Some Ammatar had a change of heart after witnessing the destruction of Starkman Prime, deciding to protect what’s left of them. There are still plenty of genuine traitors left, the Ammatar Mandate certainly didn’t collapse overnight just because some of them decided to rejoin the Republic as Nefantar.
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The Reclaiming is, on the face of it, such an insane and impossible objective, though. Since the political picture stablised with the founding of Concord, has the Empire managed to either conquer or peacefully convert even a single world?
The State allied with them solely to preserve our self-determination - we wouldn’t have done so if we thought that they were a bigger threat to that self-determination than the Federation.
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Yes. Several worlds in fact.
And I’m not talking about the Militia Wars.
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You say it would create more enemies you’ll have to face. You understand you don’t have to face every enemy with your finger pressed against a trigger right? I’m not shooting you yet I would pretty much be an enemy. The Sanmatar didn’t shoot the Empress at her coronation right? Theres more to confronting your enemy than bringing them to their knees or reducing them to a pool of blood on the floor. Sometimes standing in defiance is more than standing over a corpse. The key here is standing as an equal as largely we seem to not be seen as in the eyes of some of your peers. An enemy doesn’t mean you’re fighting by default. An enemy means you disagree.
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Well-- it’s kind of funny, Pieter: historically the Amarr have actually done a really good job of Reclaiming just about everybody they came across. But, “humanity” kept getting bigger. Udorians, check. Ealur, check. Ni-Kunni, check. Minmatar … uh, partial. (That was a lot to try to swallow.)
Gallente Federation: “Uh … that’s … big.”
Add in the Caldari State? “Now hang on a minute!”
Still, it’d worked so far, so, they were more or less game, and decided to try for these weird people over here on the edge of known space, as a start. Then, Vak’Atioth and the Minmatar Rebellion.
At their darkest time the Amarr had never been much worse than evenly matched. Now they’ve got three major powers and an identity crisis to contend with. So, major slamming on of reverse thrusters.
It’s neat to get to watch it.
One thing I really don’t get is the idea that an attempt at peaceful Reclaiming is something so awful that it should be met with deadly force. It’s like stabbing people for trying to talk you into letting go of a custom.
“But you don’t need to throw your elderly out into the snow anymore, right?”
“You have attempted genocide against the Caldari people! Pay with your life!”
If it’s something people can “kill” just by talking, was it really worth hanging onto?
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I never said their claims weren’t fedo farts.
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No, it’s not. Produce enough instability in the Federation, wait for the normal friction between Matari pride and Gallente smug superiority to create some daylight, and then push hard on the right levers… you’ll get large swaths of the Federation populace saying the Republic isn’t worth their blood and treasure, and it’s not like the Amarr are really trying to Reclaim everyone. After all, it’d be such an insane and impossible objective…
And then, with the Republic gone, the internal pressure on the Federation gets ratcheted up, while the Empire uses their loyalists to ‘assist’ the State’s militia forces, seeding areas like Black Rise and Placid with the faithful… they’ll stay quiet when the State’s in charge, but if the Fed makes headway, they’ll work to spread the faith, preach ‘stability’…
No, it’s not insane or impossible, it just requires taking the long view, and using the mechanisms put in place through CONCORD to spread the tendrils of their corruption farther afield, like bamboo running beneath a roadway.
Nobody said the State’s never made a mistake, Pieter. Well, other than That Which Shall Not Be Named.
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Isn’t an enemy more what Cpt. Rhiannon said, though, Ms. Vess? Someone you try to destroy?
I guess definitions can differ, but it feels like an awful lot of the people who “disagree” with me about this stuff pick up guns. They might not be aiming them right at me or mine personally (the Empire’s big), but it kind of feels like they’ll get around to it?
If someone says, in effect, that the people I live among should be destroyed, militarily and culturally, should I believe they have no intention of trying to make that a reality? Or that their counterparts here won’t use their actions, or even just words, to justify preparing, mentally, physically, socially, politically, for war?
It doesn’t feel like those who rattle sabers should be surprised if they end up facing a drawn sword.
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Arrendis, that scenario would require a perfect storm of political events in which the Empire would have to get everything right. It’s surrounded by three other entities of which two are militarily stronger than it. Perhaps it could reforge it’s fleets into a an offensive power sufficient to destroy any one of those powers, but all three?
If the Empire launched a war of aggression against the Republic, I’m not sure how the State could support it in that action. I really don’t see how the Federation could stay out of that war.
I do disagree with Aria’s statement that an attempt to peacefully convert the State is not an attack. It is. Cultural war is still war, and the State takes the purity of its Culture very seriously. If one man makes an attempt to convert another, then I agree that this is no threat - but an organised campaign, paid for by the Amarrian state religion coffers?
That’s a planned offensive against the Caldari way of life - and ought to be met as such.
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Cause and effect. I dont make a habit of shooting those I agree with do you? In mind clash your opponent is your enemy, does that mean you shoot them at the start of the match? Short game if so… Only the psychotic kill without reason, I find it hard to believe a whole race has no sanity. It just doesn’t seem logical.
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Even when the Gallente Federation was actually doing this, the State still didn’t actually respond with lethal force, Pieter. People might have resented it, but, they watched the holos instead of banning them. They’re not even banned now. The State survived-- maybe not without some scars, though, I guess.
I don’t have a perfect solution here. I do note that the State does already ban the practice of the Amarr religion by everybody but Khanid Kingdom nationals living in the State. I guess … just because someone wants to talk to you doesn’t mean you have to listen. Closing your ears collectively seems like the current option of choice.
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I think your definition of “enemy” is a little broader than I’d maybe make it, Ms. Vess.
An opponent isn’t necessarily an enemy, to me. If I play a game against Directrix Daphiti, she’s my opponent for a while … but never my enemy.
There are a lot of people I’d call opponents in various contexts. I try not to have a lot of enemies, though.
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We already do. Every single day. The war never really stopped and our people are under threat every single day, from slaver fleets and more. I bet I could go out there and get a fistful of Amarr Navy tags on a daily basis. The sword was never sheathed.
Of course, this is just fine and dandy for you, since you and yours aren’t the targets, which means we should be fine with it too, and just let the Empire prey on our people, already gorged to the gills with the ones they have, huh?
Your position remains indefensible and you know it.
It’s a very simple fact that human civilization has never successfully maintained a status quo for very long, on historical scales. Even when one of our worlds successfully had the longest period of peace known to humanity, war came from the outside. There will be wars between the various nations of New Eden, no way around that. When there’s existential threats, nations will bare their claws and go for the throat, sooner or later.
The Rite is and will remain an immutable core of Amarr society, barring cataclysmic events. The Rite mandates the reclaiming of all of humanity. The other three nations are quite impervious to peaceful conversion, as the Tribes know the Rite and its shackled minds intimately and won’t embrace that willingly, the Federation is pretty much impossible to subsume into a monoculture or faith by dint of the sheer chaos of its ideological and cultural marketplace and trying to peacefully convert the State would be like you trying to take down a blast door by pissing at it. This only leaves forceful reclaiming, and you know that bit about existential threats bringing out the guns? Well… the Amarr Empire not being able to peacefully reclaim humanity and thus having to sacrifice this core of their identity to avoid pursuing it by force… that’d count as an existential threat.
The war would come.
There is only one question when it comes to the war to come, and that is exactly when it’s coming and how many of the people currently in bondage, and currently being enslaved will have been sacrificed on the altar of the status quo before it finally kicks off.
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You were the first one here to threaten others with physical force if I remember right.
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I honestly was speaking more of like a rival, not a friendly game with friends. My bad on that.
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Was I?
I … uh, respectfully doubt that just a little, ma’am. Miz’s comments to me-- and actually the Amarr generally-- have been a lot like the ones above. For years. The same’s been broadly true of Arrendis, for at least months. Cpt. Rhiannon was kind enough to give us a taste of her thoughts here as well.
For the sake of argument, though, let’s say it was in some way true.
I want peace. Protecting people’s ability to pursue their lives undisturbed by armed, violent people, whether they’re self-righteous ideologues, dutiful soldiers, or people with more selfish motives, is a lot of why I ever got into this work. I’d never say my hands are clean, but, that’s what peace is, in the end: a dirty thing full of frustration and compromise. Peace, on any high level-- within or between civilizations, especially-- is rife with contradiction. Deadly conflict gets to be pure.
So, sure, maybe I did threaten violence. And I expect I meant it sincerely, even if I dearly wish to stand down. I’m a trained, armed fighter, and I’ve shed enough blood that I don’t have a lot of reason to regret spilling more. Certainly, I might bare my fangs to defend what I care for, what I believe.
Then, also, this topic did kind of give me the impression for a time that maybe the only way for the Empire to have peace was for the Republic to lose all hope of military victory. Maybe the only way for mine to be safe was for yours to die.
Thanks in part to Ms. Vess, I don’t really hold such a bleak opinion right now. Grim declarations have a certain dramatic appeal, but, they normally don’t reflect reality too well. I’m glad someone was able to help me see or remember that.
So if I did start the threats, I’m not sure that means I can’t criticize the use of words that won’t help, even if I don’t always help, myself.
Being wrong, I don’t give up all power to say something right. Whether I’m listened to is maybe another matter, though.
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In case anyone was curious about actual facts, when I said that the Amarr Empire had indeed successfully Reclaimed worlds in the CONCORD era, I was referring primarily to the worlds of Tandoiras constellation in The Bleak Lands, which were Reclaimed by force only a few years ago.
It could also be argued, that the Khanid Kingdom has also been peacefully Reclaimed, now that it is a mere province of the Empire, as opposed to an independent entity.
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It’s okay, Ms. Vess; the comment would stand anyway. I don’t really think of rivals as enemies, either. You can use a rivalry to hone yourselves, each against the other. Rivals can make each other better.
A proper enemy, I’d resent giving strength to, even if it strengthened me, as well.
Where possible, rivals are to be exceeded; enemies, extinguished.
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Were that true, the State wouldn’t need the Empire at all. We’ve talked at length how, ideologically, the Republic’s a much more natural ally for the State if the Fed were to attack. Absent Imperial involvement, there’s no reason to beieve we’d support the Fed in an aggressive war, and plenty of reasons to believe we’d be willing to support the State.
… though they probably should have. Just sayin’.
And all of those comments came in response to centuries of aggression. You don’t get to arbitrarily pick a time-frame for the conflict. The conflict between you and I is a subset of that between my people and the people you serve. And that began with their unwarranted, unprovoked, and cold-blooded aggression. Aggression they have never even apologized for—because they’d do it again if they thought they could get away with it.
Claiming ‘that’s not how they do things now’ holds no weight when the only reason it isn’t is because people are ready to shoot them if they try.
Interestingly, it retains its own sovereignty and its own fleet. Just because they give lip service to the throne their former King attempted to claim (twice) doesn’t mean that they won’t flip the Empire the bird as soon as that association’s inconvenient.
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For maximum pedantry, you were the first one as I see it who went “sigh, it pains me to do so but I’m going to kill you because you don’t like people I like abloobloo.” You were the first one specifically to threaten participants of the thread with physical violence out loud. See post #243.
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