Mr. Vas’Hiigara;
If I’m not mistaken, Lady Newelle is Alizabeth’s liegelady. Just so you know.
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Well then. I welcome her to the conversation, but I do ask that we try to keep on track with peaceful relations. I will create another place if and when we have to discuss war with the Drifters.
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From the Empire’s perspective generally I’m not at all sure there’s daylight between “our present situation” and “war with the Drifters,” Mr. Vas’Hiigara.
Ali (or Alizabeth, please do not use her recorded last name) (it’s complicated) and Lady Admiral Newelle are noisier about it, but, I believe that’s SFRIM’s basic policy as well.
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Except, they don’t. Anoikis does not belong to the Empires. It doesn’t belong to CONCORD. CONCORD’s sovereignty infrastructure doesn’t even work in Anoikis. CONCORD does not police Anoikis. CONCORD and its member-states make no claims upon Anoikis, and CONCORD’s even been on-record as advising capsuleers to stay out.
More important to your claims of ‘law’, they have established prior claim. When we first went into Anoikis, the Sleepers were there. Their megastructures were there. That’s the Drifters. We can clearly document that they appear to have been there for hundreds of years, at least, based just on the decay rate of some of the inoperative hardware. We are invaders in Anoikis. They’re shooting back. And you can say ‘they didn’t leave a ‘do not disturb’ sign in legalese’, sure… except ‘automated defenses that fight back’ seems to be a pretty clear ‘GO THE HELL AWAY’ message to me, you know?
After all, shooting on sight without a forewarning is *perfectly legal by the standards of CONCORD and the Empires—happens every day with automated Starbase defenses in low-security space.
So, ‘they are in the wrong’? Not so much. If anything, the active Drifter forces we’ve seen can’t be all there is to them. It’s far too shallow a variation to be representative of an entire social order. So what we’re seeing are likely specialists—the individuals who get activated and tasked with ‘kill the invaders’.
They’re T-cells. And we’re the virus. And just like T-cells, they don’t care if the virus would be totally ok if only it wasn’t invading the brain, they’re apparently willing to kill all of it, everywhere.
If not for the fact that their idea for fighting back against hostile invaders with no respect for their lives or property appears to mean ‘kill everyone’… I’d kinda be inclined to root for 'em. But you know, I like a couple of the littler bits of ‘everyone’. So… gonna shoot 'em back right back.
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Congratulations, you just told Alizabeth’s boss to speak to Alizabeth.
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Right now, this will happen when we, or they, are dead. They’re showing no signs of any interest in it otherwise.
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I had not known. I am relatively new - need I remind the people present - and I meant to say that if they find hostile action is not preferable or possible for whatever reason, they are welcome here. But otherwise I would appreciate consistency.
Then I propose a challenge. Find a way to initiate communication with them. They don’t want to talk to us, but they certainly talk to themselves, through whatever means they have. Find out how they do that, and we will have the key to talking to them.
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You may think that… but you’d be wrong. They were human. Just heavily modified, really screwed-up humans.
As for the rest of that post…
The Drifters are at the very least a Jove offshoot. That means that, unless the SoCT has legal papers showing they’re taking responsibility for all of the possibily intelligence-gathering against all four empires and human populations in nullsec, the only people with a legitimate claim on the Observatories’ salvage is the Drifters. There’s no diplomatic contact with CONCORD for us to have established any kind of ‘hey, respect our sovereign territory’ claim on those materials… but we sure as hel felt free to go entosis the bejezes out of 'em and grab whatever scrap we could like good little amoral scavengers, didn’t we?
How many antikytheras passed through your hands, Makoto?
Yes, the Drifters crack open Sleeper enclaves. I can open my hangar in a different station, too. Just because I had to travel to get there doesn’t mean I’m robbing the place.
There is as much direct evidence for the Drifters—each and every one of them, individually—being the Amarr God, as there is for Sleeper drones attacking Drifters. It’s never been seen, there’s never been debris found to be consistent with it. This is a baseless speculation and conjuring of a scenario that good scientific methodology would have to reject until some evidence emerges that suggests it might be happening.
Signs of a civilization? You mean like the production facilities we know must exist for them to continue to produce battleships? You mean like the massive structures throughout Anoikis that even before the Drifters showed up, scientists throughout the cluster were speculating might house entire societies of pure infomorphs?
As for the decay of their space… is it? Or is the majority of it simply not being torn apart, drilled into, harvested and exploited? If it’s their space, it’s their space. They set up their drone defenses to hold it… saying ‘that’s not enough for us to respect your claim’ is essentially saying ‘hey, listen, we know you just wanted to be left alone, but we’re going to break into your house and take your stuff anyway because you can’t stop me’.
That’s kinda… douchey. Not to mention illegal, in most societies. I mean, sure, it’s basically the entire underpinnings of Amarr society, just replace ‘stuff’ with ‘family’… but the rest of the cluster considers it a dick move, you know?
And no, nobody’s saying we “deserve what we get, and may as well stand and take the hits and hope the Drifters get bored”. At most, I’m saying "we might deserve what we get, but when the hel has that ever stopped us from trying to get out of it?’ Just because all of humanity has deserved to get wiped out basically since the moment the first idiot looked up at the sky and wondered ‘how can I screw up all that crap, too?’ doesn’t mean we’ve got a long history of letting ourselves go extinct, you know?
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I dunno, Arrendis - I prefer a policy of “Kill 'em all and let some scholar somewhere feel bad about it later” than “We probably all deserve genocide.”
I’ll be in humanities corner. Swinging.
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I wonder which bit of ‘humanity’ remains in those of us who have abandoned its more… humane aspects.
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That’s a good question, Mizhara. I’ll consider it while I’m tucking my son in, tonight.
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Capsuleers breeding. In all probability raising and passing on values to the runts.
… now there’s a horrifying prospect.
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How positively Gallentean of you.
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Mahazkei Vas’Hiigara:
I’m going to lay it out for you by the numbers, since you’re too dumb to understand otherwise.
You have not earned a seat at the table.
All the Drifter groups have been doing this for more than a year now. We’ve fought, died, got back into space and fought again. Some have tried to go the scientific route. Some have gone the militaristic route. I will listen to all of them, since they all have proven their value.
This isn’t some kind of egalitarian democracy, where everyone’s idea is considered with equal merit. This is a war, which we are not winning. Your ideas are incredibly dumb. I don’t take advice on sex from a virgin, and I don’t take advice on wars from someone that’s never even seen combat in the first place.
You do not speak for any collective.
You’ve inserted yourself into a conversation that you have no right to join in the first place, and self-styled yourself it’s leader. Priano-haani is, bless her heart, much too nice to say this, but here it is: not a single one of the people that matter are going to do anything you say.
There is no we here. Better men and women than you have tried to communicate them. Everyone and their slaver hound can see that you’re trying to take credit for achievements that are not yours. Even ■■■■■■■ Borkstar gets more respect from me for his attempts, and he’s one step above the ■■■■ I scrape off my boots.
You have no accomplishments, no credentials, no auctoritas. Go find a fleet to join, kill some Drifters. Maybe after you have some combat experience, others might listen to you. Shoot, if you manage to kill fifty of them in an afternoon, I’ll give you a solid hour to hear your plan and then explain to you why it won’t work.
Lastly, do not ever disrespect Lady Newelle again.
Ah, egoes have been threatened it seems. Potential shifts of attention must be quashed.
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Need I then explain to you that if one wishes to establish peaceful relations with something, shooting them in the face is not the way to go.
This is starting to sound like a re-enactment from the time I advocated for a more cautious approach with the Drifters, an indeed it was Makoto Priano who, in a moment of brilliance, told me to join a fleet of known aggressors on a raiding party to their Hives to try and establish peaceful contact.
The problem is, a lot of people have already, apparently irrevocably, made their minds that Drifters and Sleepers deserve only to be ground up into paste, not understood.
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As a result of the murder of Her Royal Highness Empress Jamyl I and the unprovoked attack on
the Holy Amarr Empire, her lands and her people, by forces recognized on an interstellar level
by the signatories of the Yulai Convention as “Drifters”, the Imperial Armed Forces find no
action more appropriate than direct and full response to the Drifter threat to Holy Amarr.On the morning of August 22nd YC117, Grand Admiral Kezti Sundara addressed an assembly of
Executive Officers of the Imperial Armed Forces, Ministry of War and leaders of The Theology
Council, outlining the threat posed by Drifter forces to the Empire. The threat to Holy Amarr
and to God’s chosen was deemed to be absolute.This release is to confirm that by decree of the Imperial Court Chamberlain, Lord Pomik
Haromi, as of 11:00 EVE Standard Time on August 25th, a full state of war exists between
Drifter forces, and the Holy Amarr Empire.
This is all I need.
If you, Teinyhr, wish to go establish peaceful contact with the Drifters, UIWHs are all over. Pick one, fly in and scream into the coms until you’re blue in the face. There you go. That is honest, actual advice on how to attempt peaceful contact.
However, it’s been tried; it’s been done; it’s come to nothing.
But hey, if you can get them to surrender, I’m all for it. God knows I would be perfectly happy to end this war and spend more time with my family.
Just take a ship with no crew.
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Without any recollection of the event, I can only assume there might be nuance this remembrance is missing.
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Considering how I seem to remember prior conversations with Ms. Teinyhr having gone, you (or someone) probably offered to escort her into a Hive by having her come along on an op if she wants to try talking to the Drifters. Considering the lower patrol concentration this last year or so it seems like maybe she might be able to slip in solo, but frankly they’ll probably shoot her on sight just like they shoot everyone else who enters a Hive complex.
It’d be an interesting experiment, though.
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