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Fiction Portal Intergalactic Summit
21

That was the motivation of many, wasn’t it?

We pretty much had nothing but speculation as to what the ultimate fate of systems the Triglavians managed to occupy during the invasions. If you look back at old threads, many did justify their support of the Triglavians under the guise of “setting seeing what will happen.”

Probably the second most common reason capsuleers throw in with the trigs after “I hate the empires, so I’m going to play games with the fates of billions and billions of people!”

But back to the main point… we don’t really know if something is behind the Drifters. The whole deal with “Tukoss” may have been the Drifters themselves. It also may have been something or someone else that wanted to activate them. I feel like if they could fool us to that degree, why wouldn’t they do it more often? If the Drifters could freely masquerade as others well enough to fool us on command, why wouldn’t they target Kasiha Valkanir and EDENCOM with more urgency. If they could pose as her, they could really get most of what they wanted, no?

They could get us to do the brunt of the fighting against the Triglavians, get us divided afterwards, and then go after us when we’re weakened and bickering with one another.

Really, there are a lot of powerful individuals they could target to do a lot of damage.

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22

At some level, the answer has to be ‘because they don’t want to’. We just don’t know why they don’t want to.

I mean, that sounds like a lot of work for exactly what we’d do on our own, anyway.

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23

I warned people not to give the weird Tukoss voice the body parts. People didn’t listen then. And then what happened ? Blammo ! Drifters.

So I’m not sure if me condemning giving corpses to the Drifters would have the desired result.

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24

Back when I practiced my previous religion, which was an incomplete understanding of the truth and not the fullness of revelation that is sedevacantism, I tried to feed the Drifters Minmatar slaves. But my efforts were frustrated by so-called Amarr Loyalists. Perhaps that line of research needs to be carried forward by someone.

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25

So … here’s the thing, Ms. Elkin: they had Dr. Tukoss. Like, had captured him apparently. And they did an absolutely terrible job of pretending to really be him. If you look back at the old messages and logs … yeah, um, it’s very weird.

His body was found outside (I believe it was) a Drifter hive a while later.

Anyway, yeah, I agree that the Drifters aren’t our friends, but the next step forward towards almost any end seems like it would be, “get them to talk.” Blowing them up hasn’t got the desired result so far, so maybe we should try something else. They didn’t seem interested the time I bailed out of my confessor and tried to request docking at a hive station (I thought at the time they might have lost their voice when they lost Dr. Tukoss. I had a backup clone ready to activate if they actually accepted), so that probably isn’t the right angle.

Or maybe I just surprised them, I dunno.

Status with the Drifters has been pretty static since we learned about the Triglavians. They’re still out there, still scary, not as reliably aggressive but also probably not operating in as predictably “human” a way. There’s no real reason to think we can destroy them militarily any time soon, and diving the Abyss you run into them all the time. There’s a whole side in that war-- a major interstellar power– we have absolutely no dialog with.

Ms. Dea’s plan is pretty macabre, but I don’t have any better ideas right now. If you want to attract birds, scatter seeds.

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26

I’m going to be honest. Though I was obviously around before the Drifters popped up, I was only peripherally paying attention to the stuff going on surrounding Tukoss and such. Back then, I didn’t really care too much about them until Jamyl was killed. So maybe some of my perceptions could be wrong.

I still feel like trying whatever crazy ideas pop into your head has just as much potential to backfire as it does to turn out some results.

I expect nothing coming about from it being the most likely result. But pushing buttons at random is almost never a good idea. Especially when we don’t understand whatever those buttons are connected to particularly well.

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27

Perhaps. But, it seems a little unlikely that the “end of all things” button is within our reach. And … well … I kind of prefer probing boundaries and looking for ways forward to just sitting still and waiting for whatever’s going to happen to finish happening?

Maybe it’s irresponsible to poke them, but it doesn’t seem all that much more responsible to just blow them up occasionally and wait. They could intend to exterminate us the moment they get a breather; it’d be as in-character as anything else they’ve done.

Maybe they already have, and the blow just hasn’t landed yet. Maybe we’re all basically dead and just don’t know it yet.

We just don’t know.

Learning probably isn’t going to be comfortable, but comfort isn’t what this universe promises to begin with.

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28

:thinking:
Hmm. Considering Jenneth’s contributions to this discussion, I’ll offer this project some advise:
Offering an amount of ISK per corpse closer to market value would increase the likelihood of people contributing to this project, and might even get me to contribute to it.
As things are now, I do not trust you enough to do so. Call me paranoid, but I suspect you may just be selling these corpses for ~5-10 times the price you paid for them.
:v:

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29

Is that really the going rate, Che?

…

Why?

I mean, has someone worked out something else to do with them other than feeding Drifters and building macabre collections?

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30

OK, first of all I haven’t seen any market orders for corpses, course I haven’t really looked either. Hell, I can’t even imagine what section of the market they would be located in.

Secondly, I view the Triglavian horde as New Eden’s public enemy #1. They are surely the biggest threat to ever show itself within the cluster, not to mention they openly declared hostile intentions and annexed multiple systems from all four of the major Factions.

So for a choice between the Drifters and Triglavians as the lessor of two evils, I’ll pick the Drifters every time. Having said that, I’m reminded of an old phrase - The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

If giving corpses to Drifters helps kill Triglavians, then I’m all for it. I’m pretty sure I have some corpses stashed away, will have to check the freezer compartments in my storage hangars.

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31

A curious project, with an interesting discussion to follow it. When pursuing information of value, I consider most means acceptable, so I see no great issue here. At worst, it will be fruitless.

What motivated me to donate a clone of mine? The idea that I might see it again in another place, another form. Slightly terrifying, of course, but also a unique and fascinating possibility! It feeds the curiosity of the scientist I once aspired to be, and the endless narcissism of the transinfomorph I became instead.

Perhaps that’s something for you to work with Ms. Dea? Lure capsuleers with prestige, not ISK? Frame it as a chance to become reimmortalized as a Tyrannos, and see who else that idea tickles?

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32

Firstly not only does this raise serious ethical questions in respect to final disposition of mortal remains, which voluntarily feeding them to the Drifters without the consent of the capsule pilot in question or the families of those crew et al that have fallen to the perils of space would cause, but secondly this would be a gross violation of the statutes that regulate and restrict the trade in corpse recovery and disposal, or ‘Bodymining’ as it’s better known.

I cannot imagine that in civilised space there would ever be a tolerance for feeding those deceased to the Drifters, which is why I urge you to reconsider your proposed course. Your claimed respect for the sanctity of life does not justify the desecration of the deceased in such an odious manner. Whilst the Drifters are indeed a severe threat to the people of New Eden and should be studied to better understand and counter them as many organisations have, it does not grant one licence to act without restraint or morality in one’s conduct.

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33

Soooo, Mr. Adams? I kind of get where you’re coming from on this, and yes, desecration of corpses, generally probably bad. While I’m in full agreement on the subject of the bodies of crew (normally only one body; that’s basically the last vestige of the being who inhabited it you’re looking at there; respect is in order), when it comes to capsuleer bodies?

The trail of vacated husks we tend to leave drifting in space?

Yeeeeeah, not so much.

What, really, would you propose we should do with the trail of abandoned biomass we leave behind? Bury it? Burn it? Recycle it? I mean, it’s not like people are holding funerals for us. (And if the answer is “recycle it,” isn’t the idea here just to provide the Drifters some recyclables?)

Keep it in storage as a sort of grim not-quite trophy forever? That seems to be the usual thing. Most of the usual alternatives are worse.

Mr. Adams, I’m not sure if you’re aware of the worst thing anybody’s ever done with one of your cast-off shells, but I’m well aware of the worst thing someone’s done with mine (or at least I hope it was the worst). Being turned over as raw material for Drifters … reeeeeeally doesn’t measure up.

At the moment our former bodies seem to inhabit this sort of liminal zone where they’re not quite just biomass and they’re not quite corpses. I understand if you want to treat them as corpses, but, actually that seems to me to even devalue a little the existences of those who live once and then truly, permanently die.

There’s an opportunity here to use pseudo-immortals’ husks for something that has a small chance it might prove to be very, very worthwhile. It’s not obvious to me that the correct answer is to refuse if no one, living or dead (or, as some would apparently have it, “undead”), is being hurt more than they already were.

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34

Not like it’s not already all just recycled biomass. Most of it’s probably former livestock bits, too.

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35

Yeah I kinda agree. Egger biomass is a strange thing to consider possessing sanctity. I shed clones more often than I do clothes, and nobody’s ever called my socks divine…not even the Dominations-issue ones with halos on them!

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36

Can i keep selling my body somewhere to you? that could be a nice earner XD

People are out mining when they cpuld be literally selling their corpses XD

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37

I could give a lecture on the many novel and occasionally amusing, yet still macabre, uses to which the Takmahl put cyborgised corpses of their servants, and occasionally themselves.

None of you are my students, though.

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38

Now there is a promising class.

How can one learn more about it?

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39

Last I checked it was the minimum going rate. Mr. Cormorant already explained you part of the reason why: biomass is in demand, even more now a lot of navy crew are also cloned.
For a female corpse I get double the amount of ISK that I get for a male corpse. I’ve been told it’s because female corpses are more rare.

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40

Nah, it’s just that male eggers are pervs.

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