Intergalactic Summit

Entry Nine: Crime

I'm officially a criminal, now.

Technically, I was one even when I was flying with SFRIM. My security status hasn't been north of 0.0 in the few months I can remember. But, well ... that was sort of a legacy my former self left me. And, also, it was closer to 0.0 than to -5.0, which it's now slipped south of.

The process to branding pilots this way is puzzling. It's not that we're a threat to conventional shipping or facilities, or even that we destroy ships with the crew populations of small towns. The thing that really seems to upset the DED is targeting our fellow capsuleers, who are about the only people involved who are nearly immune to being killed in this way.

Kill a freighter full of people and steal its cargo, and the DED lightly slaps your wrist. Inconvenience an infomorph, and the DED comes down hard.

Why?

... well ...

Someone suggested to me last night that capsuleers are mostly weapons of mass destruction meant precisely to take on conventional fleets, as a method of reducing cost and risk for the empires. That's probably true (if horrible), but it means that targeting each other is maybe a subversion of that role.

That role would seem a little more palatable in our earlier days, before the power imbalance became so extreme. But I guess how palatable it is doesn't change whether that's what is expected of us.

Maybe we're supposed to be executioners on a massive scale.

But, in that case, why tolerate those of us who do otherwise? ... And we are tolerated. As much as local law enforcement in every highsec system I pass feels the need to point at me and scream, "criminal!" I don't see anyone coming to revoke my license, confiscate my inventory, and arrest me for crimes against whoever.

It's not punishment they're meting out. It's more like a restriction on my movements to protect the potential victims (again: other capsuleers, not baseliners) who form the core of the capsuleer economic system. Nullsec alliances and capsuleers living in Anoikis can defend themselves, but high-security space continues to provide an essential hub of basic, utilitarian manufacture and trade.

So, maybe the targeting of another "empyrean" demonstrates that as tools go, I'm a dangerous one and need to be kept away from my more fragile colleagues so that they can get on with building the machinery of war without having to worry about me turning it on them.

But, of course, capsuleers do that anyway. There are places in highsec it's deeply dangerous to fly a freighter through.

Maybe it's that inconveniencing another infomorph is the closest crime we have to murder? I mean, this is a legal regime in which direct theft won't lower your security status and defrauding your fellows isn't even a crime, so it kind of lines up.

It's not the value at stake; the hardware in a capsuleer's head can be worth billions, or, much more commonly, nothing. Often they're getting a free trip home and a fresh change of clothes while we're getting a heavy hit to our security status. So why?

... maybe it's the emotive content of the thing?

In targeting another capsuleer directly, I'm pretty fundamentally rejecting the idea that professional courtesy is due-- that we're playing a sort of gentlemanly sport, where crew die by the thousands but nobody goes after the commander. Crew are plentiful and easily replaced, but I'm intentionally targeting a peer. And that's not playing nice, even if the commander will almost certainly survive.

If that's the way of it ... I'd be really proud to be someone like that, someone who reminds emypreans of the rules everyone else has to play by.

Memento mori. A reminder of death.

... Or maybe it's something else entirely. Something to think about, I guess.

I think I came myself to very similar conclusions... I am glad to see that someone sees it the same way.

All good counter-points, Mademoiselle Jenneth. Allow me some time to consider them and I will continue the dialogue.

Godspeed.

Ah uh... you... sorry.

Mr Antolliere sent his message just before me.

Yet surprisingly enjoyable.

Very much so. As a Peace and Order Unit officer my job in physical confrontations was always to render the target no threat to myself, other officers or civilians in such a way as to maximise the subject's physical safety.

As an Operative in Pyre Falcon, though, my job is to put the boots to the opposing force. Any tactic that minimises loss and maximises the destruction of the enemy should at least be considered.

This does, indeed, make me uncomfortable from time to time.

You target and kill capsuleer ships and murder their crews that are not enlisted on military vessels and you are branded a criminal and that puzzles you?

You pretend you are engaged in an honorable war when you are just the hired gun of any scum willing to pay for your foul deeds.

Embrace your criminality if fits you better than your weak and horribly unsuccessful past attempts at understanding history, honor, integrity, and morality. Now despite your flowery words your security status will clearly identify what you truly are, a common garden variety criminal, just another capsuleer pirate menace to law and order.

Welcome pirate on your successful Sojourn to Crime.

Abuse, shame, and moralizing; often the last resort of the powerless, often the first of the ones prone to overinflated opinions of themselves. By externalizing and villifying the source of their own failure -- I was unfairly jumped by a gang, the other pilot had far more skill training and resources than me, fast and long-range ships are just plain bullshit -- the losing pilot can avoid doing the hard work of accepting failure and improving themselves -- scouting, keeping in touch with allies, acquiring resources of their own, investigating and adapting to current trends in the war zone.

One of the many paradoxes of capsuleerhood is, I feel, that in order to avoid this kind of damage to your ego, you must kill it yourself first.

I remember the early days when the top used ships of PY-RE were mostly Condors, Kestrels and Cormorants and I was told we were terrible because we didn't, "Risk expensive assets," even though we'd still be on top in regards to both efficiency and kill:death ratios.

Now I get told we're terrible because our success is only due to using, "Expensive assets."

I just think many will reach for any pleasant excuses for their own failures, whereas others make no excuses for their own and through that act of taking responsibility for personal failure grow out of it.

Although there's no greater excuse for failure to me than flawed conceptions of honour. I don't live in some tragic-romantic delusion of ancient warrior caste codes of conduct.

Life is simpler when you do not expect mercies or niceties from others and thus have no onus to give it in return. About as simple as my personal rule that just as there is no such thing as a civilian in war, there is no such thing as a neutral in lowsec.

To be honest, the whole area is a warzone and given the preponderance of pirates that operate in the area (usually significantly more than the number of flagged combatants of both sides combined!) I don't see an NBSI policy as being excessively violent.