SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VI

[Simon_Jester]

And... not so lighthearted note.

[puts on modhat]

[cracks knuckles]

[picks up war surplus Bragulan beating stick]

[wraps it in rolled-up newspaper]

[WHAM!]

Bad Force Lord! Bad! BAD!

[WHAM WHAM WHAM!]

...

You need to take a step back from what you're doing in the Outlands. Consider the following.

1) You are portraying utterly ridiculous political shifts taking place in a matter of weeks. That last wankpost is a particularly severe offender. You claim to have "stabilized" an entire sector in a matter of weeks. This would, realistically, require Centralists in the region to wage a number of major land wars against non-Centralist factions on various planets, sweep and secure dozens of star systems to find pirates, guerillas, and people who don't want to be ruled by Centralists, and in general do a whole lot of stabilizing.

To make matters worse, you claim to have done this using only light forces and a handful of political agitators- deniable, disposable assets. If you had actual major battle fleets in this area, or large armies, then you could probably subdue a sector in a matter of weeks.

But a handful of rabblerousers and some military aid? I mean shit, it's as if you'd written the Libyan rebels conquering all of Africa in two months.

2) You are doing this in someone else's back yard. This is important.

3) You are not giving others time, either in-game or out-of-game, to reply to your actions effectively. Mayabird, for example, cannot post extensively today because she is busy, and as far as I can tell you're trying to present her with a fait accompli that her people cannot intervene in- a new polity appearing literally on her doorstep without her consent. Similar complaints apply against Shroomy, who is on the other side of the planet, where it is currently about 3 AM as I write this.

4) When anyone does intervene to delay your hyper-speed triumphal march of conquest (like Siege) you start pulling in even more ridiculous wank, such as your fascist propaganda convincing an entire species to send their armed forces off to help you on a moment's notice- the Mari.

This is transparent bullshit, and I'm disappointed in you. I thought you were better than this. I hope that this is merely your brain overheating or something, because I would like to believe that this isn't the 'real you.'

---

In consequence, I make the following mod rulings:

1) The Mari jumping into your collective laps didn't happen.

That post is retconned out. Maybe some Mari hopped into ships, a few of them, to help you. But they do not represent their species any more than whatever handful of robo-Nazis you have on your side represent the Refuge. Nor do they possess more than a fraction of their nation's warfleet.

2) The Centralist presence in the Outlands, to offset its extremely rapid growth, will now suffer a "Scourge of God" event of unspecified type.

This is in the works; I am privy to the details and have approved. Key to the nature of the event will be the fact that to make all this work, your Centralist proxies must have been rapidly shifting their forces throughout the sector putting out countless hot spots and crises to retain the appearance of strong military presence (when in fact they are less strong than they appear, having had only weeks to consolidate). And that these forces will be wasting a lot of time running around in circles chasing everyone in the sector who doesn't want to be a Centralist. Both these factors will weaken their ability to present a credible response to the aforesaid "Scourge of God" event.

Brace yourself, FL. This isn't gonna be pretty.

[Force Lord]

Retreat! *is shot*

Yeah, I'll just go back to where I started.

[Shroom Man 777]

1) The Mari jumping into your collective laps didn't happen.

That post is retconned out. Maybe some Mari hopped into ships, a few of them, to help you. But they do not represent their species any more than whatever handful of robo-Nazis you have on your side represent the Refuge. Nor do they possess more than a fraction of their nation's warfleet.

Oh, darn. I just wrote up a screed from the Tym Trotskies.

[Simon_Jester]

Oh, darn. I just wrote up a screed from the Tym Trotskies.

That's OK.

Tym are hyper and prone to overreaction, we know this from Mayabird's Fooking Prawns storyline.

The TITS still exists, even if its grandiose proclamations about Mari fascism do not reflect the behavior of the entire Mari species.

[Shroom Man 777]

Basing it on the Outlander guy's brief. Mari are served by the Tym. There's a big commie movement amongst the Tym. Put two and two together.

[Force Lord]

Um, can someone bring up Q?

[Simon_Jester]

Um, can someone bring up Q?

NO.

You are merely going to receive a stickbeating for excessive wanking and attempts to rush a conclusion to events in the Outlands without giving other players time to respond.

[Force Lord]

No way I can get out of this, like delete my posts?

[Simon_Jester]

Retreat! *is shot*

Yeah, I'll just go back to where I started.

In this case, your previous actions more or less stand: your Centralist proxies spread rapidly throughout the sector, using their existing military assets to fight high-intensity military campaigns. They were able to suppress unpopular groups (such as whichever pirates didn't sign on with them) and potential rivals. For a time, they did appear to be all set to control the sector.

Then shit started going wrong.

EDIT:

No way I can get out of this, like delete my posts?

Deleting your stuff will get you in more trouble. Because that will be you trying to sneak out instead of taking it like a man.

The Centralist presence in the Outlands will suffer a major setback due to their strategic overreach. It is decided and in the works.

[Steve]

Outlands, not Outback.

[Zor]

Shroom, that is a bit too soon to issue a weaponized cure en mass.

Zor

[Siege]

Zor, it's also a bit too soon to use my unique one-of-a-kind tailored nanophage transmuter as a convenient catch-all WMD to use against political opponents.

But you didn't hear me about that, did you?

[PeZook]

Frankly, I find the idea of forcibly changing people's species into Tau almost as distasteful as Fin's forced breeding of sentients as snacks for the God Emperor.

[Siege]

Of course it is. That was in fact the point... At least until Zor used it as a cheap way to fostering political upheaval, that is.

[Simon_Jester]

Of course it is. That was in fact the point... At least until Zor used it as a cheap way to fostering political upheaval, that is.

I will say in motivation that, from an in character standpoint:

1) The Atlanteans strike me as the kind of polity where "change your phenotype" is actually an option to some extent for (roughly) normal citizens; they may not take it as seriously as we do when coming from a less... protean culture. I suspect the Sovereignty would be somewhat the same way, not that this means that you personally would be, Siege.

2) The Byzantines offered the Commonwealth, and its Tau minority in particular, extreme provocation, taking it upon themselves to travel the full width of known space for the sake of flaunting their ongoing atrocities against whatever Tau they can find, in a way that cannot possibly be interpreted as anything but a brazen-faced insult to the Commonwealth.

3) Both in and out of character, the Byzantines have made any number of sneering, dismissive remarks toward anyone who attempts to criticize their human rights or sentient rights record. Their real policy tends to come across as "we have a right to commit whatever atrocity we please, a right backed by naked force, and what are you going to do about it, puny mortals?"

In this case, the Atlanteans took that policy, turned it round, and threw it in the Byzantines' faces. Fair enough.

While I think Zor could have found a classier, more imaginative, and better-presented way to go about getting back at the Byzantines for the recent issue over treatment of Tau, I don't think the specific response his nation took was fundamentally unreasonable compared to the scale of the provocation.

[Shroom Man 777]

Shroom, that is a bit too soon to issue a weaponized cure en mass.

Zor

The weaponized cure has, at best, a 20% success rate (probably actually much less) and its manufacturers and users know that it's not really a cure, because it kills far more people than it actually saves. It is more of a vengeance weapon. But they can distribute this very lethal agent under the label of "medical supplies".

The actual working curative treatment involves a battery of nanochemotherapeutics and painful reversive procedures that takes far longer to administer. It's not as simple as [gorilla grodd] "poof, I've transformed thousands of people into gorillas by some gas that immediately affects them and suddenly turns them within a very short period of time! mu-hahaha![/gorilla grodd]

The fact that the weaponized cure has a very low effectiveness and kills way more than it cures, and the actual working curative treatment is a long and painful medical process, actually makes it far more believable than a "I injected you with a shot, now you will instantaneously turn into something else/a sausage/whatever! because of magic nanotech! hahaha"

[Simon_Jester]

Now see, Zor, the problem you have here is that you want countermeasures against the things you do to have no effect, or negligible effect. And so you write them being casually ignored and defeated, like it was all a joke.

This is reasonably considered obnoxious behavior by people trying to interact with you.

[Siege]

While I think Zor could have found a classier, more imaginative, and better-presented way to go about getting back at the Byzantines for the recent issue over treatment of Tau, I don't think the specific response his nation took was fundamentally unreasonable compared to the scale of the provocation.

I agree with this; my beef is not with what the Atlanteans-the-nation did but with what Zor-the-writer did. There's a certain poetic justice in turning hateful people into the thing they hate (for certain values of 'justice', anyway) and it is possible for citizens to change their race in the Sovereignty as well (though I don't think painful nanite transmutation would be the commonly used method)... So from an in-game point of view I can certainly see this happening. But OOC it's not very chic.

EDIT: And the fact that in the aftermath of being forcibly converted from one race into another, an event which ought to be extremely traumatic physically and mentally, Zor has his transformees do the equivalent of shrug and say "oh well" and continue to not just stay sane, not just maintain a functioning society, but somehow impose order, unite the transformees -- communists, Byzantines, centralists, i.e. mortal enemies -- and purge all remaining orthodox zealots (a group of people who suffered no trauma by simple virtue of still being human and that MANY OF THE TRANSFORMEES THEMSELVES BELONGED TO ONLY A FEW DAYS AGO!) is not just completely insane and unbelievable, it smacks of all the worst kinds of wankery.

Seriously I'm having difficulty expressing just how utterly retarded this sequence of events is.

[Shroom Man 777]

It's like they combined Andromeda Strain and Red Dawn.

*coughs up crystallized lungs*

TAUVERINES!

[Steve]

Tell me, Zor, why are these Tau-hating transformed Humans calling themselves Tau? If anything they'd insist upon their continued Humanity and be waiting impatiently for a more thorough cure. Even if they fought back against efforts by un-transformed Imperium-followers to slaughter them, they're not going to embrace the culture of people they hate and who's protectors have transformed them against their will. They're not going to call themselves "Fire Caste" and such!

All they're really going to do is (not so) patiently wait for a cure so they can be transformed back.

I also suspect we'd see a high suicide rate, or murder-suicide, with priests promising Christian burials and such and working around the suicide angle by saying that it's not suicide but preserving one's soul from being corrupted by the "foul xeno" or what have you.

As your "I still win" handwave posts go, this really takes the cake.

[Shroom Man 777]

At least the nano-virus is a workable way of explaining inflated census numbers of Japashinto-Norse Tau followers.

[Steve]

My post is the first of a multi-post story. Please, nobody jump the gun on what I've written yet? I need sleep, dammit.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

Last Order said:
* Speaking of vegemite, one of my abandoned story ideas involved a far-off human colony world midway between Karlack, Bragulan, and Outlander space, fighting off a remnant force of the Scron that managed to survive the Bragulans' extermination attempts...
Shrüm - COCHENGO SARSAPARILLA - 王永福:
* :D
* Yes
Last Order said:
* I really do think I should bring that back.
Shrüm - COCHENGO SARSAPARILLA - 王永福 said:
* it can be a grotesque mix of all sorts of RTS
* after the Scron, the Zerg Karlacks arrive

Consider that once-abandoned story thread officially resurrected. Truly, the former Outlander Commissions are going through some interesting times.

[Shroom Man 777]

Oh lord.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I'm not sure whether to be insulted, or just amused.

I am picking the latter.

Why? Well, this has always been Zor's modus operandi. Way back in the Hadhramara smack down, this has always been. Steve remembers it well, he can feed the details in. He did approve my posts after all.