Intergalactic Summit

Please correct me if I'm wrong but the numbers Arrendis was quoting were mainly blood raiders (numbers being from activity in the Delve region, primarily consisting of Blooder) right? Them dieing won't cause me to shed a tear, I'd hope the same opinion is shared by anyone in this thread.

I do kind of feel bad whenever I blow up an Ashimmu. They're a lovely little ship.



It's a way to pay the bills...

And, you know, pay for a new Hel after a month or so.

Capsuleer on Capsuleer running totals

When did this topic become acceptable anyway. Did those who found it distasteful all quit flying or have they changed?

That's five billion, not trillion. And it looks like it's just the count of baseliner crews of capsuleer vessels since this past May.

This is why in a very short time I've grown to prefer sleeper sites to bounty hunting pirate baseliners.

At least in those cases all I'm doing is destroying vast amounts of potentially useful advanced technology.

And where's the harm in that?

Is this why I didn't know about the sheer scale of all this?

All my pre-existing "knowledge," the groundwork for an intricate case claiming to prove our inhumanity-- my predecessor would have loved such a statistic. I knew some of our methods had changed, but....

Is this why I didn't know? Because it's distasteful to look at what we're doing?



This is what I told myself when I started hunting conventional craft: it has to be done. It has to be done. Sansha's Nation can't persist. Sani Sabik can't be allowed a foothold. The others can't be allowed to do as they please, either. They have to be destroyed. It has to be done.

... I feel sick.



Also, most indications to date are that the Sleepers are an upload civilization whose infrastructure we're attacking and degrading.

Considering that an upload civilization's physical presence might be nothing but infrastructure, which that civilization depends on to exist ... I'm not sure this is really a better thing to be doing, Mr. Galente.

I know that. I've been largely at peace with it.

... and trying a little bit not to be, because it doesn't seem like a thing humans should be at peace with.

Sansha's Nation-- sure. It needs to be destroyed. That's more like fighting a wildfire than conducting a massacre, anyway.

The Blood Raiders-- sure. I mean, I guess. Sani societies aren't stable. They're not safe, for themselves or anyone around them. The Covenant needs to perish, to be driven into collapse and the remnants hunted.

The others-- the Cartel, the Guristas, the Serpentis-- they're ruthless. They can be brutal and deadly. ... So can we, though.

If I kill a battleship, I'm destroying basically everyone who's standing within about a kilometer of each other, give or take-- and I'm killing them basically because they were standing in that space, which I'm being paid to kill everyone standing in. People whose primary crime is probably just that they were born on the wrong planet.

It's really hard to say that everyone, or probably even most of the people, standing in that space really deserved to die. It's not like they really have all that much of a chance, either. A fleet can be a modest challenge.

I'm okay with being an instrument in others' hands. I'm okay with playing my part, even if that means burning some luckless person's shadow to a wall, then blowing that wall out into space. Or boiling the blood in their veins and the viscera in their bellies. Or slashing them with shrapnel, or delivering a lethal dose of radiation. Even if that means doing that to a million of them. Ten million.

That's what I signed up for when I chose to accept what I am.

But if you look at those numbers without unease, Mr. Ronin ...

... I begin to think, at the end of all this, they'll probably kill us. Our host civilizations will.

And when they do, I don't think we'll have a lot of reason to complain.

Well-- only, industrial capsuleers mostly serve to arm those of us who do.

The whole capsuleer economy's pretty bloody.

It is more than possible to make your way as a capsuleer without engaging in the blind slaughter of billions of baseliner ships crews. I may have killed more people than a reasonably virulent influenza strain, but most of them were crew on a ship that met or exceeded the specfications of my own and was out there, in harm's way, specifically to bring harm to me or those like me.

Maker knows that I have my reasons for not sleeping well at night (the fact that I sleep the sleep of the righteous amongst those reasons) but to say that this HAS to be one of them is incorrect.

Nah, it's something she's aware of, but it doesn't change the basic calculus: right now, we don't have a lot of ways to learn about them other than blowing them up and pawing through the wreckage like hungry procyonids.