Elsebeth's Quick Tips to Inciting Rebellion (FAQ)

Fiction Portal Intergalactic Summit
21

Systemic abuse … I see. You think the world can be fixed. Like the Amarr, you still want to see the world made whole. You just don’t think they’re the ones to do it anymore.

“Systemic abuse” is something you’ll find in every society, Samira. It won’t be fixed, because it isn’t broken. It does seem to be more intense in some places than in others, though. Or maybe it’s just more obvious?

I suppose it’s possible to sand or grind down jagged edges. It’s probably easier if you don’t start by smashing everything to bits, though.

That’s Elsebeth’s game-- if she’s successful. To me, it just looks like a recipe for a horrid mess.

(If not she’s not, it’ll just be a series of smaller messes that’ll probably involve a lot of misery to clean up. Less than the big one, though.)

In the world I see, order and peace are hard to come by, Samira. They have to be both struggled and compromised for; as you’ve learned, “purity” is the cry of war. So I don’t mind a lot when people call me a hypocrite; of course I’ve compromised.

To me, in a world that isn’t made for our sake, that is the best we can expect to do. So to the degree I have a political posture in this world, I come down on the side of existing order, ugly though it can be.

I keep my promises. I accept my duty.

This isn’t the first time you’ve called me a coward. Tell me: does it seem truer to you now than when you first said it?

Do I seem to you like a person motivated by fear?

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22

Nice guide and all, but where’s the FAQ?

23

It might be in every society, Aria, but it’s much, much worse in some. And wherever it is, it has to be fought. And while I wish it could be done without ‘smashing everything to bits’, it would be easier, reality rarely works that way. Reality is suffering, and if you want to do some good in the world you’ll often have to pry it out kicking and screaming.

Order and peace are hard to come by. But order isn’t good if it’s being used to do evil, and peace doesn’t exist if people are still suffering. Amarr doesn’t have peace, it just looks like it from the top down. But in the souls of the downtrodden, there’s still war. If there wasn’t, then there wouldn’t be rebellions.

Yes, you do. Just not for yourself. You’re afraid that the order and peace you value will crumble. You’re afraid that the people you care for will get caught up in the conflict.

That’s a different kind of fear than personal survival. It’s the fear that change might be worse than the status quo, and so you pretend the sins of the status quo aren’t as bad as they are, that they’re acceptable, that they’re normal, that society “isn’t broken”. It can’t be fixed, so what we have is “the best we can expect to do.”

It’s a conservative fear.

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24

The FAQ is “how do I start a rebellion at X”.

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25

You accuse me, that I’ve caused death in Thebeka by helping their resistance.

Yet you are willing to compromise the freedom, health, sanity and life of others to get peace and order for yourself and your loved ones.

I cannot help but wonder if your vehemence against me is more based on what you see in the mirror than what you actually know about me.

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26

Excellent summary. HUANG once used an Orca’s tractors and Planetary facility launches to evacuate civilians in danger on Eytjangard IV during the Ammarian occupation of that world eight years ago. Ingenuity and flexibility are key.

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27

Aria Jenneth’s descent into unquestioning dronedom has been sad to witness.

Oh, right. Uh.

Great guide Elsebeth!

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28

Ultimately, unless the Republic Fleet is en-route with a sufficiently large number of atmospheric craft capable of evacuating the rebels in short order, the overwhelming majority will die. And by overwhelming I’m thinking of 1 person making it off the planet for every 10,000 that take up arms. And of those that make it off the planet, they still have to get past the Imperial Navy.
It does no-one any favours to try and sugar-coat that terrible calculus.

But, a slave and a free man lose different things when they die. A free man loses the pleasure of life. A slave loses their pain. Death is the only freedom a slave knows. That’s why they are not afraid of it. That’s why they’re willing to rebel, to fight.
It does no-one any favours to try and sugar-coat that fact either.

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29

Was I?

For the love of the ■■■■■■■ gods, foreigners want to show up in this thread to tell me people actually die in wars?

Please.

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30

Slaves and free men lose the same things when they die. We all have the same choice to make. What a person feels they have to lose, what they are willing to sacrifice, and what they hope to gain, is entirely dependent on who that person is and what they believe, not on what they are.

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31

No. It was just something that was necessary to provide the context for the second part of my post. Wherein I point out the flaws in the argument that Aria was making.

32

Honest to gods I liked the old independent-thinking pirate/killer Jenneth than this mindless slaver mouthpiece version that’s replaced her.

At least the old Jenneth was entertaining to read and often thought provoking. This new version is just tedious and hypocritical.

Also, thank you Else for starting this thread.

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33

I guess that’s not wholly wrong. Gratitude creates attachment; attachment creates desire, the desire to conserve and retain, and so, fear, of loss: of those I’m close to, of the part of myself they would take with them, of the stability I’ve seen so many lives, including these, depending on.

Very well: I’m afraid that you and your Republic allies are going to lay waste to this world with no workable plan to put it back together after, that you’ll make so forlorn an idea as “justice” the enemy of civilization itself.

If the desire to protect those I’m close to and the society they live in makes me a coward, Samira, you can expect to find this coward standing in your way a lot as you try to remake the world in your image. I’ll make a thousand cowardly stands with my fellow cowards, die a thousand deaths in the name of fear.

Of course, most of those deaths won’t be so meaningful to me, but I’ve recently learned that I’m not more terrified of the other kind than I think I am, either. If my timeline ends serving the cause of a god I don’t even believe in, I won’t have any right to complain, or even if all my timelines end, not that I’ll know the difference.

So be it, pitiable soul at war with the world. I’ll await Else’s and your next moves. I wonder if you’ll find me trembling, pleading for mercy, like the coward I am.

34

The old version had given up on her own humanity.

I haven’t.

This, of course, makes me a tedious, pretentious hypocrite. It’s kind of like being a peace-loving sword.

Absurd, isn’t it?

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35

For what it is worth, it does not make you a coward in my eyes.

But it lays your arguments that I am evil for causing death a moot point.

Face the facts: those you are close to and the society you live in are built on sacrifices too, sacrifices other than your own, and sacrifices not given to you willingly. You and yours and the your society benefit every day from the institute of slavery, where people suffer and die because other people either brainwash or force them to.

Live as you choose, fight me if you must, but do not try to be holier-than-thou about ‘false lights’. Your light, your peace, your order, your society, are equally false.

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36

The society they live in is one that abuses, rapes, and murders millions of innocent people. It isn’t worth protecting as long as it facilitates the Naupliuses and Arzads and Kahahs and breeding centers of the world. It isn’t worth protecting as long as it is a place of evil and greed and corruption.

I lived in that society, too. I grew up in it. I defended it. I excused its evils. And that made me a coward, too.

Defending people isn’t what’s wrong. It’s who you choose to defend that is.

Don’t worry, if you stay on the course you’re on, you won’t be serving His cause.

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37

I’m a little impressed that you’ll grant us an “equally.”

I don’t see you as “evil,” Else. I don’t believe in such a thing to begin with. I also understand why you think it’s necessary, even if I can’t agree with your reading.

Only … with LUMEN, I’m kind of involved on the other side of what you do. Usually I’m up in space, so I don’t have to deal too much with what’s going on on the ground. (I’m not Ali. Even a mid-sized force has specialists and dedicated officers that do everything I can do on a battlefield, better.)

I know people down below, though, including one or two I’m really close to. I hear the reports, I see the images. It’s not like I’m blind to what goes on.

And it’s not like once things get going it’s all or nothing for the rebels and everyone near them, everywhere in the Empire, you know? … Kahah was Khanid space, but Thebeka wasn’t. People who surrendered … there was no reason to harm them.

It should have been short-- a deathglow fever dream, a few riots and skirmishes, then quiet and reconstruction. Only someone decided to pile fuel on the fire. And so, it was horrible.

And doomed.

And horrible.

… really horrible.

If the deathglow attacks had continued at a rapid pace maybe you could have built momentum and brought about your lovely large-scale revolt. Maybe there’d soon have been too many rebellions to supply.

But they didn’t. Whatever the perpetrators have in mind, it’s different from your goals, or maybe they just ran out of deathglow. Either way, the fire lost momentum and burned out … but not before consuming an awful lot of “fuel.”

Mostly people whose lives, it seems like, should be dear to you.

LUMEN’s mission is often mercy, to one degree or another: search and rescue (I’m doing that literally right now, sweeping what’s left of Mr. Nauplius’s archaeological hobby project for survivors), looking after sick and wounded, that kind of thing. That’s what we did on the ground at Thebeka.

The wounds I see, it’s hard not to look for a cause: Why did this happen?

Usually, because of who we usually wind up cleaning up after, the answer is, “Nauplius.” (No new survivors the last two days, by the way.)

At Thebeka, the answer started out with Blood Raiders and deathglow, but as the fighting got more intense instead of less, it soon became, “Electus Matari. Elsebeth Rhiannon.” Lord Avarr was down there treating wounds you caused. And it’s not like the ones who suffered most were the ones who deserved it, even by your own standards.

I don’t regard you as evil, and I even understand where you’re coming from and why. But I can’t forgive you at all. Not at all.

In the end, LUMEN is about peace, and the spread of peace. You? … You’re proudly about war, and the spread of war. And no, I don’t see war as inevitable, or the injustice as unbearable. Your own ancestors bore it, after all. They stood down their fleets and armies and built a society. Was it really only to prepare for a bigger, better war?

If there’s one conviction the past years have left me with, it is this: that those who pray for war deserve to receive what they pray for, that they deserve to experience every misery they’d see inflicted for their cause.

There is no justice in this world, but if there were, you would have to face, yourself, the cost of what you desire.

That’s unlikely. But it’s how I feel, and I don’t care whether the universe agrees-- whether you’re “evil” or not. You have your reasons, but I have mine.

You who pray for misery, may you receive it.

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38

For rebelling slaves? Yes, there was. Proper Amarrian slave keeping calls for examples to be made to show that it is unacceptable behavior, to discourage a repeat of events. While I can’t speak for all of the lords on Thebeka, Lord Numayr is not the sort of Holder adverse to conducting public executions and other punishments for senior rebels and any outside help they might have received. For the rest, likely large reduction in privileges and increased oversight in their communities.

Now, not to the same extent as at Kahah, of course. That was utterly indiscriminate and monstrous. But it’s inaccurate to believe that everyone who surrendered in Thebeka was let off the hook.

But it isn’t just his fault. It’s the fault of the whole system that fuels his behavior. It’s the fault of the Holders who sell slaves to him, the Holders who buy slaves creating a market for rogue slavers. That’s the problem, Aria. You can’t just stop at him and call it a day. He’s a symptom, not the cause. LUMEN stops short, because the real problem is so much more vast and frightening.

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39

Hm. True.

… If it had stopped at deathglow riots it really would have been pointless to punish them, though. Do you think Lord Numayr would have been sensitive to that? I mean, no leaders for one thing.

40

I have no idea how to answer any of that, Aria Jenneth. That whole post is so full of so many false assumptions that I cannot even…

So let me just say this: no, you have no idea where I am coming from and why. Some of the people on the Amarrian side do understand me, but you decidedly do not.

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