Intergalactic Summit

Oh, I'm sure. I also hired a priest to run the chapel on my Archon, so they are covered that way, as well.
Really though, most of the losses are not ours, but N3PL's. People will claim that there were millions of dead. That's right, on the enemy's side. If I had to guess I would say that the CFC/RUS bloc is looking at two million dead. I would wager that the number is above ten million dead on N3PL.

What people need to remember is that the CFC is repelling an aggressor. We do not start wars, but we finish them.



If Father Constantin wishes to do a service, I will allow the use of my chapel in my Archon. I will even hold the service in B-5R. Everyone else is going to have to watch by holo, though.

It is within my purview, if you would like, though I know I would probably not be welcome in your space so much considering my position on warfare and the like. If you would like me to perform a service from here or make the trip, though, do let me know. I can make time.

If either of you find anything interesting or valuable among the dead I would be more than happy to buy it off you. Not like they are going to need it.

Welcome to New Eden.

Those people knew what they were getting into when they signed those employment contracts, yet the whole thing has a tone of making them into some kind of martyrs.

Simply put, they aren't.
If these were figures on civilian populace casualties after some kind of a great disaster like Seyllin, I'd understand the whole rhetoric behind calling it a tragedy. As ms. Teinyhr already pointed out, it would be rather hypocritical to mourn after them.




Yes, yes, death and destruction, etc, etc, we get it.

You're making the Guristas look subtle in comparison.

Your hubris beggars the imagination. You suggest that the cluster should THANK capsuleers for their service to the humanizing of war?

You are of course aware that this conflict was STARTED by capsuleers? Introducing them as a mitigating factor in the butcher's bill is a murderous kind of retconning.



That is precisely what you have done.

Thank? I wouldn't have said so myself, no. Those factors don't suddenly make a million deaths a GOOD thing, but... While you are correct that this particular battle wouldn't have happened were it not for Empyrean ambition and greed, I'd suggest that if not us, then somebody else. Humanity's a greedy species; we can either tear our clothes and lament that fact or we can own up to the reality that killing one another in the name of transient and arguably petty gain is one of those things that humans do, prolifically and well. That isn't going to change any time soon.

What can change - indeed, has - is that our warfare can be fiercer while consuming fewer lives in proportion to that ferocity. For example: the military death toll for B-R is exceeded by the civilian death toll of the bombardment of Caldari Prime (which I mention only as a historical example, not so as to raise anti-Gallentean sentiment). I can point to land wars in the history of most every civilisation - generally late industrial-age wars - with civilian death tolls in the multiple millions.

The civilian death toll for B-R is nil. None. not a single collateral civilian death. And a number of paid volunteer crew dead which is, relative to the number that would have died had the ships involved been baseline, really rather small. How much was a human life worth in that battle? Official estimates have it that Eleven Trillion ISK of ship was destroyed in B-R, and If we call it a round million dead, then each human death came at an expense of more than ten million InterStellar Kredits.

I could name some wars in Caldari history where the life of the soldier was worth an infinitessimal fraction of that. Whole platoons of Raata soldiers were worth less, monetarily, than the horse their general rode, the sword he wielded and the armour he inherited. So to recap: Fewer people killed than would have been if the ships were conventionally-manned, zero civilian casualties, and more than ten million ISK spent per person slain.

Seen that way, what capsuleers have actually done is to make each human life MORE valuable. I wouldn't suggest that we should be thanked for that - It wasn't our idea, after all and at best it only mitigates the slaughter rather than excusing it - but these facts should at least be acknowledged and borne in mind as sitting on the other side of the fulcrum from all the bleeding-heart wailing and weeping.



You're right, it is. Sloppy of me to have said that in the first place, really.

I wonder how many of those crew were janitors cleaning toilets? Saying to themselves "Who needs this shiit?" before each flush...

I'm not sure anyone would be surprised at casualty figures having come from a battlefield. I'm also not sure that is a state of humanity we should find acceptable. Casualty figures this high should have taught us all by now to find some other way of communicating.

You constantly hear the idea that we need to learn to simply cope with the figures and move on. That sounds a bit like sticking a fork in an electrical socket, losing control of our arm for fifteen minutes, and saying to suck it up and wait for the next opportunity to get into the silverware drawer.

The galaxy needs idealism, keeps a sunny side to things. You don't have to believe it, but it never hurts to let others bask in the glow a little....

"A bit," yes. The analogy is flawed in that no one's ever gained moon mining claims by sticking a fork into an electrical socket.