Intergalactic Summit

So ... to start off with, I should say that this is mostly going to be speculation, and I'm undoubtedly wrong in places and missing things in others. That said ... I don't know that I'm very wrong, and this seems like it could be important to say to a wider audience, so ... here goes.

Our position in this universe has never made the slightest sense.

Our natural place in history, our appropriate and predictable place, would be as subordinate tools of empire navies. We easily could have, should have, and ordinarily would have been kept on a very short leash by the nations that birthed us. Given our entirely predictable status as autonomous weapons of mass destruction, it's bizarre that it happened any other way. It's especially bizarre that we have essentially been given the status of small, autonomous nation states, beyond the reach of the law outside of retaliatory strikes and diplomatic consequences.

Our legal position is absurd, and we didn't create it for ourselves, which means that someone else did. We have had a benefactor somewhere, a powerful one.

Recent events have strongly suggested just who that might have been, even if our own prior history did not. The Jove have been watching the empires, listening to the empires, recording the empires, over the course of much of our history. They've been making predictions about our growth and development, our historical trajectories. While presumably not wholly accurate, this system has allowed them to pick some degree of order out of the chaos, providing sufficient data to predict patterns among our civilizations the way baseline meteorologists might predict planetary weather.

They've therefore had ample opportunity to meddle: encourage a trend here to encourage this, cause a little disaster there to discourage that, quietly fund a political movement to inspire that other thing.

What's more, they've had motive. The battle at Vak'Atioth was no anomally: the Jove were, and remained, something mysterious, dangerous, and desirable as a resource. Given time, each empire, as well as the pirate factions, would have had reason to turn their attention to the Jove. With the damage being done by the Jovian disease, the Jove were weakening as the empires grew stronger. The Jove had to provide some sort of long-term solution, or they would face conflict with the younger powers time and again.

Their solution can be found at the heart of every one of our ships: the gift the Jove bestowed on the Caldari, the hydrostatic pod, or capsule. Surely, they must have predicted its combination with cloning to create a class such as ours. Once that class emerged, the Jove had only to accomplish our legal independence (a diplomatic feat that was probably a lot easier when none of us were flying capital ships yet) to create what was sure to become a massive distraction for the empires.

Unwittingly, we have been agents of the Jove, chaotic elements running interference between the Directorate and the empires.

And then, things went wrong.

How our contact with Anoikis came to be, whether it was by someone's design or an odd cosmic accident, I don't know, but as soon as we traveled there it was inevitable that we would find the Sleepers and that we would do what capuleers do: find what we can turn to our own use, and exploit it.

Considering what has followed, I sort of doubt that Anoikis was a place the Jove ever intended us to find.

It's been looking more and more like the Sleepers are probably an upload civilization. This is especially so now that we've got the Drifters clawing for biomass, but it always seemed sort of likely. If this is so, while we may not have done much damage to their primary hardware, consider what we've been blowing up by the dozens: drones.

Drones bristling with tools.

We've been destroying the maintenance system, the infrastructure, that keeps the Sleeper civilization working. Even if we haven't been much threat to the Sleepers themselves, this sort of indirect attack would cause the loss of hardware, and, depending on how their system is set up ... they may be losing parts of their world, or themselves.

And the Sleepers didn't need to look any farther than what lay at the core of every capsuleer ship attacking them to see just whose catspaws we were.

They struck back, hard. Caroline's Star was a military strike by the Sleepers against the Jove. Our benefactors have been removed from the equation, at least temporarily.

Now the Drifters are here, working alongside flights of Circadian Seekers. They are breaking down the old Jovian observation apparatus, salvaging it for parts, and salvaging our biomass for their own use. What they intend, it's difficult to say, but the only route to peace I can think of would involve withdrawing capsuleer forces from Anoikis. If we were a military force obedient to some central power or other, that could be easy ... but we're not.

We're anarchic. We were designed, engineered technologically and legally (there was probably no need to do any tinkering socially), to be a chaotic element. That means ... we have no real control over even the part of the situation that is us, that is caused by ourselves and our own actions.

Whatever their intent, it seems probable that we are the Drifters' targets. It may be that we cannot give them what they want-- that we simply are not capable of that degree of control over the actions of our own.

So, though we likely brought this on ourselves and our benefactors, we may now have no real option but to prepare for war.

I almost agree.

I'm not so sure that the capsuleers are the primary target of whatever Sleeper faction that constructed the Drifters, but otherwise, this.

Ugh. I just realized.

They aren't salvaging the Observatories for parts. They are doing it primarily for the logs. They are after the information. I think that bodes less well for us.

The Directorate was a quasi-benevolent manipulative group. Maybe not acting in our interests, but at least not actively working against us.

The Drifters, however, are at some point going to be actively against us. And now not only do they have a technological advantage over us, but they have centuries of observational logs on us. Older than any of our modern empires.

If the drifters have capital ships on the same scale as their battleships, I don't think the "how" is going to require much thought.

Well ... there are maybe some societal pressure points that would be best "hit" with a Drifter diplomat.

If they function as differently from us as their brain structure seems to suggest, though....

I'm ... trying to imagine such a thing as what the Drifters would dispatch in a diplomatic role. Really, they might be best off sending a featureless flying cube and avoid the risk of appearing too human and yet not human enough.

Perhaps. The Jove have occasionally hinted, as when they presented us the Apotheosis, that they might think of us as ... well, apprentices, of a sort.

We're still quite a long way from what the Jove are, or were, though. A lot of the reason is summed up in the word, "fullerenes."

The Jove and Sleepers have both developed that technology to a very high degree, and seem to have had it for a very long time.

We didn't even have large-scale access to the materials until we found Anoikis. We can use it now, but.... If they're using battle rifles, we've just invented the arquebus-- albeit, to stretch the analogy to the breaking point, sort of made out of badly-repurposed battle rifle parts.

We're well-designed to complicate things for the empires. We're also well-designed to really upset the Sleepers ... but I'm not at all sure what purpose the Jove could achieve by having us do so. Which makes it seem less likely that the Jove meant it to happen.

I'm not convinced they'll attempt diplomacy, either.

It's probably the easiest way to eliminate us, though. If our support structure turned against us, we'd really be in trouble.

Actually, it's a lot harder than it sounds. All four empires have been dealing with such attempts at diplomatic warfare since their founding. As for the capsuleer empires, they are far to many, to fluid, and individually insignificant to be bothered with. As for driving a wedge between capsuleers and the empires, that would be a blow to both sides. We are far to useful to be sidelined and far to adaptable and vindictive to be written off if we were.

This ... feels like an old debate on well-worn ground. And it's ... well, the old me's territory, so, if it's okay, I'll just touch on the argument briefly and leave it be. I don't really want to walk that ground again.

If the empires wanted us dead, they wouldn't come at us directly. If CONCORD can't just basically switch us off, there's still another way: subvert our crews. Encourage sabotage, in the ship, the pod, and the clone bay.

If it were me, I'd reward any person or group that put one of us down for good by transferring that capsuleer's assets to their ownership.

It's why I used to be so afraid of "humanity." That is, baseliners. I thought they'd do us all in one day.

I'm not sure I was wrong, but I guess I'm not so bothered by it now.

Still, I'd be grateful if we could leave it at that.

This does not explain one key element in the 'Caroline's Star' mystery, if this was a military strike by the sleepers, what were the Servant Sisters of Eve doing in those ready built starbases revealed in Thera? Aiding the Sleepers? working with them? spying for the jove? How did they seemingly, independently gain the technology for their new 'exporation and rescue' ships?

They are one organisation that know a lot more than they are letting on, and I for one would like some public explanations from them.

is it possible that we have been used as pawns by both sides? I still do not think we are anyones primary enemy yet. though the more we kill, the more likely they are to declare war on us.

I have read other theories on drifters, that also have their place in the debate.

[url]=https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=421141[/url]

A debate that will continue until answers are given as to exactly what the 'benevolent Sisters' know, or until war brings more chaos to the cluster.