Intergalactic Summit

I think what you meant to say was when the Amarrian Empire conquered the Minmatar Empire... oh wait, I forgot how the Republic likes to revise history to suit the present.

Always wondered where Blaque got it from...




Really? Tell it to Abel Jerek.



As for Sarum... my family is looking forward to bidding in the auction of whatever left of his estate when his little plan reaches it's inevitable conclusion. We're not particularly rich, but I've got a hunch it will be quite the clearance sale.

As sickening as it may be, I actually agree with you, though I am inclined to think it is the latter. Roden didn't say whether or not the Gallente would get involved, merely that he would disapprove of Amarr's actions and that -we- would retaliate.




I haven't seen one bit of praise for the Federation from my cousins, and certainly not from myself. It remains to be seen if the Federation even will assist those they call "ally" in this matter.




The battlefield changed with the signing of the peace-treaty. The real war never ended, and that war is the war for the freedom of our people, all our people.

And once again the heathen prove me to be in the right. I hope my fellow Faithful take note.

Katran,

You're making people with this hair cut look bad.

Can you not?

So you admit to failing her? Shame on you. How dare you to speak to such a fine warrior as the Shaman Surionen with that tongue? Strike that wagging organ from your body, whelp.

You have proven yourself nugatory and pungent. May you not sallow this woman again until you can show the strength, the conviction and the compassion to apply your full self in bringing her into the light you so hold to in your beliefs.

We will see precisely how strong your faith is, child.

I'm not sure which possibility I find more physically sickening - the possibility that you know what you're saying is false and simply regurgitate it to please people who are transparently using you to further their own interests, or the possibility that your outlook on the world is so fundamentally damaged that you genuinely believe what you're saying. One paints you as an individual so thoroughly twisted and evil you'd sell out your own kin for a pat on the head - the other presents you as a desperately ill product of a seven-hundred year campaign of abuse and brainwashing.

The Empire does not have the best interests of the Minmatar at heart, and there is no point in history at which they have. The Amarrian religion - a long series of falsehoods based upon the worship of a demonstrably fictional entity - has, since the age of the first Reclaiming at latest - arguably earlier - always been a tool to keep the Amarrian elite in power. The Udorians were a more open and prosperous society with more social mobility, and the sheer attractiveness of that concept to those Athran commoners who had long dwelt under the Empire's oppressive bureaucracy meant that the Empire was losing influence and citizens to those who sought a more attractive way of life.

They couldn't have that, so they reinterpreted religious scriptures to give them ownership over the Udorian people. But they didn't stop there - the Athrans decided they were entitled stewardship over reality itself. And it all went from there.

The Minmatar Empire committed no crime or trespass against the Amarr Empire short of simply being there. They never "turned away from God" - there was no God to turn away from. The first they'd ever heard of the Amarrian God was when they were being dragged onto slave ships in its name. The Minmatar never asked for nor needed Amarrian "salvation" - they were doing fine on their own, and before you start spewing tired metaphors about children and medicine, the Minmatar were and are not children (despite the best efforts of the Empire to erase their culture and make them utterly dependent on the Imperial teat). They had colonised three seperate star systems by the time the Amarr found them.

No matter how many sordid justifications you throw at us, it doesn't change the fact that the Amarrian religion is just that - it's all about them. The Great Houses are all Amarrian (consider the irony - the Khanid people don't even get to be the heads of a royal house that bears their own name!), every Emperor in the history of the Empire has been Amarrian. The vast majority of Holders are Amarrian, and the religion itself claims that the Amarrians are the chosen of God, granted stewardship over every last grain of dust in the cosmos. Not only that, but they've gotten other races to willingly shill for them, despite the fact that - of course - they get very little tangible benefit from the affair. No, of course, they're reaping the spiritual rewards - at least, they are according to the Amarrians, who are of course the only people qualified to judge such things. Why? Because they wrote a book that says so. Now, these spiritual benefits might not be very tangible in this life, but honestly, you'll thank me when you die. How do you know you can trust me? I'm an Amarrian, and this book my people wrote says I'm inherenty the best kind of person! Would I lie to you?

There was an Intaki I once met - his name escapes me, unfortunately - who said it best. "What's the difference between a cult and a religion? In a cult, there's a guy at the top who knows it's a scam. In a religion, that guy is dead." I'm not sure precisely where that places the Amarrian faith. With people like Zaragram Ardishapur and Jamyl Sarum - given that the Emperor is essentially the spiritual leader of the religion as well as the head of state - could profitably say that they're at least vaguely aware that the entire machinery of religion can be turned to the benefit of one person, but Zaragram in the past and Jamyl in the present both had an unfortunate tendency towards sampling their own product and believing their own lies.

In reality, Kernher, The Reclaiming serves - and has always served - only two true goals. Firstly, it gives the lower echelons of Amarrian society an external target against which to focus their aggression so they won't become cozignant of the fact that the upper echelons of Amarrian society are screwing them. Secondly, it acts to eliminate cultural alternatives to the Empire, which are by neccessity a threat to its hegemony.

You're quite literally a tool. You've been sold up the river with the illusion of salvation and now you'll help spread those lies because you're addicted to them - that Intaki friend of mine also used to say "religion is the only addiction that needs to hook other people to maintain the high."

We have always been clear on our intention to bring everyone under the protection of the Amarran Faith.

Reclaiming does not necessarily require military force, however, and we spent the last century trying to open the door to a peaceful reclaiming rather than a military one.

The Empire kept faith to its treaty; it was the Republic that chose to abandon the option of peaceful relations in its duplicitous attack on the Empire.

"Rejection of cultural norms" was included in my growth only because I chose to include it. It was not something that was given to me. It was something I had to create and take and fight for on my own.

Give themselves over to God? That's not the issue, Samira. We'd rather die than be enslaved. We'd rather die than have our identity taken from us.

If they'd offered "God" to us on our terms, then maybe we'd have followed. Or maybe we wouldn't have. But we'd have been able to choose our path. We would've been free.

If you and your masters pursue this course of forcing us, either you and they will be destroyed or you will be complicit in the destruction of your people. Either way, you will have failed at "saving" us. You have a choice to make, Samira. Choose wisely.

Actually, the Elder Fleet weren't operating under the auspisces of the Republic, and the Empire had been breaking the treaty for at least the entirety of the capsuleer decade and most likely beforehand as well.


So essentially what you're saying is "the results of a democratic election aren't valid if we don't like who got elected." While we're on the subject, we're talking about an election in the Minmatar Republic - why does the fact that the Empire is not a democratic country have any relevance to that whatsoever?


I'm not Gallente.