Intergalactic Summit

Giving up trade secrets, dear?

I know, I know, I'm getting soft.

You mean the others, right Veiki? WE'RE tight, right?

How quickly the naivities of youth are taken from us.

Her sister is nicer, anyway. *hmph*

Okay, I've got a lot of data to cover here.

Jili: You say Matari Lives Matter, but they're getting killed as rapidly as they're thrown on the execution block.
You seem to get very detached from the fact that you're a capsuleer now, not the same human you used to be.
Furthermore, you seem to think we have some issue with the Matari, which I personally love them, but detest the Republic, and that's not even why I'm in this 'war'. It's quite simple really, I wholly intend to eliminate targets regardless of race, creed, or values, but now at least someone's paying me to do it on top of all that.

Matar Ronin: I have a hard time staying interested in what you have to say, as what it lacks in content it makes up for in--actually no, until you start applying some weight to your words, your roars are as whispers, fitting for a kitten with no fangs. I wanted to address you so you don't feel left out, you know, because I'm nice.

Deitra: Exactly that, really.

Vincent: This is why we're friends.

Jili, pt. 2: If it weren't about ISK, you wouldn't be in league with the Tribal Liberation Force. You sound an awful lot like I did when I first joined the Caldari war zone. I was angry, with a belly full of fire and a fistful of conviction, but in the end, it doesn't matter; business runs the same regardless of what you think about it. You cay say you oppose it all you want, but your actions are spinning the same wheel as the Imps are, like it or not.

Entry Five: Zones of Concern

Entering into this whole thing, I sort of assumed that the so-called "Demented" had generally reverted to caring about concrete people and few, if any, aggregate or abstract entities.

It seems I gave a lot of us too little credit, or, maybe, extrapolated too far from my own limited and kind of unusual experience. It seems even the most ruthless capsuleers can still feel a strong attachment to an alliance of thousands of pilots, and some (mostly in smaller capsuleer circles?) might even maintain strong protective feelings towards basline crewmembers under their care. Whether these feelings are motivated in the ways that those baseliners might find most comforting is an open question, but that's maybe the case for persons of lesser status in most societies.


I want to make clear, also, that what I'm talking about isn't anything unusual. The specifics might be uncommon (a quasi-immortal class of humanity's kind of a new thing, at least in the empires' experience), but the patterns are familiar.

A few examples:

* Soldiers are routinely conditioned to let go of their reluctance to kill. A soldier who won't pull the trigger isn't much use to anyone. Soldiers in a single military unit often develop intense loyalty towards one another, sometimes exceeding their attachment to the societies for which they theoretically fight.

* Disaffected citizens routinely arise in every society, and form their own sets of loyalties and sympathies, in defiance of social norms.

* Nationalist or ethnically-centered political organizations tend to focus on, and encourage, loyalty to a narrower circle of humanity than the society might normally recognize.

* Criminal gangs and, especially, organized crime have a long history of establishing what are essentially smaller, alternative civilizations within their host civilizations, with sharply different sympathies emphasized. Loyalty to country, to humanity generally, and, certainly, to the society's recognized power structures are undercut, and replaced with loyalty to the more immediate group.


Likewise, even the most disquieting habits common among capsuleers have precedent:

* Social elites often have minimal awareness or caring for those of lower status unless given reason to pay attention (and maybe even then). An example of this is the corporate abuses that gave rise to the Brothers of Freedom, and ultimately Tibus Heth.

* People generally find names and faces easier to care about than death statistics. In general, those crew who die in the ships we destroy are no more "real" to us than those at the receiving end of a ground-based artillery barrage are to the gun crews.

* Torture and general abuse of those perceived as "enemies" can only be said to be "inhuman" conduct with a massive dose of optimism about what humans are capable of. If anything, capsuleers seem to do less of this than average (if only through a lack of caring).

* Warriors of many cultures throughout history have taken pride in being seen as demons or monsters. They've worn fearsome masks, painted themselves in lurid colors and fantastic patterns, stuck rotting human heads on posts, and gone about doing all in their power to make themselves look large and fierce. That's not to say that they weren't really dangerous; quite the opposite. But calling yourself "The Demon of the Badlands" and stringing the intestines of your enemies up on trees is an effective way to get people to surrender, or else to fight frightened and therefore make mistakes.


Any effort to try and nail down the usual characteristics (if they're even consistent) of an ... acculturated? Is that the word I should be using? ... independent capsuleer will also have to do business with human frailties that have nothing to do with culturally inculcated zones of concern: depression, for example, seems likely to have played a role in my predecessor's "slide" into "The Black." Something else to watch for would be genuine psychopathy, which we're probably as subject to as anyone else.


So ... that's sort of where I'm starting. The theory. The vision of independent capsuleerdom I'm here trying to verify (or, more accurately, seeing whether it gets disproved).

Not necessarily heroes or villains. Neither gods nor demons (nor monsters, even).

People.

Wish me luck.

Perhaps.

Jokes aside, I would not say we are, "tight", we are work associates in a business together. A business that I feel only requires me to prosecute targets with requisite levels of force of violence -- tasks which I feel there exists no doubt in my fulfillment of the KPI. Once those tasks are accomplished then my personal life is my own.

No, I do not believe I stated seeking to inflict casualties with targeted spalling ammunition was SOP across the board by any means. Indeed, taken from a purely mercenary perspective it remains an unnecessary extra effort without benefit, financial or otherwise. However, the context in which I view my own actions as regards target prosecutions likely differs in that I view my current freelancer status as an opportunity to gain both combat and operational experience in tasks and procedures I believe to be of use in a future conflict scenario involving Kaalakiota and the State in a total, absolute war.

These remain still nothing more than my own training days. The CEWMPA regulations provide a framework to pursue the expansion of my hydrostat-pod combat skillset in preparation for the day The Company calls me to war without the restraints of CONCORD or interstellar treaty. I pursue unnecessary casualties today in order to better inflict necessary casualties in the future. There's no emotive factor involved in it beyond a satisfaction in having developed a skill. Like flower arrangement, or lacquer stenciling.

Besides, DED killmails don't record crew casualties so one can just assume warp core explosions don't kill people if that makes it easier on the conscience. Sweet Maker wept, it's not like a few more dead here and there even matter after the first few thousand.

If compassion is weakness then I would be a very weak person indeed.