Horrors and Reprisals in Floseswin as situation stablises

Fiction Portal Intergalactic Summit
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Gutter Press reporting in from the ground in Floseswin.

With the situation on Floseswin IV beginning to stabilise, the process of securing and rebuilding in the liberated areas has begun, and Republic policing agencies have moved in to restore law and order, while a provisional civilian administration is set up.

Republic forces are in the process of re-establishing control in the northern hemisphere, while Amarr forces are entrenched in the southern hemisphere, including the capital.

Republic investigators, from the Justice Department and other agencies have uncovered numerous instances of suspected war crimes, while civilians have come forth with their own tales of woe and horror from the chaotic events surrounding the occupation and liberation of the northern hemisphere of Floseswin IV.

“Some villagers here said there was a mass grave. We’ve got ground scanners in place and are surveying the area. We did find some fresh graves that were marked, but unidentified, so we might need to exhume them to handle them in accordance with Tribal customs”, said one Republic official.
“We found an Amarr military cemetery a couple days back. We’re in the process of contacting the Sisters of Eve to arrange exhumation and transport. As I understand the Amarr religion, anywhere an Amarr is buried is holy ground or something, so we’d rather not have any of them buried here, to be brutally honest”, said another Republic official.
“These offworlder clowns turned up, and accused a bunch of the village lads of being collaborators, and they go and hang them from that tree over there, and put landmines all round it, so we can’t even get them down. Elders curse them”, said a goat herder from a farming village, pointing at a tree where what appeared to be human bodies were suspended from several branches.
“These Amarr soldiers come in dropships, and tell us to evacuate our village, because they’d heard we were Faithful, but we say ‘no’, so they go away again. Then some off-worlders shell our chapel. On Emancipation Day, no less. So a bunch of our boys have gone and formed some kind of militia, looking for revenge. They’ve got the killing rage in their eyes, I tells you”, said a village elder from a commune of former slaves.
“I seen them in the first days of the invasion. Amarr troopers in red power armour, with a silver fist logo on it. They were just shooting everything”, said a villager from a coastal village.

With the onset of the rainy season, the situation on Floseswin IV is forecast to stabilise somewhat, and Republic forces are taking the opportunity to rest and re-organise many of their forces.

“The civilian volunteer militias, we’re going to disband and amalgamate most of them. While we appreciate their local knowledge and willingness to fight, we have to mix them up, for their own good, so that the loss of any one unit would not be a catastrophic loss for any of the local communities. If a village militia unit gets wiped out, that village loses all its able-bodied adults, you know ? So we’re reorganising them into formal military units under Republic command”, said a Republic training officer.
“We’re in it for a good few months yet, and it’ll be slow going from here on out”, said another Republic soldier.

With the Republic Fleet having gained space superiority in Floseswin, the supply situation is less critical than it was a few weeks ago, though assistance would still be appreciated. Persons wishing to help are advised to try and contact the Floseswin provisional civilian authority, to receive updated lists of the commodities most in need.

Gutter Press. News.

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Sounds like a mixture of partial truths and political spin; mixed in with creative journalism, to portray some sort of situation with a aspect of realism.

I’m sure we will find a better reflection of the true circumstances, once the Amarr Militia have wrestled control of the entire system back under the banner of truth.

As always a servant to the Amarr throne.

Master Sergeant MacRobert

NB: please note I am currently unavailable to contact along the usual lines of communication whilst I undergo rehabilitation from a significant injury after an attack, by Republic terrorists during a non-capsule timeframe. It was decided that transfer to clone would be less beneficial but, it was not anticipated that a lengthy recuperation was necessary until after final consultation by our esteemed Medical Corp.

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One assumes this “journalist” will not bother collecting stories where Amarrian forces were not conveniently two-dimensional, faceless villains from a holovid. Uncorroborated, unscourced, unverified. Nameless “investigators”, unidentifiable “witnesses” from unknown villages, generic “the bad-guys came” stories. This is propaganda at its most base, unimaginative, and pathetic form, designed solely to breed resentment and revenge amongst the civilian population, which will lead only to more innocent deaths of non-combatants.

Genuine military personnel on both sides should, at the very least, take no stock in this sort of thing, and indeed should seek to combat it where possible. Not doing so will likely have serious repercussions for civilian populations all over Floseswin IV. I am disappointed to see certain people promoting it. I had thought better of them.

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To a certain extent, litterally coming to invade and take people unwillingly doesn’t lend credance to that sentiment. However I can’t imagine it being that black and white.

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I would like address some of your claims, as the one who at the head of a small number of soldiers spoke with the elders of the manumitted community.

Firstly, you were inaccurate, no instructions were given the villagers. Aid was offered, initially by way of information concerning several threats to their safety, then the offer of transportation and shelter, the information was of interest to them. Sanctuary not so, they chose as was their right to place their fate in God’s hands.

More misleading was your omission, reporting the shelling of their chapel by “offworlders” without mention of either the friction between this commune and their neighbours, a friction you were clearly aware of given your previous reporting of it; or the depth of the settlement within Minmatar controlled territory. The absence of basic and clearly relevant details you could not have been ignorant of, suggests that your intention at its most generous to shield the militias from suspicion or I find more likely an attempt to cast Amarr soldiers as wrathful at having been disobeyed.

I cannot speak with any certainty to the validity of the rest of your reporting, but between what appears more to have been calculated misdirection than bias in this case and your clumsy prior misidentification of me as a vassal of His Grace Lord Sarum. I can only infer it to be equal parts framed and fabricated to fit your narrative.

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Allow me to address some of the points you raise.

The use of “offworlder” in this article, and previous articles by our correspondent in Floseswin, is a translation of a word in the Floseswin dialect used to refer to Minmatar who are not from Floseswin.

The misidentification of your Titan as a Sarum vassal, was an error due to inability to verify the details of the ship, due to a faulty downlink to our correspondent. Available information from the ground merely indicated an Avatar class capsuleer-model Titan in orbit.

In response to Ms. deSilvestris’s point about unidentified sources, this is in accordance with the Gutter Press interview policy where names and identities of interviewees are obscured, where Gutter Press staff consider that such information may place the interviewee at risk. As Floseswin is a conflict zone at this point in time, the policy stands.

Gutter Press welcomes correspondence from our readers.

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And are therefore conveniently unverifiable. That said I suppose no-one really considers this a trustworthy source of information. I also assume it is unwritten policy to be unbalanced and subjective.

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Whether the misinformation is careless or malicious matters not, time has a way of uncovering dishonesty and lies; history affords them little place.

I offer but one admonition, words uttered cannot be recalled and those you let fly regarding the commune had weight. Though they were clearly the words of others, I have no doubt that even if those who shelled the chapel did not number among them. That many of your readers knew of its existence and wished to do similar because accusations of collusion were made public.

A portion, however small of the responsibility for that attack belongs to your publication.

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All responsibility for loss of life, attacks and any damage to property lies at the foot of the Cow Sarum.

Blaming the press how Amarrian

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That kind of poor reading comprehension is exactly what I was referring to, my gratitude for the illustration Macsliebh.

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As you quite rightly point out, Ms Yassavi, this is exactly the unquestioning, credulous target demographic of this so-called reporting. Thankfully, however, there are certain parties within the Republic that are capable of independent and analytical thought. If only their voices were more loudly heard.

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Trust me, there isn’t a government in the cluster that wants voices capable of independent and analytical thought heard.

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War is God’s way of strengthening His Empire.

All lives ultimately belong to God. His gift of war distinguishes not between soldier and civilian. All shall be touched by it. An Empire forged in the furnace of war, tempered with adversity, shall be made stronger and better through the experience, that all of New Eden may one day be made to bow down before God and the Empress.

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Yes! A good, hard war will cleanse the Empire of wayward, liberal thoughts such as abolitionism.

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No honest capsuleer can claim to oppose war. We have abandoned all other meaning to our existence. We rob, we murder, we kill, we plunder. The illusion of immortality which comes from capsule technology has made us nihilistically worship violence and death. Even capsuleers holding themselves up as more civilized, such as those in charge of the Providence Marches, are not an exception to the savagery, differing from the rest only by Imperial decree. What right does any of us have to object when people do to each other on a planet what we constantly do in space?

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That is a short-sighted and foolish position to take, and one that reeks of self-justification. No capsuleer can oppose war because we make violence our profession? Then it would hold that no member of any military can oppose war, for exactly the same reason. And yet, many do—in both groups.

War is a horror. It should never be sought out. It should never be desirable or treated as a game, undertaken for ‘fun’. War is evil, in ways very few things in New Eden are. Whenever possible, people of good conscience should do all that principle allows to avoid war.

And sometimes, we fail.

Sometimes both sides sincerely wish to avoid war. But principle, and obligation, make demands that put them on a collision course. Where neither side can make concessions, but one or both sides must advance their cause… conflict arises.

And sometimes, one side is not led by people of good conscience. Sometimes, one side is led by people who see other human beings only as resources to exploit, grist to grind in the wheels of their Empire, until all are reduced to meal that serves their purpose.

Regardless of ‘why’, when such conflicts threaten, only an irresponsible, foolish, or dangerously insane nation does not prepare for war. Preparedness, in many ways, is still more attempts to prevent war. If you are so strong, so well-protected, that any who would threaten you cannot hope to win, that all they can accomplish is their own destruction… then they are less likely to attack.

And that is the role of the military, and the capsuleer: we are deterrent. We are the threat of reprisal that prevents further bloodshed. Even if sometimes, that deterrent fails, and that threat must become the reality of violence.

We can most certainly oppose war. We simply cannot claim to always get what we want.

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How many capsuleers really wage war for any reason other than merely because we are bored and lack another purpose? We make up justifications, claim to follow noble causes. It is all meaningless. We wage war because by becoming what we have become, we have robbed life of all value and meaning. We are not a deterrent to anything. We make war more likely simply by existing. A capsuleer is a human with all of the flaws inherent to being human, but freed from the limitations of the human body, who has tricked himself into thinking that he is immortal. A capsuleer is simply a human separated from all that limits humanity’s flaws. How can such a thing be a deterrent to war?

Without the normal limitations of humanity, the only thing left to provide meaning to a capsuleer is duty to God, but because the typical capsuleer has tricked himself into believing that he is immortal, the typical capsuleer has no interest in God, so ignores this check against the more savage impulses in the human soul.

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Assuming one knows the Plans and Intentions of God is a certain path to Heresy. Be very, very wary of your arrogance, lest it be your demise.

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Nihilism is a sad way to go through life. You have my sympathies.

I will let my kin answer that when she notices this. I think, given your affiliation, she will have thoughts to share.

There are many other things to which a person can commit themselves. Rejecting your sadistic, mean-spirited deity does not mean abandoning oneself to the basest parts of our nature.

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Aren’t we? Let me paint you a picture.

Imagine… just imagine, for a moment, if your alliance and mine, working together, decided to enforce peace in the Amarr/Minmatar warzone. Imagine what that would look like.

We could do it, you know. It wouldn’t even be hard, if the will was there, and there were no other threats to concern ourselves with… like one another. Think of it: whole fleets roaming the warzone, sending one wing into each Constellation. It wouldn’t take much. 50 frigates for each of 13 constellations wouldn’t even fill up 3 fleets. The extra hundred could be quick-response tackle.

Maybe we each provide two fleets. Maybe we cut that down and just use 20 ships in each constellation—10 attack ships, 8 support frigates, and a pair of more heavily-tanked fc ships for each group. That would have us down to only 260 ships each, and let’s face it, both sides have that many sitting more or less idle in home defense fleets just waiting for idiots to shoot.

Do you think there would be any difficulty in maintaining that kind of presence—from each side—around the clock in the warzone, if we really wanted to? Would anyone be attempting to run complexes? If they did, would they keep trying for very long?

We could do much more than maintain that presence, too. More than simply manage plex denial. We could have a few hundred supercapitals and twice as many dreads ready in Amamake or Basgerin to completely shut down any attempts to attack structures in the warzone. And considering the size of the dread caches both sides already have around New Eden, and the number of supercapitals and force auxiliaries both sides have… I don’t think our Home Defense fleets would really even notice.

At most, there might be fewer idiots who need to get told to wait for the FC’s orders, and not just instantly jump to any cyno that goes green.

You don’t think that would serve as a deterrent? When’s the last time anyone reinforced the Perimeter Keepstar? When’s the last time anyone even tried?

We could do that, in the warzones. We could enforce peace in New Eden, more thoroughly and more truly than CONCORD or the empires will ever seek to do, the hypocritical pieces of crap. We are that level of deterrent.

But we won’t. Because the only thing we trust less than any of them… is each other.

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