don't have colony worlds anymore. Blowing up their homeworld, assuming you could find a way to do that, would lead to them prioritising the destruction of Earth to a point that you simply would not be able to stop.
It would cost them, oh man would it cost them, but if they threw every single War Fleet they had at Sol along with a significant Regular Fleet component, the FSN would lose badly. The main reason they don't do that right now is due to wanting to keep those War Fleets closer to home as response forces against half the galaxy going up in flames around them.
Which just means that the Fifth Battle of Sol can be expected to be a horrific grindfest of a battle against an armada on a scale not seen since the War of the Sphere.
Oh so if we destroy their core world without making them see it was us try to make it seem like it was one of their own or well an enemy that also is bad for the entire galaxy or not at all because it's like fighting the battle of terra only if chaos will eventually win
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
I think you need to start with how you blow up the planet.
Then how you do it without the Shiplords knowing it was you.
- Location
- Queensland, Australia
You forgot to add in 'make sure that the Shiplords have a more believable target for who pulled this off even if they have no idea it was humanity that caused this than the folks who just actively triggered the next Galactic War against the Shiplords and have demonstrated anomalous energy and anomalous Secret develop speed capabilities'. Or to put it more simply:
If the Shiplords Homeworlds blew up by themselves for absolutely no detectable reason, I swear it was an Act of God from Outside the Universe, then Humanity has maybe a year to tell the Shiplords everything they have to prove it wasn't them. And then the Shiplords use all that information they're given to crush Humanity regardless as just because they weren't the ones that blew up the Shiplord Homeworlds, doesn't mean Humanity isn't still their active mascot enemy.
Tayta Malikai
200% Space Whale
- Location
- Australia
Welcome back! \o/
[X] Listen to Iris - your daughter spent most of your time at the Forum as part of a group talking to an ex-Tribute Fleet officer. You'll take the time to properly work through that experience after the fact, and see what truths might linger.
[X] Listen to Iris - your daughter spent most of your time at the Forum as part of a group talking to an ex-Tribute Fleet officer. You'll take the time to properly work through that experience after the fact, and see what truths might linger.
Dmol8
The Undead Unhinged Lunatic of the Web
- Location
- Belgrade,Serbia
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Maybe a temporary threadmark?
From what I understand of your summary of what our characters know right now it can be summed up as this:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cYXSBY8ZqI
only Shiplord in nature instead of Human.
- Location
- Germany
- Pronouns
- He/Him
@ Snowfire - so, I understand that the majority of the Authority condones/supports the current Tribute fleet practice of genociding races that don't manage to kill at least one Tribute fleet ship in the initial visit?
And - the solution coming from aliens explains why no SL found it in the last few million years and highlights one of their cultural blind points - their 'burden of the white man'(*) mindset that stops them from looking for support from others that don't share their point of view.
(*) "It's our holy duty to safeguard the galaxy versus secret misuse. Our. No one else can be trusted."
And - the solution coming from aliens explains why no SL found it in the last few million years and highlights one of their cultural blind points - their 'burden of the white man'(*) mindset that stops them from looking for support from others that don't share their point of view.
(*) "It's our holy duty to safeguard the galaxy versus secret misuse. Our. No one else can be trusted."
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Just gotta say:
Why exterminate species that fail to do sufficient damage to the first Tribute Fleet?
That's the part that turns the Shiplord mega-genocide regime from being "okay, this is cruel and dreadful and wrong and I hate it and am fully resolved to stop it, but it's at least something I can imagine people deciding to do and still being people" to "yeah, that can just die now, I'm through with it."
I don't understand, essentially, why the Shiplords choose to act like these guys. I'm not sure anyone here among the readerbase does either.
And for a variety of reasons, we still don't have an answer to that question, and it kind of just... makes it really hard to even retain any good feeling or any hope about any Shiplord thing, at least for me. It causes "there is a chance for peace" to feel emotionally more like a 'tell' thing and less like a 'show' thing.
Because the majority of Shiplord society being so apathetic that they don't restrain the mega-genocide fan club faction from doing that just... I can't relate to that level of apathy and indifference to other beings' lives. Especially since definitionally that includes the beings that are most peaceful and harmless.
Given what we've seen of the Shiplords and their behavior over the last few eons, man oh man are those last eight words capable of doing a lot of heavy lifting.
The part that I have never, never, never understood, and that we still do not have an answer for, the part that completely punts the Shiplords over the line of "un-relatable" for quite a few of us, is something that's almost a throwaway line within the context of the quest but that makes up such a huge fraction of the Shiplords' most appalling mega-genocides:
Why exterminate species that fail to do sufficient damage to the first Tribute Fleet?
That's the part that turns the Shiplord mega-genocide regime from being "okay, this is cruel and dreadful and wrong and I hate it and am fully resolved to stop it, but it's at least something I can imagine people deciding to do and still being people" to "yeah, that can just die now, I'm through with it."
I don't understand, essentially, why the Shiplords choose to act like these guys. I'm not sure anyone here among the readerbase does either.
And for a variety of reasons, we still don't have an answer to that question, and it kind of just... makes it really hard to even retain any good feeling or any hope about any Shiplord thing, at least for me. It causes "there is a chance for peace" to feel emotionally more like a 'tell' thing and less like a 'show' thing.
Because the majority of Shiplord society being so apathetic that they don't restrain the mega-genocide fan club faction from doing that just... I can't relate to that level of apathy and indifference to other beings' lives. Especially since definitionally that includes the beings that are most peaceful and harmless.
From the Shiplord perspective, the most likely culprit would be the Uninvolved finding a way to bypass Shiplord sensor networks, so the most probable immediate consequence would be the Shiplords activating whatever war plans they have for attacking Uninvolved, wherever the Uninvolved may exist.
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Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
In fairness (well, y'know) the one race they did trust after the Consolat took a look at their actual problem, worked on it for a bit, then gave up and went Uninvolved. It's not...wholly unjustified.
I feel like, in this case, they've actually done a reasonable job of it? But I'm not in polsci so I could very well be wrong.Given what we've seen of the Shiplords and their behavior over the last few eons, man oh man are those last eight words capable of doing a lot of heavy lifting.
I'm not entirely sure if my answering this OOC would help. I can do that, but it would also be doing that OOC instead of giving you an IC interaction with the point which I suspect given previous conversations around this matter would probably mean be better for reader consumption. If you want to pursue this question IC as soon as possible, voting to talk to Iris would cover the matter. I'll try to highlight any future options that would do this.
- Location
- Florida
[X] Listen to Iris - your daughter spent most of your time at the Forum as part of a group talking to an ex-Tribute Fleet officer. You'll take the time to properly work through that experience after the fact, and see what truths might linger.
Snowfire
Polyglot of Chimera
- Location
- Wordcats
Start with how you intend to do this.
If i did I would get the moderators here just go if we got advance enough and the galaxy combine to take them out
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
I'm not saying they haven't, just that "this is the best Shiplord culture could figure out how to do" gives a lot of narrative wiggle room from what we've seen.
I do understand and I'm not complaining as such, just noting that it's one of the big points of friction that I feel with the narrative at the moment, and one of the things that keeps me (and probably others) from feeling fully engaged with the "there is hope that the Shiplords can be redeemed" arc within that narrative.
I'm not sure there's an easy way to fix it given the constraints of the quest format, where pressure of events keeps pulling us away from the places and cases where we might actually find out the answer, assuming there is one. But if nothing else, it's worth watching out for it, because you do have Doylist control over what Watsonian in-story pressures we face and why and when we are forced away from situations in which we might get the answers we're looking for.