A bit of analysis: Posleen War

[PeZook]

That's kind of staggeringly dumb to the point of how could they ever be an advanced civilization, which is a reason why I don't bother with books like this thank god.

They actually aren't, they're more like a locust horde, given the (automated) tools they needed to wreck people's shit by their creators and set loose upon the galaxy. They are even managed by an AI system which rewards them for going down to planets and fighting, which explains a lot of why they don't just wreck factories: the Net gives huge rewards to god-kings who capture important facilities.

So basically they're like, I don't know...playing this huge MMO, only with real guns and where failure could mean getting used as a mineclearer by more powerful peers of yours

[Simon_Jester]

Now that I think about it, it does sound a lot like an MMO. Specifically, it sounds like some of the things I've heard about EVE... possibly with the Posleen cast as the GoonSwarm?

[Sea Skimmer]

They actually aren't, they're more like a locust horde, given the (automated) tools they needed to wreck people's shit by their creators and set loose upon the galaxy. They are even managed by an AI system which rewards them for going down to planets and fighting, which explains a lot of why they don't just wreck factories: the Net gives huge rewards to god-kings who capture important facilities.

So basically they're like, I don't know...playing this huge MMO, only with real guns and where failure could mean getting used as a mineclearer by more powerful peers of yours

AI = Artificial Imbecilic?

Like I was saying, cripple the power plants and you knock out all the industry without damaging it, or at least not heavily. Some oil refineries and other sensitive factories might explode themselves. Afterwards only a fraction of the power stations even need to be repaired, since you can just deny power to non industrial functions as long as is required, like lighting in the houses of human slaves. Crippling global power would basically force people into surrendering in the long run anyway, because lack of fuel would collapse global food production and just as importantly, distribution.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah, I don't think the AI is programmed to be a good strategist.

I don't know who's supposed to have written it and why, to tell the truth. If the programmers actually intended the Posleen to attack the Galactics, it's probably written with an eye to fighting on Galactic planets, where there's no effective, sustained military resistance- at most, a small amount of fighting against whatever poorly conceived and poorly handled weapons the Darhel and company came up with, the systematic slaughter of a large helpless population, followed by the capture of immense amounts of high-tech plunder.

Now drop them on a primitive world where the infrastructure is mostly useless, and where that infrastructure is being constantly used to churn out crude yet brutally effective weapons for killing Posleen day after day. If the AI is still modeling the planet like it was a Galactic planet, the Posleen are going to be in big trouble.

About the only thing I know gets targeted by the orbital bombardment is actual surface-to-space weapon installations.

[Ahriman238]

And obvious military bases.

The Posleen Datanet is odd, like most of their technology it is inherited form their creators, the Aldenata and generally poorly understood. For one, it acts like a vast database, where every planet, foe, and tactic encountered by the Posleen is recorded. But it has no index or search engine, so massaging data out of it is hard, and mostly done my God-kings who are willing to put in the long effort for incertain rewards. This is probably one reason the Darhel can leak data to the Posleen and be confidant it won't be traced back to them.

The Net is also the AI previously mentioned. It's supposed to be an objective judge to decide how the spoils of war are divided, and is credited for keeping the Posleen from turning on each other and destroying worlds before they're even done conquering them. However, the Posleen have mythologized enough of their history, and the workings of the Net that few understand the rubric it uses.

Because the Net can strip a God-king of his status for cowardice, most God-kings assume the Net values courage and mighty acts of war (hence the personal, infantry combat) and the results of over time can seem to bear that out. In point of fact, the Net rewards results and effciency. So if 2 God-Kings get similar results, the one who either took less casulties, or had a smaller command will get a larger share of the plunder. A few God-kings over time have figured out how to game the system, but they aren't going to tell everyone else how to do it. It isn't until the last 2 books that Tulo pulls together all the smart God-kings and has them pool information that this becomes generally known.

Might have been interesting to see what the Posleen would do with that information if they'd won. It would probably transform their doctrine into something saner, anyways.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, Tulo was a relatively competent strategist anyway- he had a concept of combat engineering, of operational planning, even of having a staff. He seemed to be at least moderately imaginative and willing to innovate, too. Which is not to say he was a military genius by human standards, but he wasn't a total dimwit or an ork warboss in centaur form.

[CaptainChewbacca]

We havn't seen the last of Tulo. If you read the end of 'Eye of the Storm' you see that the Indowwy have gone back to him and asked for the assistance of the 'reformed' posleen to fight the Hedren war. I predict a few battleglobes will be joining the allies, as insane as that might sound.

[Ahriman238]

We havn't seen the last of Tulo. If you read the end of 'Eye of the Storm' you see that the Indowwy have gone back to him and asked for the assistance of the 'reformed' posleen to fight the Hedren war. I predict a few battleglobes will be joining the allies, as insane as that might sound.

We certainly haven't.

I got bored with Honor of the Clan so decided to skip a bit and read 'the Hero' which is actually really short, it only took a day. The story is set 1,000 years after the Posleen War, and features Tirdal san Rintal, one of the few Darhel to join the traditionally human-dominated military.

Before I get into the history and hardware I offer this disclaimer, John Ringo, after embracing this book has retroactively declared it non-cannon because the Darhel are alive as second-class citizens and this contradicts the epilogue to Watch on the Rhine, where a human fleet attacks a Darhel world and our heroes clearly want to kill off every man, woman and child. I do not consider these differences irreconcilable, it is possible that cooler heads prevailed or they found themselves unable to follow through on genocide when the Darhel surrendered. Anyway, Ringo disavows this book, make of it what you will.

After the humans overthrow the Darhel, they rechristen the Galactic Federation the Solar Systems Alliance (SSA) I'm not sure that anything signifigant changed besides the name and who was on top of the food chain, because the book has a very tight focus on a small group, and no scene takes place within the SSA.

Earth, and later Barwhon, were eventually cleared entirely of Posleen through the simple expedient of developing enough of a population to scour every. single. meter. of the surface. That's pretty impressive. I don't think we could do that now. We do know from the Cally books that Africa made a quick recovery as surviving zoos released their animals into the wild and lions found Posleen to their liking. The elephants also developed a habit of stepping on any Posleen eggs they could find, and bull rushing any Posleen they could see or scent.

Anyway, after all this, Earth went back to 'business as usual' meaning stringent enviromental protection and gun laws. And, because they are morons, tried to enforce the same on worlds where the Posleen are still very much a problem. This eventually led most of the Blight Worlds, unwilling to give up their god-given right to automatic antimatter weapons, to secede and form the Islendian Confederacy, the home to our heroes. This happened about 3-400 years before the story.

Anytime this history is brought up, the mentats are thanked for playing neutral peacekeepers throughout the revolution. They say that if the Islendians had access to GalTech (still vastly superior to human-made, even a millenia later) the SSA would have taken them seriously enough to start glassing planets. As it is, they never made it to that stage before the SSA decided preserving the union was more trouble than it was worth.

Incidently, the military and diplomatic genius who pulled off the revolution was named Parker Sunday. What a small universe these people live in.

The SSA values the Confederacy (which is sometimes randomly referred to as the Republic for no discernable reason) as a buffer state between it and the Tular Posleen (yep, Tulo's group is going strong and have made amends, but relations still turn frosty sometimes) and whatever else is 'out there.' The Islendians meanwhile, don't have many other people to trade with, so they're not too upset with the SSA.

However, these rugged frontier types (Who Made Am-.... Islendia!) have noticed something odd about the people of Mother Earth. Over time, they're slowly becoming ever more insular, nonviolent, and philosophically inclined. This is probably the result of the Indowy programs to "civilize" humanity in the Cally books. What it means in the immediate sense is that they're no help at all in the present crisis, being increasingly uninterested in war as a concept, and in "regional conflicts" as a whole.

The Confederacy (that is sometimes a Republic) has a very limited number of ACS.

The new alien menace, the Tslek, are gray, amorphus blobs about the size of a small car. They get around on pseudopods, communicate telepathically, and no one has a clue how, or if, they see or otherwise sense their enviroment well-enough to navigate it. They have rough technical parity with the Confederacy/SSA, are equally intelligent about using the things they have, security and other things, and their hearts (assuming they have an equivalent) are incapable of any emotion save malevolence and the vindictive pleasure of seeing their enemies die horribly.

They are also invisible to the unit's tracking device, which sniffs out chemical traces, sweat, hormones and finds bits of DNA left here and there.

But the Blobs are just set pieces here. The DRT (uh, something recon team) unit that Tirdal is attached to infiltrates a bug-dominated world to sniff around and see if it could be a major staging ground for the Blobs. They do find an enemy stronghold, except that it's all a hologram and is really a single enemy in a hut. Spooked, the team records everything and bugs out, only to stumble upon the ruins of an Aldenata facility, with an artifact.

Tirdal recognizes the artifact as a lindai, a remote control for the mechanism that induces lintatai in Darhel, but says nothing. The captain figures an Aldenata artifact with a power source is worth a cool billion credits. Rather than settle for an 8-way split of a 10% finder's fee, Dagger (the team's sniper) murders the team to steal the device. Except Tirdal survives and gets it first.

The rest of the book is the inexperienced Tirdal, the sniper Dagger, and Ferret the other survivor who's determined to kill both of them, playing cat and mouse for a few days in the bug infested forest.

[Darth Nostril]

The rest of the book is the inexperienced Tirdal

Who manages to figure out how to kill without triggering lintatai, making him a hero amongst the now not extinct Darhel.

[PeZook]

God, Ringo just couldn't resist the temptation to make Earth a bunch of sissified pacifist girlymen, could he?

I can't blame him, naturally. Earth becoming a bunch of hippies is definitely a logical consequence of them discovering just how hostile and dangerous place the galaxy is, after all.

[Ahriman238]

God, Ringo just couldn't resist the temptation to make Earth a bunch of sissified pacifist girlymen, could he?

I can't blame him, naturally. Earth becoming a bunch of hippies is definitely a logical consequence of them discovering just how hostile and dangerous place the galaxy is, after all.

Compared to the HE-MEN ON THE GALACTIC FRONTIER! Yes. I'm sure the Indowy, Tchpth et al. still think we're a bunch of psychopaths. Plus, the indowy have by now had a long time to try and make us give up our wicked carnivorous ways.

I can sort of see the return to normalacy thing once earth is secure, though probably not if 'normalacy' was 300 years ago. Wanting to control weapons on worlds where God-kings still occasionally muster company-strength units to attack settlements is the sort of idioicy that only occurs in baen books, when someone really wants to make a ham-fisted point.

The rest of the book is the inexperienced Tirdal

Who manages to figure out how to kill without triggering lintatai, making him a hero amongst the now not extinct Darhel.

Pretty much. The book is a bit contradictory on that. The Rintai Group is apparently aligned with the Bane Sidhe and have been studying for millenia to figure out how to get around lintatai. Certainly, killing rodents and insects is not a problem to any of them. It is implied that their ability to kill sentients is largely theoretical. Tirdal finds it a lot harder to kill things the smarter they are. Which feeds into 2 things that really need to be discussed.

1, the sensats. Humanity in this distant future has figured out ESP. Almost no one has the combination of training and native ability to actually read minds, most sensats (the name for the psychics) can only provide Troi-level obvious insights into someone's emotional state. And of course, most can sense the direction and roughly the distance of any sentient mind. The range at which they can do that is highly variable, dependant on external factors as much as training and skill. Tirdal, who is both a sensat and the field medic for the team, seems to have a reliable range for about 2 kilometers.

The sensat gift seems to have a high co-morbidity with the potential to train in sohon. This makes sensats rare because, frankly, even if someone chooses to train in both disciplines, sohon is far more profitable and prestigous than sensing. There is widespread distrust and occasional bigotry towards sensats.

All Darhel are sensats, or were, at any rate. In ancient times, the Darhel used their gifts to track and stalk their prey. These ancient Darhel were far more capable than even the greatest of modern human sensats for 2 reasons. First, after the Aldenata messed with their biology, sensing death became a great risk of triggering lintatai, so they've spent a very long time as a culture and as individuals learning to suppress these abilities. Second, the use of tal increased their range and sensitivity ten times or more, and is clearly no longer an option.


2nd, the lintatai. In this and the Cally books, the precise mechanism of lintatai is discussed. The Aldenata scattered 'many' microscopic sensors around the Darhel brain to monitor the levels of tal, a hormone that serves as the Darhel equivalent of adrenaline. Once the tal level in their brain reaches a certain amount, they go berserk and then fall into a coma. These sensors are too many and too scattered to be effectively removed via surgery, and are now a part of the Darhel's physiology.

We know that lintatai does not affect children, apparently their bodies only begin production of tal during adolesence (now, why would that be?) In fact, thousands, sometimes millions of young Darhel every year are "killed" by lintatai. The Darhel, in general consider this a Darwinian process, those that subcumb to lintatai lacked self-control, and were clearly and literally too stupid to live. Better for the clan/group/race that they're gone now. I doubt the Darhel would employ child soldiers, given what a knife's edge their adolesence seems to be, it would probably be the difference between losing them to lintatai now and losing them in a couple of years.

There are also tal addicts who watch wrestling, animal fights and violent sports, working themselves up just enough to be close to lintatai, then pulling it down. It is, of course, a very dangerous vice. Tirdal spares a couple thoughts for long long he'll have to be in rehab after the mission.

Tirdal spends the entire book staying just ahead of lintatai, pushing his limits because he needs to move that much faster, go on a bit longer, sense a bit further, etc. He has to carefully meditate/ignore what he's doing the first few times he kills. Even later he seems to need to make a concious decision to do so, and psych himself up to doing it. And even late in the game he prefers taking indirect shots "I'm not shooting Dagger, I'm spraying the landscape with cover fire, if he gets hit its not my fault" "I'm just shooting that tree" "I'm just doing some landscaping by bringing down the bluff, not my problem if someone were to be caught in a landslide." "I'll just start a brushfire and see where it goes from there."

Which is the main problem I have, lintatai doesn't seem to make sense. If it's triggered by adrenaline equivalent, why are the Darhel not at risk every time they get startled? Why do they have to do calming exercises when interrupted at work or woken in the middle of the night? Why should it trigger when they push a button authorizing intelligent space-missiles to fire themselves, or hiring an assassin? And if it works to that degree of seperation, why is it not triggered by causing ruin and starvation through their financial schemes, or feeding military intel to the Posleen? Why not eat meat?

I mean, Tirdal can eat meat, but he finds the whole thing very uncomfortable even when he, personally, had nothing to do with slaughtering the beast.

The whole thing feels very artificial and arbitrary, like lintatai occurs when convenient to the authors. And that's a serious problem with writing.

[Connor MacLeod]

Isn't THe HERO Michael Z Williamson? IIRC he had a stint on SB but he was kinda a weird writer in his own ways from what I heard.

[Ahriman238]

Isn't THe HERO Michael Z Williamson? IIRC he had a stint on SB but he was kinda a weird writer in his own ways from what I heard.

Yep, he's the one who writes the Freehold books, of which I've only ever read a short story, my impression is that he'd fit right in with Ringo and Kratman. Ringo is credited as co-author but I get the impression he didn't have a lot to do with writing this one.

[Connor MacLeod]

I think williamson was known as a wacky libertarian sort, and yeah he would fit in. I'm just saying its quite possible that the hilarious portrayal of Earth was his doing rather than just Ringo. You tend to notice patterns of writing that develop when he's interacting with particular authors like that.

[Ahriman238]

I think williamson was known as a wacky libertarian sort, and yeah he would fit in. I'm just saying its quite possible that the hilarious portrayal of Earth was his doing rather than just Ringo. You tend to notice patterns of writing that develop when he's interacting with particular authors like that.

It's quite possible, and even probable. Like I said, most of the book didn't really feel like Ringo's style. Or even like Ringo-with-Evans or Ringo-with-Kratman.

Anyhow, on with the hardware.

The standard weapon for the DRT seems to be the punch gun. It uses some sort of plasma effect to create a powerful, torus-shaped shockwave. The main advantages are that you can adjust the size of the shockwave, say if you need an area effect weapon, and it can casually blast through several meters of rock, soil, and most metals. For all practical purposes, there is no such thing as cover against these things, and no less an armor than ACS will do squat. Just forget about packing crates and barrels.

The downside is that the wave expands, more so when you set it for wide effect, but even with tight-set shots, the gun only has an effective range of about 100 meters. At one point Tirdal shoots beyond that, (~1400 m) but his fire is comparitively weak and really inaccurate.

The gun does not appear to have an automatic fire mode. One power clip provides at least 85 (probably 90) shots, and each team member with a punch gun carries 4 spare clips.

Everyone has railgun sidearms, no mention of range, ammo capacity, or rate of fire.

One member of the group carries a grav-rifle. He dies with the rest of the team without ever firing it except in the exercise before the mission. Nobody scavenges or uses it, so it's mentioned once in a throwaway line and never again.

The team heacy weapon specialist carries an "autocannon" (I know, Connor, I know.) basically a SAW that fires armor-piercing railgun rounds with "a few micrograms of antimatter inside." It is apparently capable of perfectly accurate fire from 2000 meters. Which seems a lot less impressive than the grav-rifle, to be honest.

[Ahriman238]

sorry for the interrupt, continuing.

On review of my notes, 12,000 round per minute firing rate for the autocannon, quite a bit toned down from the grav-rifle and flechette cannon of yesteryear.

One team member, Gorilla, was a robotics specialist, and while he was alive the team always had a perimeter of little scout-bots. Most of these bots were hemispheres about a foot across, with spidery legs and 2 retractable blades for dealing with the local fauna. There were also tiny fliers, with the size and appearance of stray feathers. All the bots could see in very wide wavelengths, and some would switch randomly between standard, UV, IR, and light amp.

Other bots were 'bio-bots' sort of like 40K servitors, these are clone-grown real animals that are lobotmized (apparently they sometimes remove the brain entirely, or tinker with the genetics) and with chunks of brain, or the whole thing, replaced with computers. The theory is that they stand out less, though I'm not sure it applies to the bug-hell planet. They also require things like air and feeding, though you can duck this need with Hiberzine. Examples of his bio-bots include: a swarm of killer-bees, networked for effciency and with their stings swapped out for more interesting drugs and poisons. 4 rabbits, that perform the same function as the recon-bots above, but also have a full kilogram of 'hyperexplosive' in their guts for kamikaze attacks. 3 falcons with 4-shot flechette guns and 0.5 kilos of the same stuff the rabbits have, and finally a mole-bot, the sole virtue of which is that it can tunnel and thus maybe get some good recon. All of the bio-bots can self destruct, to prevent their hardware from falling into the wrong hands, and all are programmed to find a quiet corner to die in if seperated from the group. then their bodies are broken down within 2 days, with a cocktail of chemicals and some specialy bred bacteria that's held in stasis until the bot dies.

[Ahriman238]

Dagger's sniper gauss rifle had a range of 15 kilometers. It shot high velocity railgun rounds, anti-material rounds similar to the autocannon's, and special rounds called 'hornets.' The hornets would be sort of like the 'smart-bullets' from Andromeda, they're launched at relatively low velocity and fly under their own power for a while seeking a target. When they lock a target they orient themselves and accelerate to a proper speed.

The thing about the hornets is that there's already a good countermeasure. Tirdal's suit has a 'proton discharge' that autotargets like a Posleen system, then tags the bullets with beams that effect them like an EMP. They lose targeting, usually just before they could line up properly, turning a kill shot into a glancing hit or a near-miss, and never work themselves to a speed that can kill targets in modern armor, though they'll certainly sting. But the countermeasure is something of a power hog and doesn't always work, so they use the hornets for irritation or in hopes of a lucky shot, or swamping enemy point defense.

[PeZook]

Isn't THe HERO Michael Z Williamson? IIRC he had a stint on SB but he was kinda a weird writer in his own ways from what I heard.

Hmm...yes, if it was written by Williamson then it's obvious why Earth is the way it is - because he is a hack and can't write anything different than what he did in Freehold, where Earth is populated by girlymen whalepeople too incompetent to wipe their ass yet somehow ruling an interstellar empire

[Simon_Jester]

The rest of the book is the inexperienced Tirdal

Who manages to figure out how to kill without triggering lintatai, making him a hero amongst the now not extinct Darhel.

Pretty much. The book is a bit contradictory on that. The Rintai Group is apparently aligned with the Bane Sidhe and have been studying for millenia to figure out how to get around lintatai. Certainly, killing rodents and insects is not a problem to any of them. It is implied that their ability to kill sentients is largely theoretical. Tirdal finds it a lot harder to kill things the smarter they are. Which feeds into 2 things that really need to be discussed...

Tirdal spends the entire book staying just ahead of lintatai, pushing his limits because he needs to move that much faster, go on a bit longer, sense a bit further, etc. He has to carefully meditate/ignore what he's doing the first few times he kills. Even later he seems to need to make a concious decision to do so, and psych himself up to doing it. And even late in the game he prefers taking indirect shots "I'm not shooting Dagger, I'm spraying the landscape with cover fire, if he gets hit its not my fault" "I'm just shooting that tree" "I'm just doing some landscaping by bringing down the bluff, not my problem if someone were to be caught in a landslide." "I'll just start a brushfire and see where it goes from there."

Which is the main problem I have, lintatai doesn't seem to make sense. If it's triggered by adrenaline equivalent, why are the Darhel not at risk every time they get startled? Why do they have to do calming exercises when interrupted at work or woken in the middle of the night? Why should it trigger when they push a button authorizing intelligent space-missiles to fire themselves, or hiring an assassin? And if it works to that degree of seperation, why is it not triggered by causing ruin and starvation through their financial schemes, or feeding military intel to the Posleen? Why not eat meat?

Up to a point, I can see it being somewhat justified by psychological parameters.

Remember, the Darhel are supposed to have been so batshit insane and aggressive before contact with the Aldenata that infighting was destroying their species. They're very predatory. Reading between the lines, I can imagine that their psychological makeup and their hormonal responses are tied together with the idea of fighting and killing. Thus, they will tend to savor any violence or destruction they cause, they can't help it easily.

And when the violence or destruction is caused directly by their hands, it places them at high risk for lintatai because they are stuck thinking "oh yeah, what a rush that I killed someon- aaargh!" in much the same way that human beings may have an automatic response of hunger when they smell certain foods, or sexual arousal when they see attractive members of the opposite sex. So their 'adrenaline' isn't triggered by the same things that ours is, I can buy that up to a point, where it's more of an issue when they experience a killing rage, but less of an issue when they're startled or frightened.

Up to a point... which, naturally, Ringo goes beyond. Heh.

I mean, Tirdal can eat meat, but he finds the whole thing very uncomfortable even when he, personally, had nothing to do with slaughtering the beast.

The whole thing feels very artificial and arbitrary, like lintatai occurs when convenient to the authors. And that's a serious problem with writing.

And, yes, point.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Yeah, I believe the line was that the Aldenata found the Darhel 'In the smoking, radioactive ruins of their own homeworld.' They had already fought one or more nuclear wars, and the Aldenata wouldn't allow them to ruin more planets. As to why they don't go into Lintatai every time they get angry or startled, thats because a Darhel spends about a decade of its' childhood learning the mental discipline to control his brain chemistry to avoid accidental suicide.

As for 'The Hero' as a whole, it can be considered non-canon because the story exists in a timeline that never had the Hedren show up. I don't expect the Islendian Confederacy would exist in a post-hedren universe where Humans, Indowwy, and Tchpth are working together that closely. The alien races know the greatest threat to the galaxy is multiple human factions trying to kill each other.

[Ahriman238]

Yeah, I believe the line was that the Aldenata found the Darhel 'In the smoking, radioactive ruins of their own homeworld.' They had already fought one or more nuclear wars, and the Aldenata wouldn't allow them to ruin more planets. As to why they don't go into Lintatai every time they get angry or startled, thats because a Darhel spends about a decade of its' childhood learning the mental discipline to control his brain chemistry to avoid accidental suicide.

As for 'The Hero' as a whole, it can be considered non-canon because the story exists in a timeline that never had the Hedren show up. I don't expect the Islendian Confederacy would exist in a post-hedren universe where Humans, Indowwy, and Tchpth are working together that closely. The alien races know the greatest threat to the galaxy is multiple human factions trying to kill each other.

Maybe, maybe not. Considering just how brief every explanation of Glactic history in the book was, and how they focused on how the Confederacy could exist at all, I wouldn't be suprised if they didn't mention every war that happened in a thousand years. In fact, I'm sure there must have reams of information glossed over.

It's implied that the glorious revolution, while not completly bloodless only coust a couple thousand lives. All the fighting occured in space, and were really skirmishs by fleet standards until Sunday's heir negotiated the peaceful split. It's also implied that the reason the SSA humans are so much softer is because of their closer ties to the Indowy and Tchpth.

Here's what I mean about it being inconsistent. When Dagger throws a neural grenade into the group, Tirdal gets a lintatai jolt enabling him to get clear. This is not a serious threat of lintatai, though firing back is. Compare with the Cally books, where a Darhel has to spend a full minute doing calming exercises to avoid lintatai for being woken up in the wee hours of the morning.

In Sister Time, Cally had to go through an elaborate act to drive a Darhel into lintatai. She had a very confrontational meeting with him, dressing and speaking in such a way as to create a subconcious impression of herself as a rival Darhel. Then when she turns to leave, having manipulated him into making a parting shot, she spins and lunges for him while activating a holographic disguise as a Darhel. And for that moment, in spite of all reason, despite knowing she'd come in to try and drive him into lintatai, despite a lifetime of discipline, for just a moment his biology reacts, and he's gone.

That's a huge amount of effort, that implies that simply leaping over the desk and grabbing his throat would not do the trick.

To a certain extent, I could forgive these as individual differences. At one point it is said that it is easy to drive young Darhel into lintatai, but one only becomes an old Darhel by having serious self-control. Except that the Darhel that had to stop himself from killing an Indowy for waking him and the Darhel Cally had to push are the same person.

[Simon_Jester]

While there's obvious inconsistencies here- I doubt Ringo even seriously thought about sitting down and drawing up a uniform trigger standard for lintatai- I can understand a certain amount of variability.

Different cues might affect different Darhel in different ways. Suppose that this particular Darhel is your typical used to high-pressure meetings, since he's been a high level corporate executive for a long time. But he's not used to being woken up in the middle of the night by random underlings: when he goes home and turns off his cell-phone-equivalent, he reasonably expects that he will not be disturbed until he gets up the next morning.

For this Darhel, it might be relatively easy for him to suppress the impulse to go berserk during a confrontational meeting, and difficult to make him go into lintatai just by having a meeting with him. But it might be relatively hard for him to suppress the impulse to throttle an annoying minion who disrupts his sleep at the same time- especially if his hormonal balance isn't as stable during the Darhel version of REM sleep as it is when he's been awake for several hours.

Meanwhile, another Darhel with a different and lower-ranking job (say, someone who has the equivalent of an IT job for a global trading network) may expect to be awakened at odd hours of the day and night to deal with problems in different time zones, and not be sent into lintatai by this... but not be so used to high-pressure meetings.


And to cap all that off, Tirdal is chosen by the Darhel for being one of the best lintatai-avoiders alive. Which is supposed to be only reason he can go into combat zones with a good chance of getting out alive. What he can resist or avoid the lethal hormonal effects of doesn't translate well into what normal Darhel can survive.

[Ahriman238]

That is all true, and the idea of tal addiction, as well as a couple throwaway lines in the Cally books seem to imply that the tal is only dangerous at a certain level, which may or may not be as much as they'd recieve in a life-or-death battle.

Tirdal is, naturally, exceptional. Having trained much of his life in techniques unique to the Bane Sidhe Darhel (and why weren't they in the story earlier?) to dodge that particular bullet.

We have a confirmation that Hiberzine was designed specifically for humans and terrestrial animals during one of the Darhel's previous attempts to employ humans as janissaries. Indowy, at least, can use the stuff, probably most of the Galactics. The Darhel, however, cannot. Or rather, they can, but there are unpleasant, dangerous and potentially lethal side-effects for them. Which seems odd, since we know Hiberzine is not chemical, but entirely nano-tech.

The chameleon suits the team wear are relatively rugged, at least as good as kevlar at stopping bullets. It has a cloaking effect and, in Tirdal's case, a harness with both antigrav (enough to make him buoyant) and the anti-hornet system. The suits carry a limited oxygen supply and have a variable permeability. At it's loosest, sweat and water and other things easily pass out, but the suit can also button up tight to prevent any heat or scents from escaping and making them detectable even with the camoflague up. They can only do this for a few minutes at a time however, because the setup doesn't have a good (or it seems, ANY) cooling system, so the wearer tends to overheat very easily.

The suits have an internal canteen, though it takes time for added water to become available to the wearer, because all water is most throughly filtered.

This is said at one point to be the best kit the Confederacy has, short of a rare and precious ACS suit.

Every team member carries a converter, that breaks down the local plants and meats into base proteins and carbohydrates and spits out edible food, with a wide menu of flavors.

That should be about it for the Hero. Except for maybe the anti-grav hopper with no combat uses.

[Simon_Jester]

That is all true, and the idea of tal addiction, as well as a couple throwaway lines in the Cally books seem to imply that the tal is only dangerous at a certain level, which may or may not be as much as they'd recieve in a life-or-death battle.

Tirdal is, naturally, exceptional. Having trained much of his life in techniques unique to the Bane Sidhe Darhel (and why weren't they in the story earlier?) to dodge that particular bullet.

Maybe the "Bane Sidhe Darhel" didn't exist during the early Posleen War, and represent a splinter faction of Darhel which decided to stop being stupid pricks and collaborate with humanity rather than risk getting plowed under, after the events of the novels that had been written as of Hero's publication?

And post-Hero, the novel has been semi-decanonized, so the plot threads created for them may be dropped so that they 'never exist...'

We have a confirmation that Hiberzine was designed specifically for humans and terrestrial animals during one of the Darhel's previous attempts to employ humans as janissaries. Indowy, at least, can use the stuff, probably most of the Galactics. The Darhel, however, cannot. Or rather, they can, but there are unpleasant, dangerous and potentially lethal side-effects for them. Which seems odd, since we know Hiberzine is not chemical, but entirely nano-tech.

They may be allergic to some of the contents of the nanites, or the nanites may not have enough memory to handle Darhel biochemistry and human biochemistry.

Though I'm surprised that the Darhel don't have their own equivalent of Hiberzine for themselves...

[CaptainChewbacca]

Good episode tonight, looks like things will finally be coming to a head in the finale which I understand will serve as a bit of a reboot/refocus for the series. Looking forward to the action.