Off-Topic Thread vol. 2

Fiction Portal Intergalactic Summit
5390

When the Amarr attacked the Minmatar Empire, the surviving records indicate we’d had centuries of peace, and retained no significant military structure at all. No, we could not shoot back. The Amarr attack was cowardly, and betrayed their own lack of faith in their beliefs: if you feel that your faith is true and righteous, you don’t need to spread it by force. You simply preach your faith to the ignorant, and live an exemplary life. In that way, you show the benefits and blessings of your god, and provide an example to be emulated. You inspire conversion with love, not terror.

That the Amarr, over and over, throughout their history, have chosen forced conversion only highlights how weak they feel their faith truly is.

No point in not doing so. It was flagrantly illegal, and undertaken by what was, at the time, a Tribe that did not have any interest in being part of the Republic. In addition, simply highlighting the truth of things is the simplest way to defang false accusations like Ms. Cora’s. As we’ve discussed in other venues, when people rely on falsehoods to make their case, they open themselves up to having those falsehoods exposed.

1 Like
5391

We don’t need you or your god, obeying the invisible man in the sky is your personal choice. And we would’ve been more then happy to respect your choice if you hadn’t forced it on us at gunpoint like a bunch of barbaric zealots.

5392

The Amarr attack was divine, not cowardly. The attack had nothing to do with lacking courage. It had everything to do without our divine purpose. For us, war is divine.

5393

I think you do need my God. That personal opinion is most certainly your personal problem.

5394

If war is divine, then attacking a population with no capacity for effective opposition isn’t just cowardly, it’s blasphemous. That’s not a war, it’s a war crime. It’s like if the Trigs declared that because Cladistic Proving is the key to ensuring the propagation of the most effective, most reliable ideas and tools, you should shoot children, so that the adult population will develop from only the kids who are naturally tough enough to survive a blaster to the brain.

It ain’t even ‘your’ God. It’s your Empress’s God. If she changes her mind about what ‘your’ God wants, then you are irrelevant. You’re just another drone that needs to obey the new programming.

5395

Again, how does lacking courage have anything to do with conquering the Minmatar. Are you trying to imply we should have trained and armed them with our technology first? The scriptures are our most sacred laws, how was this blasphemous? A war crime according to what laws that supersede our scriptures? The conquering of the Minmatar was not about a good fair fight, it was about bringing them into God’s Grace.

Our scriptures do not indicate we are only to Reclaim those that are worthy, or that can put up a good fight. All are worthy of Reclaiming.

5396

Nor do they indicate that the Reclaiming must be carried out by fire and sword. They explicitly call upon you to ‘cultivate the spirit of mankind’, to be ‘shepherds’. Do shepherds usually start off by attacking their sheep?

It’s only those who actively turn away, reject the message, who are to be struck down in wrath—and tellingly, there’s no timetable given for how long you should work to convince them before deciding that they’ve truly rejected the message, rather than simply not yet understanding the truth. So, again, you’re left with the idea that if a child asks ‘but mom, why does God let bad things happen to good people?’, that child should be ‘struck down by his wrath’ immediately.

Turning to violence before any attempt to Reclaim by word and example remains a cowardly act, and the act of a people who do not truly believe in the rightness of their cause. It is the actions of those whose beliefs are too weak to stand on their own merits, those who are afraid because they know they cannot inspire others to follow what they themselves do not truly believe.

2 Likes
5397

Still not seeing the cowardly and weakness that you so claim the Amarr Empire was. I think either insult has poor relevance. If anything, at the time of the Amarr Empire conquering the Minmatar, the Minmatar were the weak and cowardly. But I am not in a rush or even have a desire to press these insults. The Minmatar Republic today certainly is not weak, and I would say the are not lacking courage either.

You are right though, the Reclaiming does not have to happen violently. The Khanid were not Reclaimed violently. But it still does not make conquering the Minmatar wrong. They were living outside God’s Grace and were made to pay penance for that. Many rebelled, but they will one day be brought back to God’s Grace. I suspect this will be a violent spectacle as well.

5398

Which part of a violent attack against people who couldn’t fight back qualifies as being ‘shepherds in the darkness’ and ‘Angels of Mercy’?

So attacking someone who can’t fight back is brave? Does it take strength?

5399

Our divine purpose is not what you want it to be Arrendis, it is what God has decided it is. A heathen twisting it to suit their desires is not it. They were Reclaimed, that is the mercy. They were brought to God’s Grace. Many refused it and rebelled and yet will once again be shown mercy one day. They are still worthy of Reclaiming.

Once again the Reclaiming is not about conquering people in an even fight. There was no lack of courage in carrying out our divine purpose in the Amarr Empire’s history. Rolling over a weak opponent does not indicate a lack of courage. They were brought to pay penance, their capabilities at resistance is irrelevant to the determination of if they should be Reclaimed. Reclaiming is not in the variety and form that Arrendis most desires.

Your line of attack on the Amarr Empire’s courage is senseless and accomplishes nothing other than being an empty insult. Yet here I keep indulging your line of attack.

5400

So the ones who were killed without having ever even heard any of the Amarr faith’s tenets were mercifully Reclaimed? Well, that’s just brilliant, isn’t it? You’ve managed to redefine your divine mandate to bring all of humanity into unity under god as ‘just kill people’.

Truly, the position of someone who is sure and confident in their faith’s ability to stand on its own merits without compulsion.

Rolling over a population that has offered no resistance before attempting non-violent conversion absolutely does.

5401

Just from this short conversation, and reading your own comments, I would think you would start to grasp why sometimes penance is best paid in death. You claim to deserve the word, but I don’t see you ever accepting it.

1 Like
5402

I’ve made no such claim about myself. But then, I’m a result of seven centuries of Amarr brutality, and a member of a people the Amarr taught to be violent, angry, partisans who—to a measurable, but not universal extent—would absolutely do everything they can to kill every single Amarr in New Eden1.

Your people made us that. That is the fruit of your violent Reclaiming. And we know that, because the Starkmanir stand as a horrible example of both the heights and depths of what the Amarr were capable of. Starkman Prime was a world where the Amarr Holder didn’t engage in violent repression, but rather inspired his flock, and was beloved by them.

But of course, that threatened to expose the failure of the rest of the Empire’s methods, so the Empire killed him. And when one man attacked his killer… the Amarr glassed the planet. Literally conducted an orbital bombardment that left a terrestrial world, inhabited by obedient believers in the Amarr faith, a volcanic wasteland with the actual crust cracked open.

And again, murdering a whole planet that doesn’t have the ability to meaningfully oppose your military, just to get one man? Yeah, that’s just a freakin’ profile in courage, isn’t it?

So no, I’ve made no claims about what I deserve. I haven’t even made claims about what pre-Day of Darkness Matari deserved. Because the entire concept of the Reclaiming isn’t about what’s ‘deserved’. In fact, it’s about defying what’s ‘deserved’, because by the Scriptures, all of humanity deserves nothing but destruction.

But that’s not the divine mandate, is it?

It’s not ‘give them what they deserve’, it’s ‘give them what god demands you give them’, and that includes cultivating their spirits and being shepherds. God demands you bring all of humanity into unity with him.

And just for the record… the version of the Reclaiming you’re defending didn’t so much achieve that… as much as it just created us. Congratulations, you’re actively endorsing failure. :+1:

1. I, of course, have no such ambition, especially considering my relationship status.

1 Like
5403

And this is why we shoot at you.

5404

Just as a point of historical clarification, the Day of Darkness is almost certainly myth, as is the idea that the Minmatar Empire lacked military capability. These myths served the interests of people on both sides, so are perpetuated, and serve to obscure a period of complex violence that lasted for years.

First, the Amarr coordination required for the day of darkness narrative is incredible to the point of impossibility, given the technology in question. At the time of the main strikes in the 22,480s Amarr’s only FTL transit was via stargates, we had no FTL coms, and our maximum speed on ships was .1c.

There is no way that anyone successfully coordinated a multi system strike to coordinate with a storm. The entire idea is anachronistic and retrojects later technology onto the encounter. Even with Warp, Jump, and FTL comms, the coordination would have been remarkable. Without, it simply is impossible.

Second, Amarr records are very clear that the Empire spent more than a century from first contact building up resources for interstellar war before the first serious attacks were launched. The Matari Empire was a credible threat that included spacefaring technology that Amarr did not understand. The most notable example here are the accelleration gates.

Third, resistance was strong enough that Amarr was not able to completely defeat the Minmatar Empire’s space forces, despite taking its planets, as attested by the existence of the Thukker.

The likliest narrative I can imagine, given the above, is a slow war in which multiple waves of slow, but powerful, Amarr warship squadrons operating under local command first broke the accelleration gate network and then besieged each of the Minmatar planets. Rather than a lightning raid, this must have been quite slow and methodical. The Minmatar Empire was outmassed rather than outcapabilitied, with its remaining fleets unable to mass sufficient firepower in one place once the accelleration gate network was breached.

Slow conquest by independently coordinated fleets, however, is a less compelling narrative than the brilliant lightning campaign of the Emperor Damius III, so poetic licence did it’s work. And a peaceful pre-Amarr Minmatar Empire serves the narrative needs of the modern tribes, so has been allowed to stand.

But this is ancient history and I do not really see how it is relevant either way to this month’s escalations.

7 Likes
5405

Myths can be true and relevant even when they are not strictly factual.

This would be one of those times where several myths and the probably factual events behind them are highly relevant to current day. Day of Darkness if one of those. Vak’Atioth is another.

1 Like
5407

Forgive me for interjecting. The Minmatar is correct.

By “facts”, I understand her to mean empirical information. Chemicals, light, heat, elements. Events. Rotational periods of stars and moons. The spacetime compression of a warp drive.

Words, numbers, symbols. They do not correspond to anything else by facts. They correspond in meaning. Supernatural things also do not correspond to facts - but they may correspond with or by meaning to real events.

Thus, “Cold Wind spoke to K’vire” or “The day of darkness happened during a storm” or “There is no strength like it under the heavens” may be true but not factual.

1 Like
5408

For example: it is practically certain that a Nameless God did not in fact become so hungry he ate even his own name and this drove him mad and to try and conquer the whole universe. Yet some variant of this myth has survived hundreds of years on a thousand planets in the Long Night, because despite not being factual it describes the experience of being governed by a powerful, conquest-hungry entity way more truthfully than a factual recount of what is known about the origins of the Amarrian religion.

For example: Saint Jamyl the Destroyer might have returned from the dead by a Miracle of God and destroyed the fleet at Sarum Prime by wielding God’s Light only, or Jamyl the Lost Heir might have skipped a certain ritual, found some kind of a superweapon, and recklessly detonated it on the orbit of a planet under siege. Only one of these accounts can be factual. However, the story of Saint Jamyl the Destroyer wielding God’s Light is a myth that speaks to many of your own people in a way that makes the facts in practice irrelevant. The spiritual experience of a beloved Heir revealing herself on a time of great need and exacting a miraculous victory are more true to a Faithful heart than the details of how exactly that came to be.

For example: factual realities of capsuleer fights are often tedious. Long waits, aborted undocks, sitting in time dilation, anchoring and the infamous F1. But the stories we tell about those fights gloss over such facts, because what rings more true than the minute-by- minute factual account is the experiences of being part of a fleet, your pulse rising when you’re about to warp, the searing white of a structure exploding, the undercurrents of tension and relief in the FC’s voice.

Some things “ring true”. They tell a metaphorical version of truth that is not, if taken literally, 100% factual, but is still true or even more true than the boring list of facts on a spiritual (the feds would say ‘psychological’) level. Myths speak of such things as values, relations, kinship, loyalty in ways that simple recounting of facts cannot.

3 Likes
5409

I had a fruity tart once. Turns out her name was Jim.

5410

Earlier you explained how the Minmatar Republic was not to take responsibility for the Elder War. Also the Minmatar was certainly not responsible for being conquered by the Amarr Empire. You detail how the Amarr taught your people to be violent angry partisans and reinforced that we made your people that, and we created the rebellion and therefore the Minmatar Republic.

All true enough, the rebels should not be blamed for any of those things. No one should be expecting those lost rebellious souls will take responsibility for anything either. Since the day our people met yours, the Amarr Empire has been the masters of the Minmatar’s destiny. The responsibility of successes and setbacks are ours to wield.

In the end, hopefully a not so far future, those that rebelled will be once again united under God’s Grace. They will not need to take responsibility for that either, we will, it is our sacred duty. They will however, take responsibility for refusing to embrace God, that which they will pay penance for. We will continue our sacred duty and slavery will be the Republic’s salvation.