EDENCOM is the poorly handled and apparently corrupt organizational body through which the empires organized their defense against the Triglavians.
EDENCOM being complete ■■■■ however, does not mean that they’re not wielding the power of the empires’ navies. They clearly do. It was the Republic Fleet, the Imperial Navy, and Federal Navy flying under the EDENCOM banner doing the actual fighting (and the State Navy under the EDENCOM banner flailing around incompetently). When you’re fighting EDENCOM, you’re fighting the empires.
This feels like a largely semantics based argument more then anything. From context it should be clear that when I say ‘I’m more concerned about the Empires then EDENCOM’ what I mean it ‘I find the machinations of the individual Empire factions, conducted outside the influence of EDENCOMs ‘united front’, more dangerous then an EDENCOM fleet.’ Yes, the Empires fleets are more limited capability wise in some respects, but far more influence is being put behind them.
It’s like saying CONCORD is the Empire. Yes but also no, and it becomes more ‘no’ then ‘yes’ as time goes on and CONCORD gains more power as an autonomous entity.
CONCORD proper deploys its own classes of ships throughout the empires. EDENCOM organizes the Republic Fleet, Imperial Navy, Federal Navy, and State Navy, who do the fighting.
If you’re talking about the very few EDENCOM pilots doing whatever they’re doing in the Abyss, sure. But most of what EDENCOM is… is just the empires’ navies with a temporary t-shirt on.
Harvesting Triglavian technology, that’s what they’re doing.
I mean, not that you’d know that from asking them, as they’re unlikely to return communication and will probably open fire on you immediately. But yeah.
CONCORD having it’s own ship design is irrelevant. It’s acting, or at least acted as, a body representative of the four empires forged out of a shared interest in maintaining the peace of the Cluster. The people in CONCORD, at one point, were in many ways empire representatives who had temporarily put on a T-shirt. As it’s personal autonomy and power grew it became the organization we know today.
EDENCOM is much the same. It’s composed of all the Empires but everyone has their own motivations. Difference is I don’t expect EDENCOM to become fully autonomous in it’s own right anytime soon, more likely the Empires will steadily withdraw support over time and pour more resources into what they personally believe is best for fighting the Triglavians.
Just because the organization gets funding and manpower from the Big 4 does not mean it IS the Big 4.
A Jin-Mei empress once ordered the construction of a hexagonal bed with moving platforms that allowed her to enjoy six suitable suitors. In this present context, her majesty’s bed would allow an adventurous individual to be the center of three triangles.
I find myself on semi-regular trips into Krai Veles and Krai Perun for contracts. While some of my clients are indeed capsuleers, I have a few others that fit the bill.
Apparently, this has led to me being labeled a Kybernaut… but business is business.