Intergalactic Summit

Which raises another point: why is the Empire so scared of change? Surely, as an enlightened society, social change would be a wonderful example of your progressiveness.

Instead, you fight tooth-and-nail to maintain the status quo.

Why is that?

Frell, my ship can barely fit what it's already got. There's no way it could run a cargo scanner.

Any attempt to evade accountability for your actions, even resorting to the juvenile "They did it too!" 'excuse'.

You thought the Sigil had abducted Matari on it, correct? Why did you open fire? Completely aside from actually knowing what was on board, even if your assumption was correct you still opened fire.

I don't get it. As someone raised a soldier I've come to know that even a child is able to accept one simple rule about war:

'War is ugly and there is no place for moral high ground in it.'

So, once this rule is understood, there is no need to try to shove off responsibility to the other side. Still, people do it again and again and again. After a while, the chatter matters more to them than the lives lost and the deeds done. Maybe it's because they need to convince themselves that they fight a clean fight. Maybe it's because they have no way to atone for the ugly things that need to be done in a war and the even uglier things that didn't, but which still just happened.

Whatever it is, my father taught me, that those crying loudest that it's all the other side's fault and that they are free of blame are the ones prone to committing the most monstrous deeds. My experience says, he's been right. Probably, because after a while those people start to believe their own voices and think whatever they do, they are justified. But then, war starts where justified action ends. I don't want to get into the thought that this - the fact that every other course of action that can be justified has been tried to no avail - is what can justify a war. Truth is, war is rarely justified but oftentimes inavertible.

Now, the real problem from the perspective of the war isn't that this behavior is immoral or something like that. The problem for the professional soldier is, that someone who thinks he's justified in whatever he's doing stops to think about what he's doing. And that leads to ineffectiveness. If you want to prevent people being taken from where they live, shooting them seems to be a pretty solution - no one can take dead people away to make them live somewhere else, no?

Problem is, these are the people one wanted to keep safe from unwanted interference in the first place, no? In truth, the best thing that a soldier can achieve isn't victory in war - it is peace. For only peace allows us to achieve those goals in a meaningful and lasting way.

I'm not trying to claim the moral high ground here. As I said, there's no place for that in war and this is true for us Amarr as much as anyone else. We did it as much as anyone else did it and is doing it. It's part of human nature, it seems. Those parts we blame in our foes and deny in ourselves. I think it's be much healthier though, if we all tried to start with ourselves, accept those parts within ourselves and work on those, before blaming others.

If we all would take a breath one time more often and try to bring light into the darkness of our own shadow, we perhaps could manage to make this world a better place. Shooting the ones we blame for our failings, shooting the ones we blame for their failings... this won't change much, this is what's going on for millennia and it's not going to change the world now.

My solace is, it won't make this world any worse.

Said like a true liberator and warrior for the people. So being ordered to work in a mine is abhorrent and subhuman yet being ordered to kill innocent people is "collateral damage". Interesting notion of freedom you Matari have. Slavery is slavery regardless of the flag your master flies.



This lies at the feet of the TLF, no one else. Even your conscience knows "My CO made me do it" doesn't absolve you.

650 lives, actually. Still no explanation for the destruction of the Sigil. What was careless was the lack of target discrimination. I don't care if it was being piloted by the Empress' Royal Guard, if they honestly thought the Sigil was carrying abductees then they should've held their fire, yet they didn't. They can't afford to quibble about what they're shooting at.

Quoted from my CO:

'And they wouldn't have been there if you hadn't taken them. We had no knowledge of them being on board until after your fleets destruction. However, had you left them where they were, they would have been safer. Not 'safe', because they are living in an occupied system. But 'safer' than they were [i]in space. Where people shoot each other.'


That should clarify matters somewhat.

Now forgive me if I'm short, as I've had some drinks. But if the Amarrians hadn't done anything in the first place, there wouldn't be an issue at all. That's all this entire damned conflict is about.


The Amarr invaded hundreds of years ago, and through abuse and brainwashing have genuinely convinced some Matari that the Empire is a good place to be, and then claim these people as their own. Would the ancestors of both groups considered this to be the case? Some eight-hudnred years ago, would a True Amarrian have looked upon a Brutor and said "This is a man of the Empire"? Surely not; he would have said "This is a man from outside of the Empire; he is not of the Empire". Likewise, the Brutor would have looked at the True Amarrian and said "I am not of your Empire; I am of my Tribe".

At what point does this change? Only when your interests, Amarrian, are threatened. You are too ashamed to admit your crimes. Yes. Crimes.

It is not fair that you can invade, enslave, slaughter, and ****, and then turn around and whine about "innocent lives being lost or risked". Are you ******* kidding me?! Get back down into mud holes you dirty rotten ******* pigs. Stay out of our space entirely.

Please do provide us with quotes for this assumption, especially the part where Heiderans reforms were revoked.

And, no, to everyone who likes to think so, Silas Vitalia is not the empress - so stop being ridiculous about her very personal opinion.

“The essence of war is violence. Moderation in war is imbecility.” - ancient proverb