EVE Fiction

And the reason we humans need government is because we are unable or unwilling to govern our own affairs. And so we pass the responsibility on to an elected or appointed representative. One who is ultimately no more capable than we ourselves.

We designate ourselves commensurate with creation itself, decrying the creator as a lie, which enables tyrannical despots to place themselves in the position for themselves.

Good intentions pave the way to hell...

The idea that "GOD" gave us inalienable rights is not to validate a religious pathway, it is to give us the sure understanding that no MAN may take these rights away. I would most assuredly stand up for anyone's inalienable rights, giving my life in their defense were it to become neccesary. Substitute any word that fits for "GOD" if you will. The sentiment remains.

I reject the notion that anyone knows what is "good for me", beyond me. I reject the idea that a Utopian society could be based upon anything beyond individual liberty and responsibility. When you say you have a better way, I must assume you a fool or a would be tyrant.

When you say I must give up my ability to defend myself, so that I can be safer in my home or my hometown, I wonder what exactly your agenda truly is. Because it is not the safety of myself or my peers. And so, I would again contend, the Federation is far from Utopian in any sense of the meaning of the word.

\/ Liked for sarcastic content...

I feel inclined to provide my experience in this area as it'll help explain the over all picture from the Sansha angle.

Naqam was the first Sansha corporation I joined and the biggest Sansha entity I knew of for its time Their established story and public relations focused on the tragedy of the Nation's downfall, the 'true slave mistake', and public appeasement with our 'truly humane utopian goals'. This was not the entirety of Naqam's senior membership's intention, but it was the story thus far presented.

For the duration of Naqam, this approach gave character and color to the otherwise 'Borg' Sansha's Nation. Izzychan, Silver Night, Carcosa Hali, and others in the corporation added flavor to the Nation with their different focuses on the Nation as an entity. This was the general state of affairs until the resurgence of the Live Events.

When the Live Events rolled around, rumors of activity from Sansha's Nation drew my attention immediately. I was very quick to jump onto their boat by getting in touch with the actor characters as I could, and re-activating the True Slave Foundations. Independent of Naqam, I wanted to see what the Nation's activity now meant and what I would have to do to fall in line with what ever their mission statement was.

The revival of the Nation threw out years of political conservatism and appeasement that Naqam had built up. The Nation made it very clear it survived, it rebuilt, and it was pissed. I was quite happy to follow this new line of the story for it fell into what I originally envisioned for my first draft of Sansha roleplay : survivors that wanted revenge. Yet as things unfolded, the intellectual intrigue of the Nation's character came through.

While it is easy to say the Nation is simply hell-bent on revenge, those who delve into its intrigue can discover a much more complicated driving force. Sansha Kuvakei isn't simply a scorned dictator in charge of a mindless, hyper-advanced drone army. He's a radically deranged intellectual whose bought into his own messianic propaganda. He genuinely believes in the goals he has set forth and he genuinely involves himself in them. He wants to reshape the world into his perfect Nation for a human utopia.

His methods can be argued of course, but I digress...

The Live Events and the precursor to Incursion all brought this forth, and it helped shine light into the murky abyss of Sansha's Nation. The Nation can easily be considered a one dimensional villain, and I do think presentation of its entire self is ... lacking. Those without experience in the area or an ability to study the history of the Sansha have a great deal of trouble finding its 'redeeming' aspects. For new players and even many regulars, it is still 'The Borg', and the work of those who tried to make it otherwise isn't seen or heard.

Yet the Nation was always this to these people anyway. Those who didn't delve into the intrigue still see the Nation as they always have. The Borg, The Weekly Big Bad, and so forth. Incursion merely brings this problem into clarity - the average consumer has no accessible means of finding out more of the pirate factions. It is always presented as the one dimensional villain on the big screen.

The nature of game mechanics furthers this problem, because the integrity of the story must be bent to satisfying game mechanics. The Nation has any number of tools at its disposal to make Incursions truly horrifying and dangerous. It can even do something as simple as copying player hot-drops with devastating results. That isn't followed through because it isn't balanced. The feature doesn't sell, and it becomes very bad for game health. There are many tears as it is when Live Event actors do this, let alone an automated feature.

The result of course is the very common communal perception the Nation is a moronic entity. It isn't scary, there isn't any danger to it. "Oh look the Sansha have come around again to line my pockets". It's bent over and broken in half by game balancing. Does anyone see high sec Incursion gate camps that actually, you know, murder all the freighters and rag-tag fleets that come through?

This is my issue with the nature of the story in the game, particularly around Sansha's Nation. Live events and the storyline of Incursion have done tremendous to developing it, yet its presentation is neither wholly complete nor logically obeyed. The only avenues of exploring outside the Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain aspects are not well developed and 'Big Bad Power Houses' are the neighborhood weenie. One can argue the hype of Incursion further complicated the latter problem, but conversely can also protest that Incursions were not designed threateningly at all...

As a whole, the story development is good - the juicy fat is in the little details hidden by the screen. The bad is how difficult it can be to find for the average consumer, and the cognitive dissonance that exists between story and game world. Faction loyalty, 'strong NPCs', threatening villains; they're all laughed at because the game doesn't give them teeth. As an analogy, if this were a D&D game: the GM has players fighting each other. Strangely, the world the GM has built is afraid of doing anything to the players.

tl;dr - Sansha's Nation got good development. Poorly demonstrated/conveyed. Crystallizes dissonance between public selling and story integrity.

lol huge post

I think that you're focusing far too much on one article, one article, incidentally, which both contradicts itself (forex, the Caldari aren't racists, but do discriminate by ethnicity. WTF?), and previous lore. I'm frustrated by a pretty long history of the Caldari State getting turned from what you just stated into essentially a designated villain for the mary-sue-topia of the Gallente Federation to beat up on in terms of moral values.

I don't know if you read my (truncated due to space restrictions) list of PF attacks on your faction. What's more, I could have made the list half again as long if I'd had the time and inclination. There is no shortage of PF depicting the Caldari as greedy, incompetent, evil, corrupt, and incapable of success without outside help. If you disagree, I can only conclude that you haven't taken the time to read all of the PF. Read TEA. Read through the past few years of news items. Read Ruthless, and Templar One, and The Burning Life, and The History of the Gallente Federation, and take note of how often the Caldari get portrayed as selfish, barbaric, and excelling only in the area of killing civilians.

And take note of how the Federation is portrayed. When it fails, it's typically the result of some outsider (usually the ebil Caldari) gratuitously attacking them. When it succeeds, it's because of its own values, its tremendously capable citizenry basking in the light of freedom and social equality. The absolute worst thing The Burning Life can say about the Federation is that it's essentially too glitzy and focused on show. Oh my, how terrible. And, moreover, the only way its enemies can prevail against it is by traitors or accident - it's never that another civilization was just damn better at something. I could make a list for them as I did for the Caldari, but twice as long and opposite in nature. I will note that the Gallente epic arc mission is a glaring exception. There are one or two others that I could also name, but then, there are one or two bright spots for the Caldari, too. It's the overall portrayal that I'm upset about, and I haven't come to this conclusion without a fairly extensive knowledge of the lore.

If we wanted to bring the Federation down to the level of everyone else - because even the Minmatar don't get the kid gloves like this - we'd need stories, and a lot of them, about corruption in the Federation, crony capitalism, vote buying, abuses of minorities, religious violence between factions within the country, corporations using political influence to destroy the property and lives of others, government agents using their power to do the same, giant bureaucracies serving only themselves, welfare recipients getting paid to not work, needy people starving and homeless, the government trying to control the media, and on and on. You know, the things that actually occur in real democracies, but are somehow absent from the Federation. I sure would like to know what the Federation's secret is, because if I could find it out, I'd be the best president this world has ever seen.

I agree with what Pieter has said.

Also, Vikarion, human history and nature is self-contradicting and paradoxical. That's the way it is. Stop basing all your arguments off of TEA as well. TonyG isn't with CCP anymore.

What people need to understand is that things are naturally going to swing back and forth, such is the way of things.

New Eden, by design is dark, dystopian, cut throat and filled with a million shades of grey. There is good and bad in all four of the major powers, and indeed in all of the pirate factions and sub-factions. Sometimes one of those shades will come to the surface and persist for a while, before moving with the ebb and flow, and being swallowed up by something fresh (but not always pleasant).

There's a lot going on behind the scenes, and we're planning a lot for the next 6 months. There are a lot of things that may be considered "wrong" to some roleplayers that are going on, and this has been the case for the last few years. I know, I was very active EVE Roleplayer until mid October last year, and have been such since a week after release. I suppose I still am, just in a different respect.

It's going to be awesome to see how people react over the next 6 months. There's going to be a lot of spilled blood, a lot of those "wrongs" put right, but in the same respect, the actions of a few are going to open up a whole can of worms for everyone.

Stay the course, times are changing.

double post

The I-RED alliance has maybe six RPers total and they don't make decisions for IC reasons. If you can point me to any other thriving Caldari Liberal or Practial Corporation I'd be very grateful.

WHG and LDIS are both Patriot aligned and both can rarely even count a dozen actual players behind their characters. I've also seen a few FW corps and alliances that have RP sounding names and RP fluff in their descriptions but don't actually RP.

The handful of other corps i know of out there are one, maybe two players with multiple accounts. Your 'doing just fine' seems like a long, drawn out death throe to me.