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The Secrets' Crusade

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Iceflame55 said:
I can see the Shiplords have SOME Idea what they're doing can be horrific. I honestly don't see them being justified. They weren't elected by the Galaxy to be the Police of said galaxy. And the sheer destruction they've wrecked on the races that have evolved and tried to reach for the stars is barely comprehensible.

While I won't say they should be rendered extinct (as there is evidence there was terrible events that prodded them in this direction of behavior), I do firmly believe they need to be kicked off the top of the heap.
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They mentioned something about how they restricted travel between stars to protect them. As in, protect the stars from the travel, so there might be some existential problem with ftl travel that the Shiplords are trying to prevent. Whether their own ftl is exempt from this I have no idea.
 
justinkal said:
I also get the impression that even they feel this is a subpar solution, just the only one they've found to be effective.
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Well then, let us be part of the continuing lesson about its ineffectiveness.

Snowfire said:
"We came, of course," Kymri said, yet their face seemed as drawn as your own, and markers for something very close to disgust flared high within the manner of their words. "To find those who had opened a way between the stars, and to ensure they would never be able to harm them."
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Suspicious! Damn, if this is all about entropy...

Or sun worship? Seems paradoxical for a race whose most feared weapon is a nova beam.
 
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[X] Remain, and view further recordings – Opens up specific social interaction with Iris and Kalilah, as well as general interaction with those others who remain behind.

Don't split the party!
 
derpfen said:
They mentioned something about how they restricted travel between stars to protect them.
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Did they? Where?
Snowfire said:
"We came, of course," Kymri said, yet their face seemed as drawn as your own, and markers for something very close to disgust flared high within the manner of their words. "To find those who had opened a way between the stars, and to ensure they would never be able to harm them."
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Snowfire said:
"In those times, there was a considerable movement still to return to what we had been, with the Directives secured against any repetition of the Hjivin Sphere."
[...]
"The Zlathbu began to construct a scaffold around their star, something that could only be the beginnings of a stellar collector." On the display, arcs of nanomaterial formed around the system's sun. "After the War of the Hjivin Sphere, where similar constructions were used so brilliantly against us, this proved too overt an action for our words to protect them."
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To me it sounds like they believe the knowledge of the Secrets leads to mass stellar disruptors, because:
  • The War of the Hjivin Sphere is considered to be one of the greatest tragedies that caused the current paradigm
  • Some kind of stellar technology was used against the Shiplords in the War of the Hjivin Sphere
  • An attempt to even approach the level of knowledge capable of recreating said technology was enough to order the extermination of the Zlathbu
Why they believe this an inevitability is their business, but from the looks of it they consider themselves the protectors of the Universe.

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[x] Remain, and view further recordings – Opens up specific social interaction with Iris and Kalilah, as well as general interaction with those others who remain behind.
 
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So the place really is a mass grave, as expected. I don't think we'll need to breach the interior to get what we came for. Let the dead rest in peace. One feeling that I can't shake is that the Shiplords know that we aren't theirs, though perhaps not who we really are. I doubt that we are the first to try to sneak in, or that we will be the last. I continue to wonder what would have happened if we had come here openly and formally requested entrance.

justinkal said:
I also get the impression that even they feel this is a subpar solution, just the only one they've found to be effective.
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I get the same feeling. "This sucks, everything else we've tried sucks worse, but it's still not as bad as not doing anything was, so we keep trying."

Never split the party.
[X] Remain, and view further recordings – Opens up specific social interaction with Iris and Kalilah, as well as general interaction with those others who remain behind.
 
Lightwhispers said:
Big question here, is what happened at the Hjivin Sphere. (Obviously, something that the Shiplords decided could not be tolerated, probably a Directive breach, but what? Seems like a good direction for further investigation.)
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I will happily confirm that one of your other destinations involves this.

MTB said:
Why would the recording lie and then the system provide the means to discover the lie? Okay, aliens have alien motives, but ???
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Insight Focused are broken as all hell - but then, so are most Potentials. It's a matter of putting everything together and seeing if it all truly fits, essentially.

MTB said:
Could analyzing the dead nanomachines give us some insights how to improve ours?
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Not really. At least, not unless you want to try and chip some of the inert mass away and have Amanda or another Mender try to restore universally capable grey goo for which you would lack communication protocols and access codes. Studying that may be...difficult.

FeepingCreature said:
Suspicious! Damn, if this is all about entropy...

Or sun worship? Seems paradoxical for a race whose most feared weapon is a nova beam.
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I can also tell you that this is not all about entropy or sun worship, as I don't mind ruling out those possibilities in this case.
 
[X] Remain, and view further recordings – Opens up specific social interaction with Iris and Kalilah, as well as general interaction with those others who remain behind.
 
Well, that's my opinion of the Shiplords completely down the crapper. It has nothing to do with any reasoning behind the tribute system or lack thereof, but is instead based on the clearly demonstrated fact that Shiplord conceptualization of diplomacy apparently does not actually include room for de-escalation or compromise. Worse, the Shiplords were at least at one point lacking in self-awareness and/or empathy to the point where they somehow didn't realize or understand the diplomatic maluses their actions would produce.

No wonder they've put the Tribute system into place, because they're apparently incapable of attributing value to things like other species not believing the worst of them - and that's where a big chunk of the drawbacks to a plan that maximizes lives saved regardless of how others feel comes from.
 
Snowfire said:
I can also tell you that this is not all about entropy or sun worship, as I don't mind ruling out those possibilities in this case.
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Okay, so, new theory.

... Damn, I got nothing. Why would the secrecy be important? A memetic threat? A combined biological/memetic threat that lives between the stars and eats suns? But wouldn't the Uninvolved know? Maybe it's something you can't see from their vantage?

I just can't figure out why the Shiplords wouldn't tell people. And why the suffering? .. It actually makes a lot of sense if it's memetic. "You can't travel between the stars, we can't even hint as to why, so we'll be the bad guys to provide a reason to not do it." Goes recursive though. Why would the SL believe this themselves? Mind control chips embedded at birth?

New theory: Shiplords are Alien SCP Foundation, Antimemetics Division.
 
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[X] Return with a small group to the memorial below, and seek out what it is to Remember – Continues to the other side of this place's spiritual relevance. Opens up possibilities to interact with a Shiplord civilian.
 
Seems the great crime they fear so much is extinction. The Secrets are galaxic scale weapons that can wipe out whole species. So the fix the Shiplords came up with is harsh penalties to prevent that.

It might be possible that not all of the tributes go into their medical ships, could be that we find sanctuaries or zoos out here in the galaxy specifically designed to prevent species extinction
 
FeepingCreature said:
New theory: Shiplords are Alien SCP Foundation, Antimemetics Division.
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At least the SL seem to be convinced they are performing a necessary service to keep the universe running, and they seem to have historic incidents that support that point of view (like omni-potent runaway grey goo in their past that made them decide to kill of this populations system because it could happen again). And they cry about the fact that they worked very hard on their self-fulfilling prophesies (surprise! Killing of a significant part of the population for no good reason makes diplomacy harder!).
 
[X] Return with a small group to the memorial below, and seek out what it is to Remember – Continues to the other side of this place's spiritual relevance. Opens up possibilities to interact with a Shiplord civilian.
 
Lightwhispers said:
Big question here, is what happened at the Hjivin Sphere. (Obviously, something that the Shiplords decided could not be tolerated, probably a Directive breach, but what? Seems like a good direction for further investigation.)

Thinking...
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Sounds like it involved someone building what these guys were obviously working towards- an interstellar infrastructure of Dyson spheres to collect power, supporting Sixth Secret nanotech masses the size of planets, presumably to wage interstellar warfare.

MTB said:
Why would the recording lie and then the system provide the means to discover the lie? Okay, aliens have alien motives, but ???
The system might contain subtle inconsistencies, overlooked by those who filled it with data, that reveal or at least hint at the lie.

Or the system might contain multiple versions of the story, one for the ordinary members of the Shiplord race, and one for whoever knows the real truth.
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[X] Remain, and view further recordings – Opens up specific social interaction with Iris and Kalilah, as well as general interaction with those others who remain behind.
 
derpfen said:
They mentioned something about how they restricted travel between stars to protect them. As in, protect the stars from the travel, so there might be some existential problem with ftl travel that the Shiplords are trying to prevent. Whether their own ftl is exempt from this I have no idea.
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We know there's *something* between the stars. There's some sorts of entities around that hang out in the void between the stars. We don't know if they are inimically hostile or not. We haven't really seen one. We don't know if there's some that can be friendly and some that are hostile.

There's just not enough information.

They can read minds and memories of those that pass between stars (save for those like the Neras). They could potentially be some sort of memetic hazard of a sort.

We just don't know.
 
Alright, looks like a convincing lead for Remain at the moment, but a few more votes could be nice.

And to take an aside here, I just want to explain why I'm probably not going to be answering many questions in these sections. I ran into a trend before in Practice War where I would dance around truths I knew I couldn't confirm without inflicting major spoilers, which would really annoy parts of the questbase. Due to the way Secrets' Crusade is structured, that issue has the ability to be even more prevalent. So I will do my best to answer what points I feel I can, like I've already done, but instead of dancing around what I can't, I've chosen to let future chapters do the talking in those matters. It just seems safer.

I'll close this vote on Monday.
Adhoc vote count started by Snowfire on Sep 26, 2020 at 9:29 AM, finished with 27 posts and 10 votes.
  • [X] Remain, and view further recordings – Opens up specific social interaction with Iris and Kalilah, as well as general interaction with those others who remain behind.
    [X] Return with a small group to the memorial below, and seek out what it is to Remember – Continues to the other side of this place's spiritual relevance. Opens up possibilities to interact with a Shiplord civilian.
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[X] Return with a small group to the memorial below, and seek out what it is to Remember – Continues to the other side of this place's spiritual relevance. Opens up possibilities to interact with a Shiplord civilian.

I am indeed curious.
 
[X] Return with a small group to the memorial below, and seek out what it is to Remember – Continues to the other side of this place's spiritual relevance. Opens up possibilities to interact with a Shiplord civilian.
 
[X] Remain, and view further recordings – Opens up specific social interaction with Iris and Kalilah, as well as general interaction with those others who remain behind.
 
[X] Remain, and view further recordings – Opens up specific social interaction with Iris and Kalilah, as well as general interaction with those others who remain behind.
 
[X] Return with a small group to the memorial below, and seek out what it is to Remember – Continues to the other side of this place's spiritual relevance. Opens up possibilities to interact with a Shiplord civilian.
 
[X] Remain, and view further recordings – Opens up specific social interaction with Iris and Kalilah, as well as general interaction with those others who remain behind.
 
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