CODE. makes a big deal about how the natural wealth of New Eden belongs to the people of New Eden. Capsuleers, CODE. tells us, steal these resources from the civilian baseliner residents of the star systems they are located in. And now here you are saying ‘but it’s totally ok if invading forces muck with the power plants that keep those systems operating’.
Forget about CONCORD. This isn’t about CONCORD. It’s not about the massive political entities that are the empires. And it’s not about the empires or their residents feeling sympathetic toward any of us.
It’s about the people who live in those systems, the people whose cause and welfare James315 and CODE. have always insisted you’re trying to look out for. And it doesn’t matter if they’re ‘sympathetic’ toward us. Who cares if they do or don’t? Some of us, at least, attempt to do what is right because it is right.
Every time we die, after a brief flash of light, we are reborn in a new, identical shell. If that is not “immortality” then the word has no meaning.
Forgive my ignorance, but do we have any evidence that the Triglavians are, in fact, interfering with the civilian populations? I have seen clouds of civilian ships floating in space next to Triglavians, without any apparent strife. I have not seen Triglavians bombing planets. I have not seen Triglavian mining fleets.
Actually, no. They mostly seem to go for intel sources and such, what you’d think of as more or less conventional strategic targets. As I understand it civilian casualties seem mostly to be incidental-- but not necessarily trivial.
The bigger problem is what they’re doing with the stars; that’s something we really, truly don’t understand, and most of the possible implications aren’t good. At absolute best, they might be attuning those stars and their systems to the Abyss in some way, making invasions there easier. At absolute worst, they might be setting up to induce a supernova or something, but that seems unlikely; more likely, they might be looking to annex them and their systems. A population abruptly finding itself dragged bodily into the Abyss wouldn’t have a lot of choice about complying; they’re as good as conquered.
And you probably shouldn’t assume they’ll consider you worthy of joining the upper echelon if they happen to pull such a thing off while you’re there, even if you have been helpful.
as stated on several occasions and to keep avoiding confusion
ARC is fighting the Triglavians in order to protect the people living in Empire space and will not support endangering the lives of the millions or even billions that are living in invaded systems.
ARC is heavily invested in trying to understand both the Triglavians and Abyssal space. We also want to make any discoveries as publicly known as possible, to help improve the overall understanding and to achieve important discoveries and breakthroughs.
At this time however, as stated by captain Jenneth, all implications are a good reason to go after the Stellar Accelerator structures.
But let’s not focus on that. And let’s not focus on the fact that even nine months later, these incursions continue, and have racked up a baseliner bodycount of “several hundred thousand” fatalities and “several million” injured…
Instead, I want you to stop for a moment and think this through.
Everything in a star system is impacted, directly or indirectly, by the big thing in the middle of that star system. They call it… you’re gonna love this… the star. If you’re mucking with the star in ways the local residents don’t understand—which they are—then at the very least, you’re likely to induce unrest.
If, in addition to all of that, you have a history of assaulting stations with armed boarding parties—which, guess what, they do—you start to push into a situation where mass panic becomes possible. At the very least, I’d be willing to bet security incidents on each of those stations are elevated each and every time the Trigs have their little incursions, and medical systems are pushed harder and harder to deal with anxiety and stress-related complications. And, you know, then you have the issue of them actually assaulting stations with armed boarding parties.
So gosh, no, they couldn’t possibly be a threat to baseliners.
As for this…
No, we’re not. Every time we die, we die. Then someone else wakes up, with all our memories, and everyone we know treats them like us. But they’re not us. They’re someone else. We die. We end. We are disposable… like tissues. Or, if this makes you feel better, we’re ammo. Just because the next round in your railgun is identical in every way to the last one, that doesn’t make it the same one.
Most capsuleers cling to the idea of ‘immortality’ that we were sold in the academy because it’s easier. It’s comforting. But it’s a lie. Your mind is not the data in it. Your mind is an emergent property of the electrochemical processes of the brain. You cannot truly separate the mind from the meat. All you can do is reproduce that state to get an extremely similar mind. Even if you set up a new brain with the same physical conditions, the processes get interrupted. It is not a continuation. It’s just a copy, like a (not at all) cheap knock-off of the original.
Your mind is not your conscious mind. It’s like saying ‘but wait, I can apply thrust to stop falling toward a planet. Isn’t that an interruption of gravity?’ Of course it’s not, it’s just an interruption of acceleration.
Similarly, the fact that you sleep is only an interruption of the conscious part of your mind. The rest of your mind keeps ticking right along. All of the intuitive bits keeps working. The whole thing keeps churning through the electrochemical reaction cascades that make up your mind. Brain-scans show that activity continues, you just don’t notice it because the parts of the mind that do the noticing are being told ‘no, ignore that’. That’s not an interruption of the mind’s processes any more than turning your wall-screen off so you can’t see it stops market data all over New Eden from updating.
Thank you very much for providing the visual confirmation that there are indeed stars and planets in Abyssal space. This opens up a completely new field for further investigation.
Setting the metaphysical aside for a moment, as I doubt that either will sway the other.
Humanity has often tried to find a measure of immortality in the idea we are what we do, and the mark we leave when we are gone. If part of your legacy is a facsimile (with or without your soul) as capable and as committed to your life’s work as you are, there is an immortality in that.
Though I don’t seek death out, facing the possibility of it is far easier with no wistfulness for things left undone or the fragility of what you might leave behind.
I’ve warped my cloaked Astero to the stellar accelerator in Keri, which indeed is still there. Scanned the thing down to see how well it would hold up under fire, and I can safely say that it’s nothing that I can handle alone, especially if some of those trigs come out to defend it, which they most certainly will. As it is a low-sec backwater system, there’s also the concern of capsuleers who would care more about killing those shooting at the accelerator than actually destroying it.
I can’t really tell you what the scientific consequences of having a stellar accelerator sit there in a system for that long are, but I can tell you that on the human side of things, it’s definitely having an effect on the system. Given that I use the ATR station as my homedock for that system, I can tell you that they’ve been considering moving their stored archives out of the system, as they seem to similarly be anxious about what the long-term manipulation of the star could mean. There are no temperate planets in the system so there’s not really any huge, thriving colonies there, but there are a few scattered mining colonies at various points in the system, who have noted that their lazers have worked noticeably better since the accelerator appeared.
If CONCORD feels the need to send a force down here to destroy it, then I’ve certainly got no qualms about it. It doesn’t seem like the Empire is too bothered with removing it as it is.
Thank you for updating on the star issue. I was sure there were reports about abyssal pockets without stars but quiet “healthy” planets (like those you captured). This is really a reminder that we have to invest more into the exploration of the abyssal landscape.
Well … it’s admittedly been a while since I paid close attention to such things, ma’am. (Chaotic filaments don’t leave a lot of time for photography and observation; maybe I should run Fierce for a while and see whether I notice any changes.)
Just, I don’t remember ever actually jumping into a truly sunless system. Sometimes it’s so far away, and the dark’s so dense, that I can barely see my own ship, but if I angle the camera drone right the star’s always there.
In this situation, i find the how as interesting as the why.
How the hell does one remove biological matter like this? Did they nuked something as they left or they actually removed everything and took with them?
The implication’s the latter. Usually if somebody nukes a town you see something about strategic antimatter or nuclear weapons, not “town stripped of biological matter on molecular level.”
Based on this and this news article; it seems that there are indeed a new developments in the ongoing Triglavian invasions. With this change in behavior, it seems likely the Triglavians are preparing for what is likely going to be the next stage in their invasions.
ARC is therefore initiating operation Unveil and will require assistance to achieve the current two stages of operation Unveil. Both explorers and combat pilots are needed.
The first and most critical stage is to have all solar systems in Empire space checked for the presense of Stellar Accelerator Structures (SAS) . This means both the high Security systems and the low security systems that are not currently suffering from Triglavian invasion. We are therefore looking for a large number of explorers who can assist with this task.
Capsuleers should be able to have an easier time in locating the SAS when including Destructable Effect beacons in their sensor sweeps.
The second stage is fairly straightforward with engaging and destroying all remaining SAS.
While the exact purpose of the SAS are still unknown, finding and destroying them will hopefully at least delay the Triglavians from taking their invasions to the next stage. It should certainly reduce the risk for all the people who are living within the borders of Empire space.
Naturally, as the invasions show no sign of stopping, this will be an ongoing operation in which assistance is greatly appreciated.
