No. We have seen no actual evidence that they are ‘fleeing’ from the Abyss, only seeking more resources to continue their war. They certainly don’t show any sign of having any operational limit to the number of ships they can throw at their objectives.
Any perception of ‘weakness’ is a delusion entirely on the part of the end-point observer perceiving it.
No, no, no. Terrorism is the use of violence and the threat of violence to create fear, sow doubt and mistrust in a governing power’s ability to provide safety and security, and foment panic and paranoia that destabilizes a society, in service of a political agenda.
The Triglavians did not do this. Their objectives were simply and plainly stated: they were coming for star systems. They did not seek any political concessions or changes from the CONCORD powers. They didn’t care if they were resisted or not. They made no demands. They offered no conditions or terms that could see them call off the invasion.
Just because people were, and still are, justifiably afraid does not make that fear and the knock-on effects of it anything they sought or in any way gave a ■■■■ about.
Can we be sure about that? After all, they provided blueprints for pod-compatible ships. And we know they can self-immolate to avoid capture. For all we know, they’ve simply refused to let us get their pods.
Not with certainty, but it doesn’t seem probable, Arrendis.
They’re way too interested in us, and specifically in us, for it to seem likely that they have this same capability themselves, and if they do then they’re being even more patronizing than we thought.
There are hundreds of star systems surrounding the cluster we inhabit. Thousands, even. Ones we don’t have access to, but presumably are accessible via their wormhole technology. Yet they saw fit to invade our settled systems.
Fear is powerful and valid tactic of war, why would they NOT use it?
If terror tactics (I’d draw a distinction between these and “terrorism”; Arrendis might draw the line differently) are successful, they internally weaken and potentially destabilize your opponent. One of the odd quirks of the Collective is that they don’t seem to want that. They seem to believe in testing ideas, designs, and even policies against one another through direct combat, but rarely to total destruction.
Probably, they want to see if we’ll learn from our mistakes and come back stronger-- and perhaps, become more and more like them in the process. It’s possible that their ideal endpoint is that it no longer matters what side any one of us fights for, because we’re all serving the same end, the same Flow, whether we understand ourselves to be part of it or not: advancement through ceaseless conflict.
Well, perhaps unfortunately for them, many of us do not share their religious nonsense. Rest assured, if I have the chance to destroy any Triglavians outright, I destroy them outright. Survivors are shown the cold of the void.
I don’t think it is inconceivable the triglavians used terror as a weapon. They presented to us with a technology unknown to us and with mysterious, non-negotiating messages about join-us-or-be-destroyed. Meanwhile, it was very clear they could not control where and when they appear in our space very well, if at all, and analysts have suggested that they stopped the invasions short, before achieving all their goals, due to running out of resources.
It is not inconceivable the mysterious advanced alien terror was intentional propaganda, meant to convince people they cannot be fought, or to join them because they are powerful. If so, inciting that fear worked some, especially for recruitment, but it also backfired, as it was what brought the defense together.
While I don’t totally disagree, Elsebeth, it does seem like they could have done way, way, way worse, and done it trivially. Consider, for example, if they’d used mutaplasmid bombs the way the Blood Raiders have used Deathglow: aggressively tailoring K-space biospheres to Pochven or even Abyssal environmental conditions before the conquest was complete, spreading chaos and maybe even forcing the locals to choose between surrender and hope for transfer into a survivable environment or else a slow death.
There are reasons they might not want to do something like that (getting samples might let us develop a counter), but the overarching theme of all the Triglavians’ dealings with us seems to me like the best explanation: that odd sense of fair play. They seem to believe in giving people prizes they earn, instead of just, well, crushing them.
The Triglavians are clearly strong and honestly terrifying, but I’m not sure that they could have done much worse.
I don’t think they were pulling punches during the invasions. I actually get the impression that they stopped actively invading because the Triglavians themselves were feeling the burn of attrition. I think that between the various navies capsuleers and the independent capsuleers who fought against the Triglavians, we were able to stand up to them1.
They have strange bioadapation and star alteration technology, but their military tech as it is isn’t stronger in direct combat than our ships using the capsule well. EDENCOM flagged empire navies were on the scene seemingly as Triglavian invaders arrived, so I don’t think answered large-scale bombings of worlds could have trivially been done without defeating the navies. Planetary defenses were mentioned quite a bit in the news we got during the invasions. They seemed to hold as long as the navies themselves did, more or less. That was the impression that I got.
They could have potentially done more damage after winning in a system, for sure, but I still think that people were one of the resources they were after and that would defeat the point a bit.
1Except for in the State, where their navy was pathetic.
I’m not sure what you are referring to here. I don’t recall any ideas that I may have had about stamp collecting. It’s really not something I’ve ever contemplated.
Um. As I remember it, Dr. Valate, it was a discussion some years ago of the risks of bringing up potentially dangerous or violent concepts and ideas within earshot of a certain person, on account of a certain … awful creativity with other people’s ideas. You quipped that you would find that worth taking seriously if it produced an atrocious method of philately. I … provided one, as I imagined the person under discussion might. You remarked on the strangeness of my mind.
If you’ll forgive the observation, that’s not a comforting thing to hear from even a relatively un-awful Sabik. I remembered it as a sort of indication of my own mind as being at least a little aberrant. That’s all.
No, they targeted their own ‘ancient domains’—the places they knew, that they had records on, where they could be sure the right kinds of stars could be found. Why waste time surveying new regions when you don’t need to?
They don’t really seem to have a concept of it, anymore. That’s likely a result of the engineered parts of the triumvirate in each of them: what does a digital being fear if it can simply download itself elsewhere? And taking all the memories of the biological components…
I mean, plenty of capsuleers already think that’s immortality, so why should we think the Trigs are immune to such foolishness?
Add into that their obsession with proving. If we have tools and strategies that work better than theirs, they want to know it… so they can take them. But they don’t want our culture, so they had no reason to bother pushing on the societies they came in conflict with… and that’s what fear targets: the society, not the war machine.
Let us know when you actually find one to toss out an airlock. Until then, such things are empty rhetoric.
I didn’t. From what I could see, stuck out here dealing with other nonsense, the last waves of forces they sent were as numerous as the first. Maybe moreso. But I’ll take you and Else’s word for it.
I’ll second this. They haven’t gotten more reluctant to field heavy units in the Abyss, either, and they seem to control those fights. They could probably pit us against other intruders every time if they wanted.
If they ran short of something, maybe it was time.
Hmm. Might have been a conversation that wasn’t logged. Was it in the Summit ? That’s the only one I really bother with logs of.
I do remember expressing some frustration at how attempts to reform said person always seem to be interpreted in an odd way, and that if I suggested stamp collecting, they’d find a way to make that weird.
Don’t wish to engage with all this at length at this time, but I felt like I should make a correction here. All clades are eager to trade in schematics and technology in return for various types of data aboard their stations. Among the requested types is Cultural Semiosis Data. Their doctrine of constant proving values the constant input of all data, for this is how they evolve their own ideas.
That all being said, I do not believe they engaged in conventional terror campaigns, unless you count the overzealous escalations in force in return to planetary resistance, which I do believe had the intent of discouraging others from repeating that mistake.
That doesn’t actually demonstrate any interest in getting involved with our culture, or allowing our cultures to compete with their own. In fact, they have thousands, if not millions, of easily-accessible sources for in-situ cultural information, including observations of the living culture, in-context.
And they’re obliterating them via forced bioadaptation.
Do not, for one moment, mistake the Trigs finding ways to keep their Kyber minions eager to do tricks in exchange for KyberSnax™ for actual interest.
So, you think that they are relinquishing materials, tech and schematics in exchange for data they don’t actually care about because they want us to “do tricks.”
Come on now, I know you are dead set on being wrong here but please try to keep the mental gymnastics in check. If you want to make the far reaching claim that they aren’t interested in engaging in cultural proving but are gathering data to more effectively dismantle our culture or something like that sure, that’s at least in the realm of possibility, but to claim they just do it for no reason? Please.
This isn’t about the proving grounds, which yes, are dedicated to combat and their observation of it. This is about their stations in Pochven requesting Cultural Semiosis Data. To me, this shows the claim that they don’t care about our culture to be baseless nonsense, they very demonstrably do care.