Life Under Idiran Rule

[Big Orange]

What was it like for non-Idirans to endure Idiran occupation? From the start of Consider Phlebas, we see a Idiran battlegroup flatten the population centres of a Culture alighned planet and it is led by an Idiran commander who sees humanoid beings as souless animals. And he's supposed to be a moderate! But to be fair he shows paternal companionship and respect towards Horza.

And while the Idirans are not above killing millions/billions in certain cases to crush resistance and to prove a point, they're not ultimately on a war of extermination and have a goal of converting non-Idirans to the Idiran religion through as much of the galaxy as possible (excluding the vast territories of the Morthanveld Commonwealth and their Homomda benefactors).

I have an inkling they build their Orbitals around the planets they conquer, and Idiran Orbitals are more like Affronter Orbitals in that they're giant barracks and factories geared towards their war efforts.

[Marcus Aurelius]

What was it like for non-Idirans to endure Idiran occupation? From the start of Consider Phlebas, we see a Idiran battlegroup flatten the population centres of a Culture alighned planet and it is led by an Idiran commander who sees humanoid beings as souless animals. And he's supposed to be a moderate! But to be fair he shows paternal companionship and respect towards Horza.

And while the Idirans are not above killing millions/billions in certain cases to crush resistance and to prove a point, they're not ultimately on a war of extermination and have a goal of converting non-Idirans to the Idiran religion through as much of the galaxy as possible (excluding the vast territories of the Morthanveld Commonwealth and their Homomda benefactors).

I have an inkling they build their Orbitals around the planets they conquer, and Idiran Orbitals are more like Affronter Orbitals in that they're giant barracks and factories geared towards their war efforts.

Did the Idirans really have true Orbital technology? The Idirans during the theocratic regime were carbon fascists, who viewed strong (i.e. true) AIs as abominations. They did have very sophisticated weak AIs and vast computing power at their disposal, but lacking mind-level true AIs would have denied them many technological advances that were available to the Culture and the Homomda. The Homomda did help them during the initial phases of the war, but the extent of their help is unknown. We can speculate though that it involved mostly crucial military tech in order to prevent the Culture from curb stomping them too soon (no doubt the Homonda also knew that the Idirans were going to lose the war in the end: even full disclosure of Homomda tech would not have changed that because of the huge difference in production capacity between the belligerents).

For the theocratic Idirans all naturally mortal beings regardless of their intelligence were little more than smart animals. The basis of this thinking was that only immortal beings could have immortal souls, which would live on after a death due reasons other than aging. Of course they could still care for animals and wish good things for them; the Idirans did not lack empathy. I don't think converting animals to the Idiran religion was their goal, however, since religion would have been pointless for soulless beings. We do not know much about other naturally immortal life forms in the Culture universe other than the Idirans and if I remember correctly, the Homonda (or were they just very long-lived?). The conditions that led to the natural immortality of the Idirans were quite rare even on a galactic scale, so there probably were not too many "equal" beings for them to convert.

So, the primary war goal of the Idirans seems to have been making sure that the Idiran home world and culture would forever be protected from conquest and blasphemous foreign influence. Therefore they probably just wanted to keep soulless beings "under the boot" and establish a sufficient defensive zone against foreign conquerors. The Culture was a threat to them since it embraced many concepts the Idirans thought were against their religious beliefs and it was expanding its influence in the galaxy. So in a way the Idirans probably thought that they were waging a defensive war. Many in the Culture had similar notions, since a significant part of the Culture belonged to the Peace faction and the war created a rift between the Peace and the War factions, which had not fully closed by the time "Look to Windward" took place.

[His Divine Shadow]

I believe the Idirans had no problems making true level AI's, they where artificially constrained so as not to gain sapience.

[Marcus Aurelius]

I believe the Idirans had no problems making true level AI's, they where artificially constrained so as not to gain sapience.

Yes, the Idirans did have the tech to make true AIs, but they did not do so due to religious reasons. The lack of true AIs probably denied them many technologies that were not attainable by the slowly working electro-chemical brains of organic lifeforms.

[Big Orange]

Idirans had highly advanced computers that played a similar role to Minds to some extent, but on the other hand for political and ideological reasons they're far more limited, knocked off the assembly line not unlike Morthanveld 'Minds' but with more restrictive safeguards to prevent a free thinking personality to emerge (but a vulnerable and trapped Culture Mind did interest the Idiran's command enough for them to sacrifice a small army on a out of bounds Death World, watched over by a hostile Sublimed sentry). The war between the Idirans and Culture seem to be more along the lines of the final war between the Vorlons and Shadows in Babylon 5 (with the Idirans being more openly despotic, aggressive Vorlons, while the Culture are more benign, enlightened Shadows).

Since Idirans were obsessed with planets but likely advanced enough to built habitats nearly as sophisticated as Culture Orbitals, but more like a bigger version of that space station seen in Starship Troopers, but instead wrapped around the important planets they absorbed into their empire.

[Starglider]

did interest the Idiran's command enough for them to sacrifice a small army on a out of bounds Death World,

Calling the Idiran force a 'small army' is colloquial to the point of being misleading. My impression was a low double digit number of troops stuffed into the internal cavities of a pair of 'warp animals', nearly all of whom died in the failed insertion. In other words, a single platoon of special forces.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Idirans had highly advanced computers that played a similar role to Minds to some extent, but on the other hand for political and ideological reasons they're far more limited, knocked off the assembly line not unlike Morthanveld 'Minds' but with more restrictive safeguards to prevent a free thinking personality to emerge (but a vulnerable and trapped Culture Mind did interest the Idiran's command enough for them to sacrifice a small army on a out of bounds Death World, watched over by a hostile Sublimed sentry). The war between the Idirans and Culture seem to be more along the lines of the final war between the Vorlons and Shadows in Babylon 5 (with the Idirans being more openly despotic, aggressive Vorlons, while the Culture are more benign, enlightened Shadows).

Since Idirans were obsessed with planets but likely advanced enough to built habitats nearly as sophisticated as Culture Orbitals, but more like a bigger version of that space station seen in Starship Troopers, but instead wrapped around the important planets they absorbed into their empire.

The Orbitals are the Culture's habitat of choice, but they also have the capability to build both Ringworlds and Dyson Spheres, which are a much more massive structures. They are usually not build since they are considered bad taste by most Culture minds. I don't think the Idirans could have build even a single Ringworld even if they wanted to. Therefore, from a balance of power perspective your analogy to B5 does not work. Compared to the Culture as Shadows the tech level of the Idirans was more like the Minbari instead of Vorlons. They only had a chance as long as the Culture had to rely on militarized GCUs as their primary warships and even then the numbers were against them. Furthermore, the analogy does not work from an ideological perspective either, since unlike the Shadows the Culture does not promote warfare as a mean of (cultural) evolution. The SC only initiates warfare in lesser civilizations when it's the only remaining choice for getting things moving the way they want. Usually they prefer less drastic, behind the scenes machinations.

The Idirans did have some things in common with the Vorlons, but actually more with the Minbari, again. Of course we don't really know much about the Shadows and Vorlons other than their ideology of raising the Younger Races, so direct comparisons are difficult. We for example don't know if the Vorlons had any religious beliefs themselves; their endorsement of the Minbari religion could have just been a convenient way of promoting their ideological (rather than religious) views.

[Sriad]

I think you're exaggerating the tech-gap between the Culture and the Idirans. I agree there wasn't much doubt among the Minds regarding the war's eventual outcome, but the Culture still had to give ground for thirty years before they had geared up for the major counter-offensive, and when it came there were still significant losses on the Culture side, as described in Look To Windward.

Generally speaking, anything the Culture can do other Involved cultures can too, though often not as well. Building a ringworld would be a challenge of field-technology, materials science, and logistics; there's no reason for us to believe the Idirans were vastly inferior to the Culture in the first two areas when the war started.

[Vendetta]

The Orbitals are the Culture's habitat of choice,

GSV's are the Culture's habitat of choice. They already regard something as sparsely populated as an Orbital as a sort of quiet place in the countryside.

That's why they have no real problem with the slash and burn retreat they were doing during the first stage of the Idiran war, because Orbitals aren't really much more than a social luxury.

[Marcus Aurelius]

I think you're exaggerating the tech-gap between the Culture and the Idirans. I agree there wasn't much doubt among the Minds regarding the war's eventual outcome, but the Culture still had to give ground for thirty years before they had geared up for the major counter-offensive, and when it came there were still significant losses on the Culture side, as described in Look To Windward.

Generally speaking, anything the Culture can do other Involved cultures can too, though often not as well. Building a ringworld would be a challenge of field-technology, materials science, and logistics; there's no reason for us to believe the Idirans were vastly inferior to the Culture in the first two areas when the war started.

Ok, perhaps I did exaggerate a little. Still, we have to remember that the Idirans received tech aid from the Homomda and the Idiran society and industry was nearly 100% geared towards warfare even before the war against the Culture started, whereas the Culture had no actual warships in service and a significant minority (probably something like 30-40%) of Culture citizens, including a similar percentage of Minds, did not want to have anything to do with the war (the Peace faction) and did not allocate resources for the war effort.

[Vendetta]

That's mostly countered by the Culture's social structure rather than technological superiority. Because most of their population and industrial resources are on GSVs, and therefore highly mobile, trying to actually inflict lasting damage on their infrastructure is like trying to punch mist.

[fusion]

The Orbitals are the Culture's habitat of choice,

GSV's are the Culture's habitat of choice. They already regard something as sparsely populated as an Orbital as a sort of quiet place in the countryside.

I am sure that in Player of Games, Gurgeh surmised if Orbitals were the country side, then the GSV are the city. Also in the same passage he thought that Azad capital was planned horribly since GSV of smaller size contained more people.