Intergalactic Summit

An old Amarrian general in a story once said, "If this is the price of victory, defeat is beyond our Empire's means to afford."

I suppose you could call driving the Elder Fleet out of our space, regaining our borders, and reinforcing the Empire a victory for us. I lost my grandfather in the initial assault. I don't feel like we won anything.

I'm sorry for interrupting, and I've been meaning to ask, but is that a KK slang of some sort, Gesakaarin-ojabuun? I've never heard the term "volk" used before, but it seems to be a synonym for Vaktikun (State, for those who haven't a napanii translator)? Or is it more like hiimot (people)? Thank you, and again, I'm sorry for the interruption in your excellent conversation.

I appreciate your sentiment, Veikitamo, and you are correct that my people (in reality, all people) of the cluster have very rarely been bereft of armed conflict of any kind, and few could say that there was not a major conflict once in every century for their people. I wouldn't call our Empire the most peaceful of them all, either, given out history.

However, God gives us chances to reflect. After millenia of victories, or conquering peoples by force of arms, I don't think any of us could say that we've had the same experience since we came upon the Gallente. After the war with the Jove, the Minmatar Rebellion, and the Elder Fleet, we've had plenty of opportunities to reflect back on that history of warfare and our legacy to the cluster. Were our most successful acquisitions coerced with arms? The Khanid came to us freely, left us, and returned again freely by purely peaceful means. What Matari still stay with us, even though they bore the brunt of the Elder Fleet? The Ammatar, who joined us freely.

I suppose Amarrians of my generation have a tendency to look at warfare as more of a limited, short-term cure instead of a panacea. Guns simply do not cure the diseases of the human condition. This had an effect on me even as my family has always been relatively less limited in terms of inclusion of other races into our family line and our relations with our neighbors. I can't, as you say, posit that I am the median of my people (though really, no one can).

Not to say there is no time when violence is appropriate, I'd be a hypocrite if I'd said that. I've had to destroy my fair share of pirates attacking civilians in my time. It simply hasn't proven effective at doing the thing that matters: spreading and teaching the Word. In the end, it wasn't our guns that made good, Godly people, it was those good Holders and teachers in our society that essentially made living with us worthwhile. When we forgot that, and we relied on our guns more than our books, we were quickly taught otherwise. It was that arrogance that required adjustment, and even we are not above God's lessons if we forget our primary purpose. We were simply not living up to the right standards.

It's a strange dichotomy, living in a world where most people would rather live in peace but cannot seem to avoid warfare. In any case, I think to have any chance of spreading the Word, we need to demonstrate not that it is the way of the strong, but the way of the wise. We simply have to prove it works in the real world, especially in an unobtrusive way. It's a lot harder to do, and will take much longer than simply aiming a gun at someone and telling them to read. However, if the Word is good and it works, it is bound to catch on. People won't want to even try it if they see the faith as an armature of a conquering army

In essence, if people see the faith as the province of the Amarr people, I wouldn't blame them for trying to avoid it. It's important to show that the Amarr people are the province of the faith, and it is not our tool. We are tools of the faith, trying to bring us collectively toward enlightenment and eventual ascension into something greater.

It's worth taking longer to do if it saves a few lives, at the very least.

You disappoint me.

What she means is that the Ammatar Mandate was not created through peace, as the Nefantar joined the Empire in response to our invasion of the Minmatar Empire.

It isn't really so, Veikitamo, and culturally we are taught very early on to have somewhat complex views of the universe.

To give you an example, I suppose we as a people seem very verbose (compared to our fellows). We actually use a different form of Amarrian for speech that should be read through a translator because a great many of our words have no direct translation into another language. For example, curretregus is a "state of being" word. It's conjugated the way our version of "to be" is conjugated, as most of the other words of that nature are. It describes the state in which you think you are correct about something, but that you find it unfortunate and wish wholeheartedly to be proven wrong. I suppose the closest I can think of in common parlance is when you say, exasperatedly, "Well, I hope you're right." However it isn't quite the same.

I suppose it does seem that we live in worlds of contradictions, but we're taught very early on to reconcile that dissonance logically. It isn't hard to see why people who want peace seem to see so much war; it doesn't take that many people to start a war and its consequences are not limited to those who fight it. Therefore, good people will end up fighting each other as long as people who want war threaten them. The majority of our peoples are not fighting each other at all; they have regular jobs. The majority of us aren't even participating in the CEWPA conflict. Not even everyone involved in that conflict really wants to be there fighting. So, in essence, a proportionally small amount of people who are affected by the warfare are the ones that are actually there, fighting.

Hence, people want peace but expect war.

As for the Matari, I did specifically say the Ammatar. The tribe which used to make up their number joined us willingly and took part in the Reclaiming of the rest of their people. The rest of their people formed the Republic, while they stayed. Even after the Elder Invasion that they bore the brunt of and that shook their faith with its revelations, they remain.

That's the sort of faith you don't have after being forced at gunpoint. That's pure and true faith, a belief in larger and greater things.

Kernher you do realize that your deity didn't order a fleet of battleships to fire their tachyon lasers at Starkman Prime, right? That order was given by a man; a man who was making a coldly calculated political statement. He was showing his vassals and the rest of the empire that he was strong and willing to wipe out an entire planet's population as revenge for his father's murder. No more, no less.

But, let's assume that the genocide of the Starkmanir was divinely orchestrated. What does this say for your deity? That it's a hateful, vengeful, totally amoral entity willing to put to death millions of its innocent "creations" in order to scare the rest into subservience? How can you worship such a monstrous construct?

And you wonder why we resist you. I want no part of a universe supposedly created and controlled by such an entity.

A Gallentean bourgeois would typically say much the same thing. I might say a clockwork mechanism is complex with all its interconnected gears, flywheels, and springs but if they are all designed to perform a pointless task like rolling a rock up and down a hill for all eternity then complexity has no inherent value in and of itself.

Of course it is not. Most Ammatars living these days did not live through the Minmatar Rebellion. They were raised in Derelik generation after generation.

Forced at gunpoint or not, that does not make a lot of difference, since it is all about cultural assimilation.



Because it is the exact reflection of the Universe and the Creation ? The Amarr have always been keen to put a great emphasis on humility and fear in front of the unforgiving nature of the universe, but eventually the Amarr God is not much different from Achura's ideology or various other religions.

I do not see what is especially surprising in that ? Unless you believe the Universe to be intrinsically good and benevolent ?



Or the Ealur ? You forgot again the Ealur.

The perception of reality, Veikitamo, is precisely that. We very often see what we want to see. Can you really think of no single event in history that came about requiring a blood sacrifice? Is it necessary that you destroy a civilization to develop warp drive technology? Did people have to die to open the stock market? Certainly, many of our goods come from vast wars in nullsec space that consume lives, but is that a necessary part of the gathering process?

No, history is not written in blood. History has trudged on, trying to advance irrespective of the losses incurred. I suppose when all you know about other cultures is violence, it can seem a very hostile place up in space. Certainly I was told the Matari were a pack of bloodthirsty savages who knew nothing of the faith. I came out here to find that believers were still out there in the Republic, practicing on as best they could.

But you can learn so much. They developed a ball game during their period before the Amarrian invasion that attracts vast crowds in stadiums. The games themselves are amazing to watch and be part of if you can catch on to the chants quickly enough to follow along. Nobody has to die to take part in this game; you can go and watch. Enjoy yourself. You can have fun and no one needs to die over it.

I suppose it's been trying to experience the less militant areas of the cultures of others that gives me the perspective I have. We here in space may find combat in dead space to be a ritual part of life, but most citizens on the ground will grow old and die never having fired a weapon at another human being in anger. Unfortunately, the rule of law here is enforced by CONCORD and few capsuleers have much of an interest in helping to secure and expand safe space. It's really the unfortunate failure of us as capsuleers. We could have done so much more than we have. Instead, we took the paths of least resistance, we did what was easiest to reinforce our own beliefs and make the most money. We never did anything difficult, like trying to bridge that gap between us that is the source of all wars.

We were uniquely suited to do it, because we are impossible to kill. We could have brought an end to the conflicts simply because we could not be silenced by gunfire, as you said. Destroying your ship in space would do nothing to quiet you.

It's not a failure beyond rectifying on our part. We can still make a difference in this world without bloodshed. Sometimes we forget that just because something becomes history, does not mean it becomes something to be pleased about. One day, many thousands of years from now, we may have finally grown beyond war as a means to grab at the fleeting figs from the intergalactic tree. What will they think of us then? Will they wonder what drove men and women to kill over differences such as ours?