Intergalactic Summit

Honour to the Heirs who have placed themselves before God's judgement to be His Emperor.

Honour to the Champions for their displays of skill, prowess, and tenacity to be witnessed.

Honour to the dead and may the peace of Paradise be upon them.

Regardless of who may ascend to be God's Representative as Emperor I believe they will continue the Imperial legacy of interstellar peace and stability pursued by Emperor Heideran VII, Emperor Doriam II, and Empress Jamyl I. The contributions of the Amarr Empire to the peace and its willingness to seek diplomatic solutions through compromise and dialogue before escalating to force and violence cannot be denied.

The century of calm and prosperity fostered by CONCORD and interstellar diplomacy would have been impossible without the wisdom and intelligence of Emperor Heideran VII. A peace only broken by the unprovoked attack upon the people of the Empire by the Minmatar Elder Fleets.

I have no doubts that the next Emperor will be as worthy of respect as those that came before them.

Something I only ever do constantly, you know? Seriously, what makes you think I don't speak with everyone around me? Including myself?

Then you would have noticed that alot of them need appointments with psychologists. Psychiatrist treatment ain't gonna help.

Also, more to the point of the thread:

I am pleased to see that Tash-Murkon and Kor-Azor are the current finalists.

If Ko-Azor wins, I am hoping that his acquired reputation for reformation and mercy will lead him to free the remaining slaves that Empress Sarum did not. As a Caldari, the concept of slavery is both foreign and somewhat offensive to me, and while I will not presume to instruct the Amarr how they should act internally, I am nonetheless willing to hope.

As for Tash-Murkon, her ascension will hopefully lead to more open and voluminous trading between the State and Empire, which would benefit both.

In regards to the point Miss Kim made, about Kador, I am afraid that, while I might agree with an Empire acting more forcefully against the Federation, Kador's version of such led me to believe that whatever his leanings might be, his actions tended towards incompetency. I would prefer less action over the useless sacrifice of allied ships.

Re-Awakened Technologies: where international peace treaties are more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.

I am saddened that Lord Sarum will not be the Emperor. With current drifter incursions strong military leadership would have been better. Naturally I will offer full support to the victor and the next Amarr Emperor/Empress

There was, actually, more to my reply than I originally posted, but I thought it might be something of a knee-jerk reaction. So I slept on it, and gave it some thought, and no, this really is something I think should be said:

Mr. Egivand, I like you. We'e had some very nice conversations in the past. Legumes come to mind, for example. That said, you are completely, 100% backwards in which way you're pointing that judgmental crap.

You say we have an 'insane disregard for personal life' because we live in space where anchorable warp disruption field generators, as well as their ship-mounted counterparts, can be used. That we treat our existence like a holo-game.

There are regions of space where fleets undock every day to hunt down and destroy one another, where individual capsuleers undock with the express purpose of seeing who they can kill that day, all for the grand purpose of.. nothing. No matter how many people die, no matter how many ships full of crewmembers suffer catastrophic hull failures, nothing changes. Not a single station is brought under new management. Not a single planetary revenue stream even pays its taxes to a new overlord. All that changes is a name on a flag, and a tally on a map that looks suspiciously like a scoreboard.

And most of the time... not even that. There is no lasting change, no real difference in the lives of any of the people living in those stations, on those planets. No difference except, of course, when the Templar forces sweep through and turn their cities and industrial complexes - their homes and their jobs - into a smouldering ruin of an arena where orbital strikes lash down to 'kill' another wave of 'immortals' playing soldier. Most of the time all of the fighting and dying happens so that the bloodsport can continue, with one side or the other making small progress, then giving it up again. And yet, the participants call this 'war'. They call their playing field a 'warzone'.

You are playing gravball for the entertainment of the political class, at the cost of peoples' lives. Some wrap themselves up in patriotic shrouds, some simply shrug and acknowledge it's all for pay. But your 'war' is a sham. Your 'war' is a sporting event the empires have arranged to ensure that the element they can control less and less, the capsuleers, remain pre-occupied with killing one another in fractious in-fighting. Those of us here who will come together against the Sansha, or the Drifters, we're the enemy. Why do you think the Empire hasn't approached the Republic about a temporary cease-fire to deal with the Drifters? They want us all to be Kim - ultra-nationalist puppets who refuse to look past our prejudices and indoctrinations, and they use your so-called 'war' as one of the means to do it.

Yes, there are some who bring that 'it's all a game' mentality out to null-sec. There are some who place no value on the lives of their crews. But I suspect if you talk to capsuleers in lowsec and in highsec, just as many of them all but forget their crews exist, as well.

When we go to war, we're not just changing a flag on a map. Stations change hands. Taxes change for the people living in the system. And we do more than just fight in our space - we live here, patrolling for pirates, driving industry, building what we can and importing what we can't. But we live here. And we fight for ourselves, and for one another. We fight to hold on to what we have, or to hurt our enemies by taking away what they have.

And we, especially, take care not to simply throw lives away. We're mocked and berated as 'blobbers' because we understand that if you bring sufficient force to bear, the battle can be won without a single loss, that if you make it clear your enemy cannot win, they will cede the field and withdraw. And we do our best to bring that kind of force.

Pilots in the lowsec 'warzones' throw lives away to effect exactly no change in the space you inhabit. To take and hold nothing, ultimately. But we are the ones with an 'insane disregard' for life, because we choose to live in regions of space where bubbles can be deployed. Bubbles which, generally speaking, are fairly easy to avoid - and which we'll be warned about by intelligence reports, within our own space. If there's an enemy gate-camp setting up bubbles somewhere in our space, we clear it.

Imperium space, in general, is a safer place to live than Imperial space. We're not the ones who treat war like a game, spending lives to achieve nothing.

Just to make my point:



Medals. Lives spent and taken for medals.

We're not the psychotics here.

No apologies needed, Mr. Tuulinen. It's a common viewpoint for people who've never been out here. It's how I thought things were, when I lived in high-sec, and when I lived in Anoikis.

And I understand that you believe that. I do. But the Empires weren't on an unavoidable collision course to war before the current, sanctioned warzones began. At least, no more or less than they have been since. And the warzones provide no 'escape valve' to bleed off the tensions within the actual military or political structures of the Empires. Instead, they are the province of capsuleers - individuals who would otherwise be governed only by CONCORD. How many would have wound up pirates, a thorn in the Empires' sides? How many more would be in null?

How would the lack of capsuleers shooting capsuleers - pilots, ships, and entire crews the Empires have already written off and ultimately, care nothing about - be anything more than a gap in the latest set of boxscores in the nightly sportscast?

Pilot Arrendis I generally agree with you but on your assertion that you and your null space associates are fighting for some grand "good" I must respectfully disagree. It seems that I recall several large wars in null have been fought simply because they could be or in order to keep the rank and file members of the great alliances occupied. Am I wrong in this?

"Good" is a subjective construct to begin with. As for large wars being fought 'because they could', or to keep people occupied...

The large wars are never 'to keep people occupied'. There are always reasons, no matter what the public story is. There are even reasons for the smaller wars - and they're almost never the 'public' reason. For example, while everyone focused on the 'we're putting Max on the throne' line, we went to Providence to learn. Entosis warfare was a large development. Provi's about the only place where we can find a group that even begins to mirror our own use of space and population density.

Alliances don't go to war to keep people amused. Smaller groups within alliances go out on deployment for amusement sometimes, but then, I suppose that might seem like 'war' to some, but really, it's like the difference between a small gang roam through lowsec from Great Wildlands, and the Elder Fleet invasion.

Like I said: we've got the same percentages of 'normal' people to 'vicious bastards' as everywhere else. The difference is, the ones giving our people direction... is us. When's the last time the President of the Federation, or the CEOs of the Big 8 fleeted up? How often did the Empress put herself on the front lines in the 'warzone'?