Intergalactic Summit

I was and am still a clansman. I grew up knowing everyone in the Enclave, I was educated among my fellows, I enlisted and went through military service and leaving having remembered my fellow crew mates and comrades by name. Including the ones who had died.

So I ended up organising my crew and staff the only way I know how: like a clan or a tribe. I know all of them. I know their reasons for being here and I insist that they must all know what I want from them and what I expect of them. As such, if I do not divulge to them the information they need to decide properly how they will live and die, I'm doing them a great disservice.

They will die. However, I will not have them die ignorant and with regret. That would be irresponsible of me. They will be educated. They will make their best-informed decisions. They will make their peace and they will make their final choice and stick to it without regret. Last thing I need is sabotage due to crew having second thoughts.

Entry Twenty-Nine: Tatters

I knew we'd recovered some people from that last tower Nauplius put up. How many, I didn't know.

Now I have some idea.

Today's day one of what I'm taking as my latest spiritual exercise: trying to nurse some of "the Butcher's" hapless victims back to something resembling physical and mental health. Directrix Aspenstar said something about how this could serve as "Sojourn: Sani Sabik" by way of getting to see them through their works, but she was really tired when she said it.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone so tired.

This whole business is hitting her more than me, I think, even allowing for how much longer she's been coping with it (I only even became aware of the scope of it all yesterday). The medical staff's hit hard, too. It must be so very hard to be someone who believes in a loving deity, a god of light and hope, of salvation for all humankind ... and then to be confronted with this.

It's like watching matter struggle with antimatter. No-- that's not right-- it's ...

Well, it's like watching a generous handful of sefrim struggling to pull souls out of Nauplius's personal vision of hell. After all, Nauplius, by his own words, believes those "given over to destruction"-- IE, Minmatar (and people who are or have been in pleasure hubs, willing or not; potential future jailers for "the Butcher" take note), should be treated and made to live (and die) as though already in hell. It seems he takes his work seriously.

Is it bad that I'm not shocked? ... Nauplius's work is pretty exactly what I expected from Nauplius, so walking into the medical facility at Gottin's Lamp is a little like walking into a scene from my own imaginings. I knew what he was like. I knew what he was capable of. The only thing that takes me aback is just the sheer scale of it all.

I can imagine individual horrors, or a few, or maybe even tens, all at once. Ten thousand is seriously pushing it. That's a statistic, not a scene. Only, if you're standing in the middle of it, it ends up being an event, instead.

It's like the New Eden Symposium or something, only instead of nifty ideas and crowds it's full of oh God he's convulsing get me a sedative, stat!-- YOU! Help me hold him down!

And crowds. Of that.

Mostly it's not actually that bad, though. Vitoc withdrawal symptoms where the doctors haven't quite figured out exactly which variant of the stuff is needed (or are still acquiring / synthesizing same) notwithstanding.

There are a couple cases that really stand out. I might have more to say about that, later. My function is kind of to be a counselor-- to sit with people, and talk, and listen. Help them find their way back out of the nightmare they've been living.

I'm not sure I'm the right person for this job. My perspective's pretty fatalistic for the Amarr (and these people are, broadly speaking, Amarr, as far as their faith and culture go).

I can listen, though. That, I can do a lot of.

I think you're trying to highlight this to the wrong member of the team, Miz. I'm not Veiki. I'm not Che' Biko, either, though.

What's more, I'm well aware that the Amarr would consider it irresponsible to free these people just on account of what they've suffered as slaves. The survivors-- most of them-- will probably spend the rest of their lives in captivity. So will their children, and their children's children.

I know all that. I'm going to help anyway.

Well ... though he's likely to take it otherwise, I don't think this is about him at all, though.

There are a lot of ways of taking all this, but if it ends up being about how awful Nauplius is ... I'll have really blown it.

(I don't even really hate him, after all.)

(And gods, that would be boring.)

I was going to try to set up some sort of metaphor for all this, but it's ended up really unpleasant, so I'm just going to let it be.

See in Lady Aspenstar's fatigue the futility of trying to operate a sizable slave colony without —

• Any prior experience in slave ownership, especially at scale.
• Use of slave control methods: chains, collars, Vitoc, whips, chips, torture, brainwashing, culling of the weak, and sacrifice.

She does have on her side the hanger security from which all of us pilots benefit plus the prior Vitoc addition of most of these slaves; without that, I imagine her quest would be impossible.


An epic therapist you would be if you can manage to reverse my indoctrination by means of talk therapy alone. You do, admittedly, have time on your side, since I can no longer indoctrinate them and you can.

I do, however, question the orthodoxy of Lady Aspenstar in that she permits a non-believer such as you to perform such sensitive work. Will you not lead my slaves not only out of the True Faith, but out even of the wayward and liberal Theology Council's version of the faith?

You are a wasteful fool, Nauplius. Of all the things you listed "brainwashing" is probably the one that has a practical application, the rest is counter-practical and serve only to fuel your need for ritualized sadism.

A proper slave colony is ran through the following methods:

• A strict, well-established hierarchy with the Holder at the top.
• Ideology and rules which apply not to those at the bottom, but to those at the top as well.
• Carrot and stick, preferentially of psychological nature. Only absolutely unruly and violent people may need a TCMC as a method to stop the madness.
• Delegation. Never mind that most of the delegated privileges are imaginary or negilible. People will serve for the rewards, even if they are purely cosmetic. Give people rewards and soon they will form a self-sustaining hierarchy. If all attempts to form a counter-hierarchy with informal leaders at the top are suppressed by the Holder, the colony can essentially manage itself.
• Isolation. If one knows that there is nowhere to run, they will not.

Hint, Nauplius. A proper colony is ran like a corporation, and not like a death camp.

That's (among other reasons) why the Empire exists for many millennia, while your vile heresy shall die with you.

• A hierarchy does exist in my colony: slaves, fairly dumb drones, and me. A Holder is unnecessary; I am Chosen.
• Not even orthodox Amarrians believe the same standards apply to Holders as to filthy Minmatar subhumans.
• Why wait to apply a TCMC when you can just stuff them in across the board and avoid problems in the first place? Furthermore, my colonies do use one "carrot": Vitoc, which makes the slave feel momentary pleasure when dosed. I like this carrot because it degrades and humiliates the slave as much or more than most punishments.
• Delegation is unnecessary when slaves are otherwise motivated. And my slaves do sometimes discipline other slaves when ordered, but they are given no permanent standing for doing this; they do it to avoid punishment and get more Vitoc or because their TCMC and brainwashing tells them to do it; that is enough.
• I agree on the utility of isolation, something hangers provide.

The Empire crumbles; may the Blood Age come quickly. Even so, Amen; Amarr Victor.

Entry Thirty: Error State

In any age, people are awful to each other.

I've been sifting through Nauplius's handiwork for a few days, now. And, the thing that keeps striking me about it all is how commonplace it all is. Unexceptional. Usual. Typical. Banal. This is just a particularly intense concentration of something that exists everywhere you go.

Cruelty doesn't have a country. It doesn't have an ideology, either, really, though I guess some probably lend themselves more to it than others. Humans are a tribal species; we define ourselves in contrast and opposition to others.

It's safe, even preferable, to be cruel to outsiders or out groups. You'll see it in national politics, in neighborhood politics, in circles of adults-- and, maybe most clearly, in children at play.

It's clear to me that this isn't an error state for humanity. It's a factory setting, probably rooted deep in our evolutionary history. Some time, somewhere, this was a quality that helped us survive.

It's a feature.

I think it's an error state for civilization, though. The first purpose of being "civilized," after all, is to keep our cruelty in check-- to bind us together into larger circles, delegitimize violence towards people who just happen to look or talk a little differently.

To persuade us not to be too much the animals we are.

So something like this....

It's not like Nauplius is unique at all, or strange. He's only anomalous in that he's taken civilization and flipped the whole idea on its head: civilization as a cause for cruelty, in service to cruelty.

Maybe in places it's necessary to define others as "outside": rival civilizations, for example. But it seems like the goal there has to be to suppress the conflict rather than the people. Otherwise, the civilization begins to undercut its own purpose and promise. Once that process begins, the tendency will be to continue it.

The gravity, here, isn't towards greater unity. It's towards ourselves, what we are, at base: animals.

Recognizing and making allowance for that is just being realistic. Letting civilization turn towards the service of division and cruelty, rather than their diminution, though....

That's a betrayal of its basic purpose. A misstep in pursuing the major project of giving us nifty toys and getting us not to kill each other. An error.

But everyone ends up doing it, at least at the margins. People make mistakes-- all the moreso when the mistake is just doing something that comes naturally to us ...

... and building a tower to celebrate it.

And that, Mr. Nauplius, is why you are an obstacle.

To a united, peaceful, human civilization.