It is also notable that once she was made Empress, Jamyl Sarum, who was a war hero and who was not chosen by the succession ritual, also changed her position and freed slaves rather than pursuing a renewed reclaiming. Again, the message to the faithful is clear. We need to look within and make sure our house rests on a strong foundation.
Haaaah, āpro-Pax candidateā. I like that. I mean, the current Empress is of the sociopathic merchant variety with significant vested interest in staggering slave-trade, utilizing vitoxin and TCMCs at significant degrees. Thereās quite a bit of love for mankind going on thereā¦ as a commodity and property. This is what you see when you think of the Pax, is it?
Trotting out the weaponized PR stunt again, are we? She didnāt āfreeā anyone that wasnāt already an indoctrinated zealot, Amarr in every way but blood. She unleashed, without any time for preparation, a staggering amount of zealots upon her enemies, and it bloody worked. She even got to look benevolent when she did it.
Now if sheād actually freed someone who was still capable of freedom, we could talk.
Still waiting for you to address the many issues and refutations weāve been serving you over the course of this thread, by the way. You keep meandering from subject to subject whenever you run out of retorts. Quite the gallop on ya.
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This use of the concept of reclaiming, I have no problem with, by the way. In the scenario you describe the system is no longer Amarr, but pseudo-Amarr, and therefore becomes an external enemy that is not under Amarr religious law.
I do not think things are as bad as this yet.
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Mmmmhm. Point out your dishonesty, point out that youāre drawing a false equivalence between an Empire temporarily leaderless and one thatās ādisintegratingā, and suddenly youāre just so obsessed with discussing the minutae of how many guns House Sarum has. Mustnāt dare engage with the topics where youāve left your bare arse flapping in the breeze.
Still waiting for a single actual citation of specific Scriptures, and not just generalizing and listing off a bunch of āIt could be somewhere in thereā books.
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God commands us to act, and gives us the chance to fail. Our future is not fated. God did not choose the emperors in the succession trials, their champions did through their own actions, success or failure. To claim it was āGodās choiceā is an excuse for the losing parties to place blame on a cause other than their own failings. Was it Godās will that we lost Vakāatioth? Godās will that the Elder Fleet was allowed to penetrate our defenses? Godās will that Karsoth came to power? Was every major victory because God willed it, and every major loss because He didnāt? The first Amarr were made Godās Chosen because they proved to him that they were worth His attention. It should not be seen that our future is based on Godās whim, but on our own ability to successfully or unsuccessfully carry out His commands for us.
I cited plenty, and if you are too lazy to check my citations that is not my problem, and I even included a scripture quote in that post. So your statement that I did not cite a single scripture quote is simply false.
You, on the other hand, are clearly only interested in discourse as a conflict in which someone wins and someone loses. You are also fond of your traps and your willful misreadings of others arguments. You delight in setting up false tests. Discussions with you must assume that you are always engaging in bad faith. So you have joined the list alongside Mizhara of people that are not worth my time. Congratulations.
And another one completely fails to defend his chosen position, and retreats into sullen, sulky and whiny defeat.
This went faster than usual.
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Isha: You misunderstand my point about Jamyl. It is not that I would expect a second Jamyl to rise up in the face of a major Amarr defeat and fragmentation into successor states, but that each successor would know that the best way to stop the disintegration is to attempt to become a Jamyl.
Most likely, this would result in a lot of Uriam-esque stupidity. Which still ends up with a lot of dead people. But what is certain is that at least some of the successor states (whichever included Sarum, and whoever got the lions share of the fleet) would be extremely bellicose towards the non-Amarr states. This is especially true if the collapse can be laid at a specific foriegn enemyās door.
Arrendisā simple line about disintegrating states not attacking others might apply to a relatively weak disintegrating state, but it certainly does not apply to the collapse of the largest coherent empire in known human history. Imagine an Empire made up of four or five Khanid Kingdoms and you get the picture. There would be no threat from say, Tash Murkon, but the republic would be under a grave threat from whoever controlled Ammatar space or the Bleaks, and they might very well look like a weaker target than the other successor states.
Focusing on the absence of God is not demonstrating that the containment of the enemy within is excluded from the Reclaiming.
Giving declarations that are not about the Reclaiming does not specify what the limits of the Reclaiming areāin fact, thatās specifically not defining the limits of the Reclaiming, because if it was, it wouldnāt be ānot about the Reclaimingā.
Books that predate the mandate of the Reclaiming cannot possibly contain its limit.
To say that the containment of the enemies within is an obligation older than the mandate of the Reclaiming would be one thing. To claim that texts which do not touch upon the Reclaiming exclude the containment of the enemies within from its Mandateā¦ is something quite different. The latter is what youāve claimed. And that is what you have not provided a single Scripture to support. Youāve provided a lot of resources that talk around the basic conflict with your assertion, but not one that actively supports it.
No, I am clearly interested in you actually supporting your claims, and not just coming up with a list of things that donāt contradict you, but donāt actually support you, either. Iām actually not fond of traps, but you know, when someoneās being evasive, sometimes, you have to break their leg to keep them from dodging.
Iāve stayed extremely focused on this one matter (other than taking a moment to point out the problems with another of your statements). I even warned you ahead of time what continuing to be evasive rather than simply acknowledging that you canāt support your claim would get you. I am not the one arguing in bad faith here. Nor am I the one who has been demonstrated to be lying.
Perhaps you should consider trying honesty for once, rather than making accusations to deflect from your dishonesty and rank cowardice. And if you have a problem with being called a coward, my lord, you should consider perhaps not running away with your tail between your legs as a preferable alternative to acknowledging when youāre in over your head.
Iād also like to take a moment and be just a wee bit more of a pedantic, arrogant jerk by pointing out that this line:
ā¦ means that if you do reply to me, youāve demonstrated yourself that you were lying.
Canāt even blame me for setting that trap for yourself.
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I actually wonāt argue that fact, however if this pax was intended to last wouldnāt the more bellicose have less of a chance? I donāt really know of you could even have an answer to that question but any insight would be appreciated.
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With respect, that was more my doing than his. Sorryā¦
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I said you are not worth my time, not that I wouldnāt reply. My decision to waste my own time is my own.
You are asking for a long scripture quote explaining what the reclaiming is not. Such a thing does not exist, I have never claimed it existed.
As for lying, you are the one who just said that I hadnāt cited anything, when what you meant is that I hadnāt cited the specific scripture that you demanded, knowing full well that such a pedantic scripture is not present in the well known corpus of scripture. The opposite also applies, there isnāt a scriptural source that says that the reclaiming does apply to the enemies within. The closest I know of is BoR 4:45, which does specify that those who submit should be saved by grace and those who resist should be destroyed.
Now, the simple scripture point that you ask for is not the sort of thing that one finds in scripture. A long definitional disclaimer? Have you ever seen anything of the sort in divine revelation from any culture?
On the other hand, the simple scripture quote that would prove your point, would be specifically anything that references internal reclaiming of oneself or of dissident internal populations already under Amarr authority. Given that we have rather a lot of scripture about self-discipline, surely there would be at least one quote that proves your point? I would be very interested if you could provide such a quote.
The quote you referenced does not do that. That was BoR 3:19, if I recall?
And the Lord spake, and said, Lo, my people,
Witness, for I have made the worlds of Heaven;
And these worlds I give to you, My Chosen,
So Amarr shall rule the worlds of the Heavens.
None shall stand higher than you save the Sefrim,
Who serve Me as others shall serve you,
For all things under Me serve one higher;
So Amarr shall rule the worlds of the Heavens.
As Garrulor rules the skies; as Frisceas rules the sea;
As Emperor rules Holder; as Holder rules Serf;
Yet all under Heaven serve Me;
So shall Amarr rule the worlds of the Heavens.
This is pretty exclusively about the structure of legal rulership in the Amarr system. God rules Sefrim. Sefrim rule Emperor. Emperor rules Holder. Amarr rule the worlds. No mention of conversion of the populations of worlds, just rulership. There is also the question of what Amarr means here, is it True Amarr, or is it something more vague like general people of the faith.
This matches the rest of the material I have seen from the book of Reclaiming.
Deitra: Do you want a long term answer to that, or a short term answer?
Honestly either would be nice, rather not disrupt other peopleās lines of questioning but I am curious Iāll admit.
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In the short term: Donāt destabilize Catiz. She should have a rather long reign ahead of her, so long as she is alive, there is no threat of Sarumite ideology becoming ascendant.
Barring that, remember that the Heirs are people, not avatars of house ideology. So any actions that would convince Arrach specifically that the reclaiming policy supported by much of his house is a flawed concept. I am not sure exactly what this would take, especially given the radical changes to Matari society that have occurred since the removal of Midular. His opposition to Khanid might be something that could become useful in the right circumstances.
In the long term, it would involve convincing the overall body of the house that the militant reclaiming is a poor approach, and that an approach similar to the conversion of Khanid is better. You are unlikely to change their mind of the overall goal of renewed reclaiming, but you might change their mind on the methodology, which buys time for other Amarr ideologies elsewhere to come into play. If there are fewer Sarumites who believe that the first thing an Emperor should do is invade Matar, then the risk of the succession trial decreases.
I do, unlike Samira, believe in the divine will guiding the succession trials, so long as they are done properly. But which specific heirs happen to be contenders is not something governed by divine rite and a place where human influence can play a major role. In a stable peacetime Amarr, the likelihood of having multiple militant minded heirs is likely to decrease.
Except my point is simply that you claimed there was plenty of Scripture which specifically countered the Scriptures I already quoted. So I asked you for citations. You have not provided them. I actually made no hard and fast claim of knowledge of the Scriptures. You did. As a result, I asked you to provide sourcing.
Had you done so, I would have thanked you and been satisfied. It would have meant I was learning something, which, really, is one of the greatest joys any pedantic jerk can experience, as it means we have more knowledge to be a pedantic jerk about.
In fact, Iād still love to find out that you can provide sourcing for your claim. It would make your claim credible, and allow me to add that fact to my own arsenal when it comes time to be pedantic about this sort of thing. But you still havenāt done that.
Yes, there is, and Iāve asked what you meant specifically by it, as well. I asked that after you asked me the same question, and I answered it. You, still, have not.
It truly is, yet, as an Amarr noble, you are expected to know the value of things, and not waste your resources. Time is the most limited resource anyone has, as every second is irreplaceable.
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While I appreciate the gesture, Deitra, as he so clearly states, responsibility for how he chooses to spend his time rests with him alone. So him ignoring the arguments heās losing to focus on something else? All him, babe. 
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Ehh, what can I say? Iām probably distracting for my own well, I would say amusement but like I said before I actually really am curious on this stuff and rarely do I actually get solid answers aside from the same scripture quotesā¦ So far this has actually been informative to me, a nice change honestly.
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When you live to over 150, and can expect a few more centuries, time loses some value.
I missed that you had asked my definition of Amarr. This thread is moving somewhat fast. I should note that I think some of your problems with my statements are due to misunderstandings caused by my answers being mixtures of answers to you and others. I have not purposely claimed to be a scriptural expert, I am not, though you seem to have read my words in a way that imply otherwise.
On the issue of Amarr definitions: When I refer to Amarr without qualification I tend to mean the area and people that are subordinated under divine law. This does not require those populations to have already personally converted.
Expectations are lovely, but data corruption happens. Take no moment for granted, my lord. Even we shouldnāt.
That would seem problematic, then, as your definition of āAmarrā includes many who would rather not be included, and whose status can change at the lobbing of a few shells.
On the Scriptural issueā¦ you claimed these Scriptures exist. I took that to mean you knew which ones they were. I assumed no other expertise or knowledge of the Scriptures on your part.
Also, for the record, if you want examples of how fracturing societies, even those fracturing into vastly uneven sizes, turn on one another rather than an external foeā¦
Wellā¦ The Empire/Republic. Used to all be āThe Empireā. The Federation/State used to be all āthe Federationā. The bitterest enemies are the ones who used to be unified, because whatever caused that split was strong enough to, well, cause the split in the first place.
And thatās without getting into any particular set of socio-political history and looking at things like the planetary history of Caldari Prime, the Intaki issues, or any other minutae.
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