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Yun Hee Ryeon
Dead Six Initiative
Lokun Listamenn
368
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Posted - 2013.12.02 06:08:00 -
[1] - Quote
It's been pricking at me for a long while, the bizarre nature of our situation.
The Ancient origins of our technological base, the troubles with the first generation, this all makes sense. Despite our small numbers, we represent a collection of impressively deadly technologies. Even if each empire controlled a corps of us, and could use us to counter other empires' uses of the same, it would have made sense to keep us close, to turn us against the outer powers when we weren't killing one another in Black Rise or the Bleak Lands.
Exactly whose idea was it to turn us loose?
We're arguably the greatest single advance in warfare since the advent of the hydrostatic capsule. What nutcase cut us loose to work for whom we please? Not just in one empire, but in all of them? What fool allows the Blood Raiders to issue contracts to us through the CONCORD system? What unmitigated idiot decided that letting Sansha's Nation contract our services was anything short of an atrocity?
Our movements may be limited, but we are granted freedom to act as our consciences dictate. Clone mercenaries, they call us, and experiment with using us as crime prevention like we were some sort of unstable understudies to Mordu's Legion. We might be rather effective at that, but the real beneficiaries in this scenario are very much ourselves.
Gods and spirits, it's the worst military policy nightmare since the advent of the pod captain privateer!
The only reason I can imagine for this that makes any sense is that the policy is being tweaked, twisted, engineered to give us greater freedom-- we, who by rights should be kept under close observation and careful control by the nation states that created us. Instead, we have so much freedom that some of us question whether the empires could rein us in if they tried.
The prime suspects would seem to be the rumored-to-be-dead Jove. Capsuleers, our fellow infomorphs, whom the Jove have regularly treated as scions of sorts (witness the recent gift of Jovian battlecruisers), are the only other group to enjoy this kind of freedom. At present, they enjoy maybe a bit more of it, but our situations are comparable. We can even share corporations.
Trying to interpret the possible reasons for this, or how much of our situation the Jove have influence over leads to some very dark places and is laden with speculation.
(Is Sansha Kuvakei really his own man? His attack patterns have been feeding resources to the capsuleers, whom he supposedly hates and is trying to stamp out. Could he just be a ... test? A sort of trainer for incipient heirs to the Jove empire?)
Like I said, it gets sort of dark, and hugely speculative. But this much is true:
As a matter of simple national policy, for any empire, this life we are allowed to lead, this role we play, makes no sense. Something else has to be going on. |
Yun Hee Ryeon
Dead Six Initiative
Lokun Listamenn
371
|
Posted - 2013.12.02 17:14:00 -
[2] - Quote
steadyhand amarr wrote:KMordus fault... Factions outside of the empire also got hold of the tech and it sprilled from their. Noone cut us lose we freed ourselfs and many of us still remeber mordus evac ships when the squids tried to wipe us out.
The empires tried to squash us and failed horrible us as mercs was the next best option at controlling us and making sure we diont gather in enough numbers to take a planet
....
Firstly, the evac ships would have been unnecessary to a templar. The Amarr conducted no purge. Bluntly, soldier, you almost certainly weren't there.
Secondly, Tibus Heth's potent dislike of our kind did not stop the State from making quite a few more of us. I'm housed in Caldari space now, not Mordu's Legion's, and have been for as long as I've been active in this role.
The technology may have proliferated, but no one, not even the Legion, is likely to have willingly turned us loose. The only rational course for the state actors who created us would have been to bind us into national militaries and enforce our loyalty by various means, regardless of whether the technology had spread.
We somehow still remain under CONCORD jurisdiction and even control; we are not entirely at loose ends. Our situation is as ambiguous as the capsuleer's, and at least as ill-explained. |
Yun Hee Ryeon
Dead Six Initiative
Lokun Listamenn
371
|
Posted - 2013.12.02 19:14:00 -
[3] - Quote
steadyhand amarr wrote:i was on the run and ran to the legion. The empress offerd forgives i foolishy accepted and got mind garbled. Next u will saying i didnt fight on caldri prime.
"On the run?" ... Remind me-- were you originally Caldari?
Quote:Anf u clearly didnt shead blood defending ur commrades from heths madness or u would never make such an insult
It's pretty ambiguous whether Heth's actions were justified in this instance.
Quote:Ur recent freedoms u clearly take for granted were fort for in blood. I expect better from you. But ur just as deluded as true when u think the empires are on ur side.
Take them for granted? I take them for absurd.
Something which might not have been quite clear: I'm not quite on "our" side, steadyhand. I'm on the side of civilization-- that is, the empires-- because I don't see the alternative, certainly including rule by ourselves, as acceptable. If the empires wanted us all dead, I would help pull the plug.
Yes, that includes on myself, as well.
In a war between baseliners and infomorphs, I side with the baseliners even if it means my death. Most of what I value in this universe is primarily theirs, and I will die before I see it come to harm.
Let's hope it never comes to that, mm?
Your record of your history is interesting, and it's peculiar that we don't have a clearer record of the events you point to. I always wondered how that particular conflict went.
While I received my implants shortly before the purge, my own implantation was of the modern "alternative" sort; my sanity was never in serious question, at least not in terms of literally "going 514", and I wasn't present during the conflict. Even if Mordu's did save you, not all of us came to this line of work by that route. In fact, it seems quite clear that most did not, having been implanted later and with more reliable tech.
Perhaps you earned this status in blood. I didn't, and I mistrust the means by which I came to it.
Kindly don't pretend that there is nothing odd about you, a renegade first-gen, and me, a loyal minion of empire, sharing our situation. You may have won this status for yourself, but it's less clear how I got here, laden with freedoms I never wanted and have no use for.
Unless, again, there is something else at work. |
Yun Hee Ryeon
Dead Six Initiative
Lokun Listamenn
371
|
Posted - 2013.12.04 00:55:00 -
[4] - Quote
It's good to see that this topic is provoking some thought. If anyone has a theory that doesn't involve ... well, Jovian paternalism, I'd really like to hear it.
Alternatives to being pawns/beneficiaries of certain sickly, surviving Ancients would be comforting.
steadyhand amarr wrote:apologies you are far far younger than i though you were, you were not around for the madness that the 1st batch of us went though.
Most true. I did get to see a good bit of it, but always as an outsider, and I was at a training camp, not yet cleared for combat duty, when the purge occurred. They didn't come gunning for us: we weren't first-gens. Apparently I came in just a day or two after the upgrade.
I think the term for what I did is "lucked out."
Quote:how did you gain your implant when i came about i was among the first who then nearly promptly OB by the empress claiming we were demons or something, i never found out the truth, honestly i think it was out of fear the other empires would get hold of the tech, which they did anyway.
Mine was a sort of odd retirement package. This is my second career. Regarding the first, I'll just say that it involved less marksmanship but a similar amount of system cracking.
I fully expected to end up a good little State soldier, probably a CalNav marine asset or something. I was exceedingly surprised when I didn't.
Quote:its becoming clear each passing month that the new breed dont understand they get an easy ride to immortality without the pain and trials the rest of us went though. i mean how do you think this tech even came about someone had to the first batch and not many of us made it thanks to the empires purges of innocent men and women.
You make it sound as though we were on some Athra veranda, reclining on beds of fresh rose petals sipping spiced wine instead of engaged in a career that occasionally sees us gargling our own lungs.
Let's be clear, soldier: when someone is dangerously unstable and heavily armed, the question of innocence takes a back seat. The first question is how to end the danger.
Three out of the four empires decided on the same answer; the fourth is the one you ironically seem to like the least.
You were early adopters and got burned by a bug. The fact that you didn't ask for that, or maybe even have a choice, is irrelevant. What happened to you is unfortunate-- that is, unlucky. You get maybe a bit of sympathy for that, but is there any way of becoming a potentially-homicidal maniac that doesn't involve bad luck?
As for the experiments done after, that's between you and your empress. My sacrifice is a bit less confusing, and a lot more voluntary, but does that make it less substantial?
Put another way, I surrender my will and fate to the greater good of my nation. To a certain extent, this is more work than it should be: as an "independent," I have to actively seek out work that will aid the State, rather than just taking orders and trusting that they're well thought out.
You had your will taken from you, and now, feeling you were wronged, you decry those who put the good of others above yours. Others may have sacrificed you, but you have not sacrificed much of anything.
Quote:but one thing is clear the empires are dieing immortals rule the worlds now its best to make sure you have the power to protect the mortals under your care just like im trying to
Gods, I hope you're wrong about this. I've always felt that a new dark age would bring on a technological crash, a spread of ignorance that would make infomorph technologies unsustainable. But if they didn't....
Here's a nightmare scenario for the ages: a pseudo-mythic new age of death and misery for "mortals" at the beck-and-call of the "immortal" infomorphs who rule them, but who lack any substantial level of empathy for those beneath them. Capsuleers reign unchallenged in the empty places between the stars, while we act as their agents on stations and planetary bodies. Some might be kind; most would be, at best, indifferent. This is remembering, of course, that a capsuleer is no more than slightly wiser than the average baseliner, and often much less.
And that is after the initial round of killing is done.
What an age of bitter wonders that would be. |
Yun Hee Ryeon
Dead Six Initiative
Lokun Listamenn
371
|
Posted - 2013.12.04 06:04:00 -
[5] - Quote
True Adamance wrote:That is a dark future I hope I never endure to see.
Didn't you say "live," earlier?
... Hm.
Respectfully, Templar Crusader, may I suggest that you not be too quick to think of yourself as something apart from humanity? While there is merit to the question of whether we are "human" (or "alive"), I've rarely found that drawing a bright line and declaring yourself to be on the other side of it went anywhere good.
In any event ... I'm not sure whether I would want to live to see such a time. Thinking about it, any surviving Achura would probably be either living in seclusion, trying to stay out of the way of a hostile and violent age, or under the protection of the few Empyreans who are culturally Achura.
There are a couple constructive roles I can see for beings like us in a time like that. One would be to aid the more benevolent capsuleers. The other would be to act as demon slayers-- to hunt, and destroy, the worst and most abusive of the new overlords, probably, again, with capsuleer backing.
As nice as it would be to act fully independently of capsuleerdom, unless and until we ourselves become captains of science and industry, it will be difficult to establish any real autonomy.
It would be an awful time. But ... well, humanity's probably survived worse, I suppose. |
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