Intergalactic Summit

With extreme pedantry, I will point out that Scrambler Rifles do not boil blood or meat. Instead, they fry your brain. This is why a headshot with one of these things is far more lethal than a bullet in the head has any right to be.

Also, to Ms. Noh. I can never understand your obsession with Sebiestor and Werewolves.

In fact, I found it incredibly perplexing how turning Sebiestors into half-human half-assault frigate can be considered a good thing.

((Wolves do not actually exist in Eve Online except in myth and as an assault frigate))

Oversized engines with guns attached! Classic Minmatar design harkening back to pre-Rebellion days. What's not to love?

Last time I flew a Wolf, years ago (forgot exactly how many years), I used to chant 'Dakka Dakka Dakka Dakka' as the autocannons fire at targets up to 15km away.

My old Wolf had a single Tracking Enhancer and some Ambit rigs to stretch range with Barrage rounds to 19km. Fitted with microwarpdrive to play the kiting game when needed. After all, it's not like the she can hold range under 10km if the opponent has a scram anyhow.

That was fun. Was how I beat a Harpy back in the day. Start firing EMP rounds at 15km and killed the Harpy's shield as soon as the Harpy lands scram. Then chew up the rest.

Harpys another big one for me, though I only use it for specific engagements, especially not against wolves. Anyways, I don't want to flood Aria's thread with off topic stuff anymore. Feel free to message or mail me if you wish to get nostalgic on good ships.

Okay-- so it really is the same technology. However, my description of the technology is also accurate.



((Source.))

It's a laser weapon, but seems to be a lot more complicated than "laser weapon" normally implies. It's a "laser-induced plasma channel" weapon. It is not just a neural disruption device.

On other words, it really will do very bad things to a human body, above and beyond frying the brain (which it will also do). It's a memorable thing to see happening.

I'm just really glad I couldn't smell it.

From what I saw of it, it looked like firing it at all was a good way to ignite yourself if you weren't wearing a dropsuit. Near misses were setting people alight. Direct hits were....

Yeah. Moving on.

(Before I do-- Templar? Do you know whether this is actually something regular or elite Amarrian forces would actually have? Or is it unique to clone soldiers?)

(Not that I think regular infantry lasers are likely to be all that much less ... flesh-boil-y. For lack of a better adjective.)



That's not really up to me, though....

Miz....

Well-- I guess, to your eye, the decision not to try to smuggle one, some, or all of thirty thousand people out of the Gottin's Lamp medical bay probably does look like a matter of straight right and wrong. It's not clear how many would have thanked me if I had, but, either way, I decided not to betray the trust placed in me by what you apparently think of as evil people.

Instead, I did as I was asked by someone whose judgment I trust and whose authority I recognize.

Even if I don't share her nation, even if I don't share her culture or faith, Directrix Aspenstar opened her home to me. Twice. The first time, I might have been describable as an innocent, but even when I returned stained with blood she still took me in and helped me to heal. She's given me advice, and aid, and support when she had every right to turn me away.

Maybe your people don't put great weight on things like this. Mine do, though.

You're right: I did make a moral choice. I chose-- I choose-- not to repay trust with treachery, or to put my own misgivings about the Empire's methods above those I care about. Even if I am not loyal to the Empire, I am loyal to people who are.

You believe in honesty, so I don't doubt you're honestly trying to lay your people's quarrel with the Amarr at my door and saying I should do something about it.

I don't care very much for honesty as a value in itself; I think it's often a harsh, jagged, hurtful thing. Integrity is something I value greatly, though. It's one of the only parts of myself I'm really sure of. I'm not sure what would be left of me if I lost it.

Our paths in this are not the same. I won't question the correctness of yours, but I leave its pursuit to you-- as I leave Amarrian paths to the Amarr and Gallentean paths to the Gallente. I have my own part to play, and I will play it.

That, for me, is the right thing to do-- my moral choice. If that disappoints you, well, you're not the first or the saddest.

I don't live by your rules, Miz, nor by Aldrith's.

Be as disappointed as you like.

That's ... um. Really flattering, Templar Ouryon, but ...

... he's gone. They all are. They have been for weeks.

I may sometimes speak about these things in present tense to give a sense of immediacy about things-- how they felt while I was experiencing them. ... but they're kind of over, now.

It would have been kind of neat to record all of this stuff while it was still going on, but ...

... it was hard, at the time. Really, really hard.

My focus here has been on a couple of stand-out stories, but some of the others are, well--

They're stories that would have ended up being about cruelty and suffering. Even if I could have put some faces on Nauplius's victims, I'm not really up for telling such things. Maybe at some point, but not now.

Not so soon.

Even getting these out has been a little difficult.

I'm sorry.

Entry Thirty-six: Statistic

Another year, another million dead. Well more than an order of magnitude more than the people we rescued so recently.

There are faces in that crowd who might have been another Miri, another Chaduk. ... maybe even another Nauplius. I'll never know. I'll never meet any of them.

It makes me a little sad, but-- well....

There's a hollowness in admitting something like this, but the scale of the atrocity denies it emotional force. It's a million people, and that's supposed to be shocking. But-- well, actually, it's just a number. That number doesn't have names, or faces, to us. It's just a number.

Nauplius is awful, but he's basically going to enormous lengths to create a statistic, then crow and gloat. At most, though, he's a blip: probably millions of people die around New Eden at our hands every day.

It's not like this was even unpredictable, since he does this every year.

It seems a little awful, to just shrug about such a thing. But in the end, if he wanted to horrify people, to create something with real emotional force, he'd probably have done better to tell us everything about a single child, and then murder that child.

A million ... there are ways of maybe conceptualizing the number, a little.

A million is more people than I've ever met.

A million is a modest city.

A million is a sea of faces. Lost. Like virtually everyone who's lived. Try to visualize all the people who've ever died, and you'll probably come up with a similar scene: just an undifferentiated sea. Too many to count.

And that's it. There's maybe a pang, and it's gone.

It's sad. ... It's unforgivable.

It's also as hollow and meaningless a gesture as any mass murder can probably be. The world continues with barely a ripple (and with vast changes, but we'll never know what they might be).

Another year has passed, and Nauplius has murdered another statistic.

It's rather sad at this point many Minmatar pilots like Mizhara seem to just collectively shrug and sigh at Nauplius's antics while my fellow Amarrians, myself included, seem to be the ones gnashing and wailing and going about trying to ruin all of the heretic's works with loud bellows.

I think at this point though I'm tired. There's only so much sadness I can feel and it's draining to think of such a loss of life for nothing. Aria, you're pretty spot on to say it's hard to picture a million faces, and I dare not try anymore. I've already the blood of millions of crew members on my conscience keeping me up at night from time to time.

Mizhara, I also think you're right he's doing much of what he does out of some mad, insecure need for attention. Maybe he believes his God's faith in him is shakey as his 'great works' are undone time and again? Maybe it's actually his faith that's found wanting, and he tries to very hard to play his role to be seen as a Believer?

I don't know. All I know is I'm tired, so very tired now, and I think l'll be trying to avoid adding fuel to the IGS fire from now on and simply do what I can to disrupt him quietly.