SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VI

[Force Lord]

Mmm, nanites...

[Shroom Man 777]

Holy balls, I still had a post half- written up with that bastard alive...

Continue using it. Just say...Goddamn Unreal Time.

[Simon_Jester]

Hey, Zor, could you narrow that picture down? It's too wide.

Holy balls, I still had a post half- written up with that bastard alive...

Continue using it. Just say...Goddamn Unreal Time.

Hmmm. [thinks]

[Zor]

Hey, Zor, could you narrow that picture down? It's too wide.

Done

Zor

[Simon_Jester]

Thank you.

[Zor]

I really enjoyed reading Fin's responce, it gave a good insight into how the Byzantine's think.

Zor

[PeZook]

Yeah, it shows you just how batshit crazy they are

[Zor]

Yeah, it shows you just how batshit crazy they are

Well that goes without saying.

Zor

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I really enjoyed reading Fin's responce, it gave a good insight into how the Byzantine's think.

Zor

And it shows how pathetically good you are at digging your own hole. Inviting the Tau to your damn territory even before the Great Crusade? Great idea. And you wonder why there's never any rapproachment.

50 billion Imperial citizens dead at least, and if we didn't launch the bioweapon, another 100 billion perhaps, while your people sit in your territory comfortably. I suppose distance is great when you aren't the one bleeding to death.

[Simon_Jester]

Eh. I don't think the Atlanteans' conduct is anything to be ashamed of under the circumstances. The opposite, if anything.

It's not as if he supplied the Tau with weapons to continue attacking you or anything; the fact that they offered the Tau the opportunity to leave without being obliterated to the last blue guy is hardly a crime against galactic civilization.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Eh. I don't think the Atlanteans' conduct is anything to be ashamed of under the circumstances. The opposite, if anything.

It's not as if he supplied the Tau with weapons to continue attacking you or anything; the fact that they offered the Tau the opportunity to leave without being obliterated to the last blue guy is hardly a crime against galactic civilization.

You would note: before the Great Crusade. Has that slipped past you? We haven't even begun the war of extermination even yet!

Would you invite war criminals into your own territory and give them a residency? I sure hope not. It's like inviting Nazis into some country while the Russians were encircling Berlin.

[Zor]

Would you invite war criminals into your own territory and give them a residency? I sure hope not. It's like inviting Nazis into some country while the Russians were encircling Berlin.

That Comparison is false: The Soviets and allies did not plan on killing every single german down to the last infant. And, lets face it, Not all Tau would have been war criminals. You can't stretch out the concept of "War Criminal" to include someone who's soul profession in life was to make toilets or acted as the administrator of an agricultural district, let alone their yet unborn grandchildren.

Zor

[Steve]

I think Fin's point is that it wasn't a "come with me if you want to live" situation, but by your own words you were openly promoting Tau immigration before the Imperium began its campaign of genocide. That makes claims of humanitarianism on your part slightly dubious and makes it seem more like Nova Atlantis was callously trying to gain advanced Tau technology in complete disregard for the suffering of the Imperium's people.

[Zor]

I think Fin's point is that it wasn't a "come with me if you want to live" situation, but by your own words you were openly promoting Tau immigration before the Imperium began its campaign of genocide. That makes claims of humanitarianism on your part slightly dubious and makes it seem more like Nova Atlantis was callously trying to gain advanced Tau technology in complete disregard for the suffering of the Imperium's people.

How would accepting Refugees increase the suffering of the Imperium's people? I said that the Commonwealth was initially sympathetic to the Byzantines, but that sympathy went away because the Byzatines turned geneocidal. Not even in during the Barbarian Wars (a period of total war where defeat meant subugation to crude power hungry warlords who would break its under the yoke to futher their desires for conquest) did the predecessors of the Commonwealth resort to such tactics as using bioweapons to depopulate worlds, nor did we wish death to anyone who fought under a Barbarian Banner.

Zor

[Shroom Man 777]

That's a cool twist. It makes things seem to be less idyllic, now that you think about it.

[Steve]

The issue is this, Zor. Did you or did you not encourage Tau iimmigration before the Imperium proclaimed the Great Crusade and began to actively exterminate Tau?

If yes, then your motives will look less altruistic.

[Shroom Man 777]

It would be cool if they did, would make things fuzzier and more ambiguous rather than clear cut.

[Zor]

Did you or did you not encourage Tau immigration before the Imperium proclaimed the Great Crusade and began to actively exterminate Tau?

Yes, but the Imperium made clear genocidal before the crusade was launched and had the war gone the other way people would have accepted Byzantine refugees. In any cases there have been plenty of instances in history in which less than noble intentions have been a driving factor behind greater goods.

Zor

[Simon_Jester]

Eh. I don't think the Atlanteans' conduct is anything to be ashamed of under the circumstances. The opposite, if anything.

It's not as if he supplied the Tau with weapons to continue attacking you or anything; the fact that they offered the Tau the opportunity to leave without being obliterated to the last blue guy is hardly a crime against galactic civilization.

You would note: before the Great Crusade. Has that slipped past you? We haven't even begun the war of extermination even yet!

Would you invite war criminals into your own territory and give them a residency? I sure hope not. It's like inviting Nazis into some country while the Russians were encircling Berlin.

Nope. It's more like interacting with Germany before and during the war, and then letting boatloads of German civilians into your country because the Russians are murderkilldeathfucking their way across East Germany after ultimately winning the extremely bloody war between the two nations.

Unless you believe in massive blood guilt (which the Byzantines do and the Atlanteans don't), that is perfectly justifiable for a neutral power. In this case, Sweden.

The level of Atlantean complicity in the crimes of the Tau against the Byzantines is virtually nil, and any nation which rejects the Byzantine doctrine of species-wide blood guilt for the Tau's actions would have behaved much as they did after the war. The Atlanteans probably wound up taking so many of the refugees purely because they'd had contact with the Tau beforehand- and a lot of the Tau refugees that fled to other states would have then migrated again to the Commonwealth as the Tau emigré population set up some semblance of a functioning community.

Now, you can say "BUT BLOOD GUILT! ALL TAU MUST DIE!" But you have to recognize that most civilized nations will regard that as monstrous and vile nonsense. As will, I suspect, most of the game players- God knows I feel that way about the way you keep harping on this.

The issue is this, Zor. Did you or did you not encourage Tau iimmigration before the Imperium proclaimed the Great Crusade and began to actively exterminate Tau?

If yes, then your motives will look less altruistic.

I consider them to still be reasonably altruistic, by the standards of international affairs.

Why should Zor want his nation to look perfect? Of course they have legitimate interests and motives for getting Tau high technology, which no doubt had a lot to do with encouraging Tau to move to Atlantis (where, incidentally, they would contribute nothing to the Tau war effort against the Byzantines).

That doesn't mean they had to take in millions of Tau janitors and farmers and stuff to get it... and yet they did exactly that.

Good enough.

[Shroom Man 777]

We should have more specific Outlands planets, just saying "somewhere in the Outlands" doesn't work well with making a cohesive storyline since we don't even know where it is specifically happening. I know I am guilty of this too.

[Steve]

How many planets will there be anyway? Ten? Fifteen? In how many sectors?

[Simon_Jester]

The original Commissions stretched over something like eight to ten sectors, as I recall, though none of them heavily populated. I imagine there were at least a few planets in a number of the unclaimed ones. So potentially, the region might be quite large. On the other hand, between the sectors controlled by the Refuge, the sectors that are part of their 'exclusion zone' as it were, and the ones that have become so devastated by war and the breakdown of political order in the region...

...It's possible, even likely, that only a few sectors are actually "in play" here.

[Shroom Man 777]

We have AA-24 and BB-25 at least.

[Mayabird]

Sorry everybody. I had a really, really shitty week so I wasn't in much of a mood to write.

That being said, what the hell did you people do to the Outlands? They were already shitty and now they've gone insano. I'm not in the K-zone and I live there, jerks!

[Steve]

Clearly someone needs to restore order in that chaotic region...