You know she’s trying to provide you with a course of action that allays the concerns of those reactionary, violent individuals who would be tempted to attack you for being members of the Amarr Rite, while still allowing you control over the station, right?
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In my place, would you, having gone to tremendous lengths to establish a home for your people, and knowing how many would attack us for our practice of the Rite; give absolute authority of that home’s administration and security to someone who only five hours after its existence was made public, kindly offered to dismantle it?
In your place, attempting to thread a needle as you are, I would very much be looking at a long-established individual from an influential Clan, offering to guarantee my home will remain safe from the violence I’ve expressed a fear of, as a godsend.
As a SOERR facility, the station doesn’t draw any particular malice from the anti-Amarr population. More, anyone looking to attack it has to weigh the possibility that Electus Matari will go beyond defending the station, and choose to counterattack the aggressors’ infrastructure.
Nor did she threaten to tear the station down. She offered to decomission the facility in a controlled way, at some possible point in the future, if that step became necessary in order to ensure that you could not be forced to fight against either your kin or your spiritual peers.
Moreover, I certainly wouldn’t go throwing around lines like “I do not wish to betray the trust of my donors by handing the fruit of their generosity to someone who has and will again wage war on them.” I wouldn’t say that because it highlights that your donors are clearly not among the Minmatar Faithful, but are individuals who have waged war against people like Elsebeth… and will do so again.
I see no demand of defenselessness. Only an offer to, in effect, vouch for your good intentions and put her own honor and that of her corporation at risk to say ‘these people are no threat to their neighbors’. Elsebeth is offering to put her good name in your hands… and you’re spitting on her for it.
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The offer was, if you wish, I will promise to dismantle it rather than let either side use it for war. If you do not want that term in the agreement, then so be it, but I did not “offer to dismantle it” and kindly don’t put words into my mouth. It is beneath you and will not help you at all.
Ok, history lesson, as you obviously don’t know me, or the history.
Prior to the coup of YC110, the government of The Minmatar Republic was committed to keeping peace with the Amarr Empire. I was a supporter, and a vocal one, of that government. I was a supporter of that peace.
But the Nefantar Crisis happened, the Elder Fleet happened, the Purge happened, the coup happened, and that peace does not exist anymore. This government has put us to war. And not a proper war, mind you: to a war of attrition, a decade of mindless grind watching the pendulum swing, a carnage eating men, women, ships, resources, eating away the strength we built.
You do not win wars of attrition where both sides lose equally against a vastly bigger opponent.
Let me put this more clearly: this government has started a war with the Amarr Empire, and as is, we have already lost it. With hard power and soft, they are coming at us. The Militia wars serve to weaken our power to fight back. All the missionaries to the Faith, including you, serve to weaken our will to.
And trust me, even if you don’t think that’s the goal, those who funded you do.
Yet I offered to help you. Why? Because I believe that what makes us Matari is allowing each clan to have their own ways, even if those ways will harm us in the end. If I had not done that, just because I personally detest your flavour of spirituality, we’d also have already lost. But I’d be lying if I claimed I’m bothered if you don’t take the offer. On a personal level, I don’t particulalry want to deal with a stationfull of followers of the Evil God.
So yes, I went to Thebeka, and I’d do it again. At this point, I’d do almost anything that has the chance to destabilize the Empire. Because we need some hope, some string to pull.
As to “mandate”, I’m an independent capsuleer. I don’t need a mandate. Apart from PIE, CVA and the Militias, no capsuleer organization has the direct recognition of a government, beyond loyalties they choose. Yes, sure, I have followed and still often follow the government’s policy as I best can. Problem with that is, who the hell even knows what our foreign policy is? The Sanmatar says things like “Death to the slavers! Long live the tribes! We come for our people!” Yet we do not go, but instead waste what we could go with in the endless grind.
All I know is that while officials have spoken against some of my internal politics, the government has neither encouraged me to nor admonished me for my actions in Amarr space. But they do encourage us, in speeches, to “go for our people”, and I know that if nothing is done but the grind, we will lose in the end. So I go. I do what I can. I don’t think it will be enough, but I try.
I do this, while you take foreign money to convert more people to the religion where “patriots” profess to support peace and refuse to fight the conquerors, and then no doubt pray God to forgive them when everyone is dead or in chains.
So go to hell with your claims that I endanger us all. The only endangering I’ve done here was to offer you help in doing yours more securely.
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I hope you’ll forgive me for regarding one point as important enough to focus on it; you detest my flavour of spirituality, this isn’t news to me, even if I knew nothing whatsoever of you but the content of this discussion it would have been clear.
I can respect that you’re willing to give voice to that distaste, but the approach you took from the start was worse than outright hostility– that at least would have suggested some semblance of equality, at best you spoke as though we are children, too foolish or easily led to be trusted with our own future and our own defence.
I’m sure at the Sanmatar’s behest the efforts of Chief Tenerhaddi Dykon to calm the fractiousness of his people about the presence of mine were made just sincerely as the offer you made to me, and despite Chief Dykon’s efforts Abel Jarek is dead.
With this history being so recent, and not a great deal having changed since, do you find it surprising that no matter how fairly you can persuade Samira Kernher to tell me that you deal with ‘God-lovers’, that the idea of relinquishing our future to someone who despises everything that we believe, is something I find distasteful and insulting? Do you expect me to do as you fail to do, and surrender authority to my betters trusting the promise such authority will only be used in the Republic’s interest?
Personally, I would sooner trust someone who says ‘even if I find your beliefs distasteful, my own require me to offer you aid and shelter honorably and in good faith’ than someone who spits upon such an offer and assumes the intention of betrayal.
We generally tend to judge others by how we would behave, in their place. Had you said simply ‘thank you for the offer of protection, but this is something I feel we must do for ourselves’, I doubt very much that any further hostility would have been offered by Elsebeth.
There was no hostility in her initial statement. She offered nothing but protection and a guarantee that if you wanted it, she would bind her honor to a commitment that under her stewardship, no-one could use the orbital platform as a weapon of aggression. And in response to her offer, you gave insult, first calling her ‘a privileged tribsewoman’ in a clearly derogatory context, and then impugning her motivations and insulting her honor.
Now you throw in her face a murder that occurred at a period when Elsebeth was—and is very publicly on-record at the time as having been—actively defending those who tried to maintain peace and tolerance and claiming ‘not a great deal has changed since’. If you believe that so little has changed, Elsebeth frikking Rhiannon is the one person on this board whose words you should trust.
I suggest stepping back from your bruised pride, learn just who it is you are insulting, and if you cannot bring yourself to start fresh, at the very least let it go.
I made an offer, in honesty, with honor, and with a reference, with as clear wording I could manage even in the initial offer, but with minimal sugar-coating and no lies about my true feelings. This is how an honest tribeswoman deals with kin. It was an offer, starting with “if you wish” - not with stating kudos I think I’m owed that would make you obliged to deal. Your veiled hints that my offer was insincere or that I might have lied are misguided and unbecoming.
How would it have been better, exactly, should I have spoken sweet lies to you and lured you into an agreement you only later found out you did not want to enter after all? Better you know it now and say no.
I could not have approached you in “outright hostility” because there is none.
Best of luck for the day when you betray either your Faith or your nation. That day is coming, like it or not.
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If I have in any way treated you unfairly, I apologise. The offence I have taken at your offer has nothing to do with sincerity or the lack thereof, or Arrendis’ assertion that I am anticipating betrayal.
I am offended that you consider the idea of dispossessing us to be a favour, that you think it would be better were we not in a position to make decisions of any gravity or consequence, that you still seem unable to see that given your hatred of our beliefs– no matter how honourable you assert your intentions are, that you will only interfere in the Republic’s interest is no comfort.
The parallels I drew with the events in Tronhadar were not to call into question your intentions but your understanding of our situation, I believe that the Sanmatar felt his request of Chief Dykon would be sufficient, it is likely also that Chief Dykon thought his people would abide by the decisions he made. As distasteful as I find it, I understand why they might have thought it was not in the Republic’s interest to closely scrutinize those events.
From the position of authority you sought, there are many things even an honourable and honest tribeswoman could justify doing for the Republic at the expense of those who live here, and in transferring that authority I would have surrendered all ability to stop you.
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If you read back, I did not make the offer to guard the Republic’s interest, I made it to spare you from the loyalty conflict where the only honorable way would be the way of the knife.
Having stood in that fork of paths myself, I would spare a capsuleer of the tribes from the same, where it would be easy to do.
But have it your way.
Given your public disagreements with Republic authorities, it’s doubtful you need my help or even a great deal of imagination to understand just how much can be covered under the cloak of Republic interest.
This alone indicates that one of you misunderstands the situation… but it ain’t Else. If you think Shakor did anything that he thought would be effective at defusing the situation, or that he didn’t make it clearly understood that his calls for calm were for public consumption, you clearly have no appreciation for the number of Minmatar he had murdered in cold blood in order to secure power, or how many more he remains willing to sacrifice to keep it.
Let us suppose for a moment that your assessment is correct, how would condemnation of the Sanmatar or a Tribal Chief serve my people? It would bring no one back, it would change nothing of the past decade.
Rather it can be viewed that assumption of the best possible motives for those who failed to secure our past safety, is an understanding that even if we trust the promises made to us; we cannot again trust our future so completely to those promises.
Alternatively, you could learn who you can trust to mean what they say and deal with you honestly and honorably, and who you cannot.
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To me it does not follow that a lesser trust in the Sanmatar’s goodwill should make me more inclined to publicly scorn him, nor does it seem sane or reasonable to expect for even a heartbeat that I would transfer ownership of Salvation to a stranger, regardless of how honourable or honest I keep being told she is.
I haven’t said you should publicly scorn him. Nor am I suggesting that Shakor’s faults should impact your assesment of Elsebeth. At the same time, though, Shakor’s statements should also not impact your assessment of someone who has publicly opposed him and his regime. They are two different things, and you should use your best judgment about each.
The actions of each are their own, naturally. That prior guarantees were found wanting did not sour my opinion of the Sanmatar, nor my assessment of Elsebeth Rhiannon.
My ire was provoked more by the overreach of her intention, however permissively, to impose external authority on people she wants nothing to do with. With it now having now become abundantly clear I assume to all parties that such a transfer is not going to happen. I can only apologise specifically to Elsebeth but also generally for allowing my indignation to overtake my composure.
Less so under “directly against the Republic’s interests”, though. I put that in the initial offer that could have been negotiable because you called yourself ‘a patriot’ and I thought you’d want some minimum guarantees that I’d not let the place be misused, even when I promised not to interfere with its daily running.
It is clear by now though that patriot or not, you want to see me as your enemy. That alone tells me something about you and yours and about the purpose of this station against whose funders you say I’ve previously waged war.
I will withdraw from this conversation then and withdraw the offending offer; again I wish you best of luck when the worst day of your life comes.
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Just as a clarification on that quote, there is a distinction between unforgivable sin and normal human error. The latter can be cleansed.
I’m not tuned in enough to this conversation to be sure where the issue being discussed would fall.
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I suspect that’s a good thing.
Call me dense, but isn’t the place for proper Minmatar faithful the Mandate? Why not just go (back) there? Like, why’d you leave?
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