Intergalactic Summit

Well, it depends. Me? I was originally crafted for that. The Republic footed the bill for my transformation to a capsuleer, and purging deadspace infestations of pirates and the odd enemy faction spy posts or rogue drones was what was expected of me - and it paid well enough for me to keep doing it for a long time. My story most likely isn't unique, in fact I'd expect a lot of other capsuleers started out this way, until they found some other paths to follow.

While I most certainly do not agree with just about anything with Pilot Ronin, I wouldn't be so crass as to outright dismiss dispatching baseliner ships as nothing of value - you might have distanced yourself so far of what it is to be a baseliner, that you might forget that they are still very real threats to other baseliners - that is to say, around 99.98% of empire navies and planetary populations. Tens of battleships are still something to contend with because of sheer firepower alone, no matter how skilled you are or how advanced modules you have outfitted your vessel with - and even more terrifying to a baseliner fleet or settlement.

You described us as "undead."

Usually I try to avoid analogizing our situation to fiction or folklore (that was kind of my predecessor's hobby), but, that argument of yours kind of got my head going in terms of what I think it would actually maybe kind of apply to. Aside from the Drifters, Sansha's Nation is the other leading candidate for an "army of the undead." ... Maybe the better one, complete with the ugliest qualities associated with fictional necromancy-- perpetual, deathless enslavement and so on.

("There is no death in Nation." Gods, I hope that was just marketing. If I'm ever about to be taken by the Nation, I'd really appreciate it if someone could shoot me in the head.)

The Drifters are maybe closer to the kind of folklore you find in multiple cultures about vengeful ghosts, or demons inhabiting the bodies of the dead.

One thing about shooting at slavers...is that you're probably going to hit their slaves.
Again you're slaughtering our people, "Matar Ronin".

Well, at least you've got the giving speeches part covered. Maybe you should start doing your holy mission on a level a bit more advanced than an academy rookie now. Maybe then you'll have more luck in this measuring contest.I'm sure we can find a qualified person with a ruler - probably don't ask an amarrian until after the coronation - to help you out there.

I have in fact opened escape pods and brought newly-freed slaves aboard, and passed them on to Gradient, whose excellent resettlement programs are the most worthwhile endeavor in the cause of Matari freedom that I have ever heard of.
As you understand only all-bloodshed-all-the-time, you would not understand what I do.

I think we might have some differences on how we approach the topic of 'the undead'. I personally believe that an 'undead' simply refers to a being who can be killed but only under very specific conditions. Otherwise, he just keeps on coming back. This sets the 'undead' apart from 'immortal'. Undead may seem immortal, but he can actually die. Some varieties might even die multiple times. The problem is he just keeps on coming back unless killed with very specific methods and very specific conditions. In our case, we are tethered to the living realm by the means of technology, our spirit transmuted into data, sent to a database and then be routed back to a new body. Destroy this tether and we will be gone for good. An immortal is nigh on unkillable.

I do not really consider the undead to have to be malevolent. After all, I am from a culture where we believe we can invoke our ancestors for guidance, the First Elders being the logical conclusion on the subject.

Personally, I identify as a physically manifested information simulacrum.

Edit: At least that way, life can be viewed more like an existential novel where there exists a choice between being either participant or observer.

@fakeveik

No; we're not properly dead. I do think we're properly alive, though.

Mr. Egivand, what we're discussing now is pretty literally semantics-- what words most precisely describe our situation, and the meanings of those words.

I avoid "undead" because (like "monster") it comes loaded with negative connotations. Whether you, personally, can argue those away for your own use doesn't signify-- it's not your opinion of us that concerns me. The idea of the capsuleer as a monster is deeply tied up in other ideas, both of those horrified by our actions and those who look at us as empty, soulless vessels-- spiritual abominations. And also, in places, ideas we hold, ourselves.

My predecessor identified as an "infomorph," an informational entity. Those who have been in this business long enough might remember her essays on the topic, the "Children of Naught"-- and where it all led. She saw herself as a kumiho, a deadly, shapeshifting magical beast that subsists on human organs. She took guidance from that idea.

What is "right" for such a being? What is "right" for humans confronted with one?

For my own part-- I'm a living person, and see neither need nor purpose in drawing some kind of bright line between me and humanity.

I have some advantages, sure. If I were to be shot dead this moment, another me would shortly wake up. She'd lack some of my memories, but she'd be human, too-- just, maybe not quite the same person. Someone I was not long ago, rather than someone I am right now. If I die in my pod, the transfer's more immediate, the copy more exact: what wakes up is basically me, the current me, with a prosthetic body.

But, you see, humans have been doing stuff like this since the first crutch or cane or walking stick-- using artifice to replace parts of ourselves we'd lost, whether that's a little strength and mobility, an entire limb, or, now, an entire body. It's just technology doing what technology does: expanding our capabilities in one way or another.

Cloning is a tool. It's not magic. It's nothing innate to us. It's just another tool.

As a separate being, I've only existed for only a little over a year and a half. That's how far back my memories go. In a way, I'm a child of this technology-- I wouldn't have existed at all without it.

I don't think of myself as a monster for much the same reason I don't think of myself as an empty puppet without a soul: because, to me, it's obviously not true. If it were, then that kind of being is all I'd ever have been, from the very first memory I have.

I don't feel like I could be anything so sad. My mind can be a little dark, and I'm clearly capable of awful things (sometimes to degrees that scare me), but-- I'm too happy to be alive, and feel too many connections to the people I meet, to think of myself as something inhuman.

In the final accounting, I don't accept that kind of narrative because it doesn't really speak to life as I've experienced it. It hasn't been true for me, so, for me, it can't possibly be right.

Subjective, of course. But in the end, my own point of view is all I have. It's the only perspective I actually see the world from; all others are filtered through.

Pilot Jenneth said :

Quote:

Mr. Ronin's insistence on referring to the Amarr as the "slavery cult" is a slightly-diminished version of this. He doesn't believe in peace, so, he does his best to make peace seem like foolishness in the words he chooses, reducing an ancient, deeply complicated, technologically-advanced culture to the taking of humans as property and non-rational dedication to that cause. Never mind that few Amarr resemble the portrait he paints very closely.

On what do you base your statement that I don't believe in peace?

On what do you base your statement I try my "best to make peace seem like foolishness"?

Reducing old technologically advanced barbarians to the very essence of what they are, slavery cultists, is not only accurate it is completely fair.

Few amarrians resemble the portrait? Just who do you think are holding the billions of Minmatar in slavery? The tooth fairy?

Pilot Jenneth you are clearly in a self induced state of denial, human slavery is an abomination before any just God and by any humane standard, and if you really think otherwise put a slave collar on yourself and go serve the slavery cultists for a few decades and see how you like the religious enlightenment it brings you. Then enslave your family members, and their future descendants for the next nine generations and tell me how benign it all is.

You think slavery isn't so bad only because it isn't happening to you or yours.

It is as I knew, you had nothing to support your statements. You of course can not defend the indefensible in regard to the barbarian slavery cultists.

It seems you need to better understand the difference between being civilized and being a technologically advanced barbarian. It might also serve your personal development to understand that a person who passionately fights for liberty & justice is in no way the enemy of peace. Without liberty & justice there is only the lack of combat not peace for those enslaved. Peace is possible when factions come together in honesty to address the wrongs of the oppressed and reconcile them in a no longer warlike manner. The Matari are the experts on peace in the New Eden Cluster having successfully implemented it longer than the other cultures in the cluster prior to the day of darkness.

Real peace is something worth fighting for because it embraces an obtainable sustainable positive outcome for all sides in a dispute. You seem to have surrender or conquest confused with peace, they are not even close to being the same.