I originally sent this yesterday as an addendum to my reply to Eamon, but
it never came through for me, so am trying again.
> One last thing, re DL/RC vs. SVs and my soundtrack. Here are the lyrics to
> Pete Townshend's "White City Fighting." This is the way an RCES remnant
> guy would look back on his life in the face of people disparaging him as a
> violent Star Viking.. Obviously without the exact 20th century
> references, but the idea.
>
>
> The White City, that's a joke of a name
> It's a black violent place if I remember the game
> I couldn't wait to get out but I love to go home
> To remember the White City fighting
>
> The White City Fighting, remember, remember
> The White City Fighting, remember, remember
>
> Down to the refuge, near QPR
> I drive to committees in my German car
> Prone to violence, prone to shame
> I glide in silence, my pride in vain
> For no one remembers, not that I can see
> That we were defenders, we were the free
>
> The White City, blood was an addiction
> Now it is analyzed just as though it were fiction
> That battles were won and battles were blown
> At the height of the White City fighting
>
> The White City Fighting, remember, remember
> The White City Fighting, remember, remember
>
> No one remembers, not that I can see
> That we were defenders, we were the free
>
> The White City, I finally grew up
> To resist the temptation the gutters all threw up
> But I have to go back, I guess I'm violence prone
> To remember the White City fighting, yeah
>
> The White City Fighting, remember, remember......
>
>
> I think you really need to hear it with the music to feel it, but if I
> were to post the MP3 on the TNE Yahoo site that might not be fair use.
> There is no MP3 version available on Amazon. There may be on iTunes, but I
> have not checked.
>
> The other key tracks from the album were: "Give Blood," "Face the Face,"
> "I Am Secure," "Crashing by Design," and "Come to Mama," the last of
> which, I thought of as "The Star Vikings Theme." All of the tracks have
> something to say, but the ones I mentioned are primary.
>
> Actually I just checked YouTube:
>
> White City Fighting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myt86ReqMqg
>
> Give Blood: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK7ijkbAyzc
>
> Face the Face: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS3nRcwWktA
>
> I Am Secure: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_DNc0xrTX4
>
> Crashing by Design: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmAmayD5Zf0
>
> Come to Mama: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWqgS_MG7dk
>
>
>> Eamon--
>>
>> (Either I lied/misspoke/changed my mind. You be the judge of my
>> character.)
>>
>> I'm going to get back to your Sufren question later (and finish my
> longer
>> answer to Bardbear). Please remind me about Sufren if I don't get to it
> in, say, a week.
>>
>> The answer to your question is a combination of the three bullets plus
> the
>> Free Trader thing.
>>
>> Hiver manipulation, yes. But Hiver manipulation plays on tendencies also
> present, like over-enthusiasm, as a basis. And also plays on data
> available to the actors they are manipulating, your third bullet
> (asterisk). That data will include data received from the FTs, your fourth
>> (unbulleted) point.
>>
>> "Hiver manipulation," some points. If you take seriously the notion that
> their highest aspiration is manipulating others, then they are all
> constantly doing it to each other, which means that there are a lot of
> cross-cutting manipulations going on, undermining/diluting each other so
> that "big manipulations" tend to melt into an imprecise sludge. Better
> manipulators are aware of this, and plan to allow for sludge. Think of
> Asimov's psycho-history in the Foundation Trilogy, which also allows for
> these. Also remember that all Hivers are "orphans," so are missing all of
>> those developmental inputs for duty, hierarchy, structure to parents
> that
>> humans start with. They spend all those years in the wilderness relying
> only on themselves, periodically being exterminated by adult Hivers, so
> what they learn is, "I can only depend on myself, everyone else is out to
>> get me." All Hivers are essentially independent actor egoists (egoist in
> the philosophical sense, not egotist, there is a difference), beholden to
>> none, and that motivation "good of the hive/race" is such a porous
> statement that it can be used to justify any action. Hivers are scary, and
>> being a Hiver is scary.
>>
>> (Note, I am currently reading "The Hidden-Hand Presidency" about
> Eisenhower. This book was published in 1982 and popularized the term,
> "hidden hand." Compare this to other Traveller developments since then.
> However, note that, aside from the applicability of the term, the way Ike
>> practiced this is NOT the Hiver model per se. Ike practiced a human
> version of this, where he cultivated an external "act" to aid the
> accomplishment of his internal goals. That's obviously not unrelated to
> things a Hiver might do, but not as sophisticated, because to his inner
> circle, via his memos, etc., his goals were clear. A Hiver would have to
> conceal even these until he was ready to go, "Ta-daaaa!")
>>
>> Since everyone knows that Hivers are manipulators, they need to have a
> public (politically correct) rationale for their policies. With the RC
> it's: "Stable polities on our border make for improved security,
> elimination of chaos and vectors for attack, and allow profitable
> trade."
>> Beneath that is the notion that the DL was not really ready to expand,
> and
>> the Hivers are jump-starting that for two reasons: 1) the sooner we
> begin
>> the re-expansion, the sooner we will have stability (public rationale),
> and 2) the mechanism of the RC expansion was to "inoculate" humans against
>> violence, i.e., doing the typical "we made the Ithklur less violent"
> Hiver
>> thing (and we know that didn't really work) and to make them more
> manageable by the Hivers.
>>
>> The idea is that RC and Regency expansion are fundamentally different.
> The
>> Regency kept a "safe," reasonably robust economy so when they expand it
> will be more deliberate, coming in and helping the locals, knitting them
> into the Regency economy, etc. The Regency expansion is "growing the pie,"
>> not fighting over slices of the pie. The RC doesn't really have an
> economy. Their expansion is "the future is right now, right now, right
> now," and depends on grabbing high-value assets which it repurposes to
> their own use, i.e., fueling continued expansion. Their growth is more
> zero-sum, fighting over pie slices, but incapable of growing the pie
> organically right away. The way they grow the pie is by expanding the
> radius that defines that pie and grabbing more of it. The Regency is
> concerned with "hearts and minds," while the RC is, "we're doing this for
>> your own good, we know you can't see it now, but someday you'll thank
> us."
>>
>> Another way of thinking of this is something that is much more
>> politically freighted in 2014 than it was in 1991-1995, but the point
> remains. The Regency is growing its economy much more slowly, BECAUSE IT
> CAN AFFORD TO, while the RC is engaged in wholesale deficit spending,
> balancing that deficit as best it can by grabbing more stuff to keep the
> fires stoked, but in an ultimately unsustainable model. Now, re:
> 1991-1995
>> vs. 2014, YOU SHOULD NEVER TAKE THIS as "one of them is
>> Republican/Democrat or Red/Blue, that was never the intent. Both are
> responding to conditions around them: Regency has the luxury of its
> approach, RC does not have that luxury, because the Hivers pushed them
> into expanding prematurely, and once they got committed to that, they were
>> riding the tiger and there was no getting off. Once you attract
> attention
>> to yourself, you invite attack, so you have to push out and defend
> forward
>> (best defense = good offense). However, I know that now that I've said
> this, the Red/Blue meme is going to take on a life of its own because no
> one is going to be able to resist it. (This is also a good way to spot
> lurkers on this list, and where they're funneling their digests.)
>>
>> But anyway, Regency comes to your planet, topples your TED, and
>> immediately starts investing, buying up whatever crap you make, and
> pulling you into the economy. On the other hand, RC comes in, topples your
>> TED, kills a bunch of people in inevitable collateral damage, steals all
> the cool stuff, and might not come back, except to steal other cool stuff,
>> which may harm the locals who had depended upon it. Does the RC try to
> help uplift the locals? Yes, but given their resources they can't do as
> much of it as the Regency, it is much more shoestring, and oh, by the way,
>> requires them to go steal more new stuff from somebody else to support
> the
>> uplift project. Is what the RC is doing "for the greater good?"
> Arguably,
>> yes. Is what the RC doing going to seem high-handed, violent, unfair,
> and
>> capricious to the locals that the RC "preys on" to fuel the "greater
> good"
>> economy? Yes, hence "Star Vikings." While the Guild may be the ones
> running around teaching the vocabulary words, "Star Viking, Longships,"
> the intent behind that capability is embedded in the Hiver manipulation,
> with the goal that, "look at how much we had to suffer to recover to where
>> we are now, let alone the war that put us there to begin with, this has
> taught us that We Must Never Fight Again(TM)." The idea is that it might
> be nice to be an omelette, but if you were one of the eggs that went into
>> the omelette, you would not remember the chef fondly.
>>
>> There are other little clues to this throughout. There's an adventure in
> S&G or PoT that players rightly regarded as chilling, where the RC took
> some important thing that the locals needed. Also in S&G I put in a quote
>> from Ritter, "I didn't say Smash and Grab, I said stash what you've got
> and grab some more. I'll never hear the end of this." And Ritter is right,
>> the title of the book is Smash and Grab, and that's another example of
> how
>> the Hiver manipulation turned "reformation" into "Star Vikings." (As we
> know, the actual Reformation turned into the 30-Years war, another
> example.)
>>
>> Now, back to manipulation, we said above, "over-enthusiasm," which then
> became, "oh crap, now we've called attention to ourselves." That
> over-enthusiasm was caused by their astrographic isolation, and intel they
>> were getting from the Free Traders? Yes. BUT, were there Hiver
>> battlefleets out there protecting the DL, allowing them to get to where
> they thought space was kind of safe? Were some of the Free Trader
> reports
>> coming in as Hiver intelligence digests: "We've talked to a bunch of FTs
> the past year, and in summary they say XYZ."
>>
>> And a step further. Some of the DL ships that disappeared without a
> trace,
>> is it because they were snapped up by a Hiver shadowing force to ensure
> they didn't return? Where are those ships/crews now? Back to trailing in
> some Federation Navy holding cell? Atomized to eliminate evidence? Do the
>> Ithklur of "Hands Across the Truth" know about this and want to tell
> someone? We clearly published somewhere that, "we are not going to
> officially say what happened to all of these ships." I also know in
> reality that whenever a publisher or TV show or movie says this, they
> always eventually do in response to public clamor. So, while I knew that
> it would eventually happen, either act of commission on GDW's part, or act
>> of omission by failing to see that someone else published it (e.g.,
> licensee), the intent was to NOT do that for as long as possible.
>>
>> The plan was NEVER to publish or officially establish any of that,
> because
>> part of the mystery of Hivers and manipulations is that you allow them
> to
>> remain the subject of speculation. I was going to expose "the
> underbelly"
>> of Hiver politics through another means, in the epic adventure that
> never
>> happened, which showed an earlier "Terminal Manipulation" which would
> allow players to think, "whoa," and look over their shoulders more. But
> just as introducing Yaskoydray made the Ancients boring, showing all the
> Hiver puppet strings makes them less interesting then if you just wonder
> about them.
>>
>> And here's the other thing to pull from that. The Hivers were backing
> the
>> RC, not the Regency, and when the two met the Hivers would have some
> opinions about that. Also, there was an established early strain of
> psionic Hivers which would fit with advocates of the RC POV not being
> present to argue historiography.
>>
>> Back to the FTs, as I said in an earlier post, we were clearly falling
> behind in fleshing them out as well as we had initially intended, and
> probably would not have caught back up.
>>
>> Re: DL tech, not sure what you mean by Tech/Starport backwater. If you
> mean did their 1201 tech come from direct Hiver improvements? Yes, the
> Hivers brought them up through various means. Here we run afoul of the
> "Traveller TL model," which is at best murky and ambiguous, as it
> clearly
>> does NOT mean that you can produce all you need there. There are all
> kinds
>> of lo-pop worlds with high tech, and they obviously don't build all that
> stuff there, but rely on trade. Economics is hard in this one real world,
>> so expecting a game to have a perfect economic model for 20,000 worlds
> 4000 years from now is silly. But the idea is that the Hivers could
> provide key technologies, such as power plants, industrial tooling, etc.,
>> which would have pulled DL up higher than they otherwise were.
>>
>> I think that covers it all, provides some food for thought, and perhaps
> more questions.
>>
>> Dave
it never came through for me, so am trying again.
> One last thing, re DL/RC vs. SVs and my soundtrack. Here are the lyrics to
> Pete Townshend's "White City Fighting." This is the way an RCES remnant
> guy would look back on his life in the face of people disparaging him as a
> violent Star Viking.. Obviously without the exact 20th century
> references, but the idea.
>
>
> The White City, that's a joke of a name
> It's a black violent place if I remember the game
> I couldn't wait to get out but I love to go home
> To remember the White City fighting
>
> The White City Fighting, remember, remember
> The White City Fighting, remember, remember
>
> Down to the refuge, near QPR
> I drive to committees in my German car
> Prone to violence, prone to shame
> I glide in silence, my pride in vain
> For no one remembers, not that I can see
> That we were defenders, we were the free
>
> The White City, blood was an addiction
> Now it is analyzed just as though it were fiction
> That battles were won and battles were blown
> At the height of the White City fighting
>
> The White City Fighting, remember, remember
> The White City Fighting, remember, remember
>
> No one remembers, not that I can see
> That we were defenders, we were the free
>
> The White City, I finally grew up
> To resist the temptation the gutters all threw up
> But I have to go back, I guess I'm violence prone
> To remember the White City fighting, yeah
>
> The White City Fighting, remember, remember......
>
>
> I think you really need to hear it with the music to feel it, but if I
> were to post the MP3 on the TNE Yahoo site that might not be fair use.
> There is no MP3 version available on Amazon. There may be on iTunes, but I
> have not checked.
>
> The other key tracks from the album were: "Give Blood," "Face the Face,"
> "I Am Secure," "Crashing by Design," and "Come to Mama," the last of
> which, I thought of as "The Star Vikings Theme." All of the tracks have
> something to say, but the ones I mentioned are primary.
>
> Actually I just checked YouTube:
>
> White City Fighting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myt86ReqMqg
>
> Give Blood: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK7ijkbAyzc
>
> Face the Face: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS3nRcwWktA
>
> I Am Secure: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_DNc0xrTX4
>
> Crashing by Design: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmAmayD5Zf0
>
> Come to Mama: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWqgS_MG7dk
>
>
>> Eamon--
>>
>> (Either I lied/misspoke/changed my mind. You be the judge of my
>> character.)
>>
>> I'm going to get back to your Sufren question later (and finish my
> longer
>> answer to Bardbear). Please remind me about Sufren if I don't get to it
> in, say, a week.
>>
>> The answer to your question is a combination of the three bullets plus
> the
>> Free Trader thing.
>>
>> Hiver manipulation, yes. But Hiver manipulation plays on tendencies also
> present, like over-enthusiasm, as a basis. And also plays on data
> available to the actors they are manipulating, your third bullet
> (asterisk). That data will include data received from the FTs, your fourth
>> (unbulleted) point.
>>
>> "Hiver manipulation," some points. If you take seriously the notion that
> their highest aspiration is manipulating others, then they are all
> constantly doing it to each other, which means that there are a lot of
> cross-cutting manipulations going on, undermining/diluting each other so
> that "big manipulations" tend to melt into an imprecise sludge. Better
> manipulators are aware of this, and plan to allow for sludge. Think of
> Asimov's psycho-history in the Foundation Trilogy, which also allows for
> these. Also remember that all Hivers are "orphans," so are missing all of
>> those developmental inputs for duty, hierarchy, structure to parents
> that
>> humans start with. They spend all those years in the wilderness relying
> only on themselves, periodically being exterminated by adult Hivers, so
> what they learn is, "I can only depend on myself, everyone else is out to
>> get me." All Hivers are essentially independent actor egoists (egoist in
> the philosophical sense, not egotist, there is a difference), beholden to
>> none, and that motivation "good of the hive/race" is such a porous
> statement that it can be used to justify any action. Hivers are scary, and
>> being a Hiver is scary.
>>
>> (Note, I am currently reading "The Hidden-Hand Presidency" about
> Eisenhower. This book was published in 1982 and popularized the term,
> "hidden hand." Compare this to other Traveller developments since then.
> However, note that, aside from the applicability of the term, the way Ike
>> practiced this is NOT the Hiver model per se. Ike practiced a human
> version of this, where he cultivated an external "act" to aid the
> accomplishment of his internal goals. That's obviously not unrelated to
> things a Hiver might do, but not as sophisticated, because to his inner
> circle, via his memos, etc., his goals were clear. A Hiver would have to
> conceal even these until he was ready to go, "Ta-daaaa!")
>>
>> Since everyone knows that Hivers are manipulators, they need to have a
> public (politically correct) rationale for their policies. With the RC
> it's: "Stable polities on our border make for improved security,
> elimination of chaos and vectors for attack, and allow profitable
> trade."
>> Beneath that is the notion that the DL was not really ready to expand,
> and
>> the Hivers are jump-starting that for two reasons: 1) the sooner we
> begin
>> the re-expansion, the sooner we will have stability (public rationale),
> and 2) the mechanism of the RC expansion was to "inoculate" humans against
>> violence, i.e., doing the typical "we made the Ithklur less violent"
> Hiver
>> thing (and we know that didn't really work) and to make them more
> manageable by the Hivers.
>>
>> The idea is that RC and Regency expansion are fundamentally different.
> The
>> Regency kept a "safe," reasonably robust economy so when they expand it
> will be more deliberate, coming in and helping the locals, knitting them
> into the Regency economy, etc. The Regency expansion is "growing the pie,"
>> not fighting over slices of the pie. The RC doesn't really have an
> economy. Their expansion is "the future is right now, right now, right
> now," and depends on grabbing high-value assets which it repurposes to
> their own use, i.e., fueling continued expansion. Their growth is more
> zero-sum, fighting over pie slices, but incapable of growing the pie
> organically right away. The way they grow the pie is by expanding the
> radius that defines that pie and grabbing more of it. The Regency is
> concerned with "hearts and minds," while the RC is, "we're doing this for
>> your own good, we know you can't see it now, but someday you'll thank
> us."
>>
>> Another way of thinking of this is something that is much more
>> politically freighted in 2014 than it was in 1991-1995, but the point
> remains. The Regency is growing its economy much more slowly, BECAUSE IT
> CAN AFFORD TO, while the RC is engaged in wholesale deficit spending,
> balancing that deficit as best it can by grabbing more stuff to keep the
> fires stoked, but in an ultimately unsustainable model. Now, re:
> 1991-1995
>> vs. 2014, YOU SHOULD NEVER TAKE THIS as "one of them is
>> Republican/Democrat or Red/Blue, that was never the intent. Both are
> responding to conditions around them: Regency has the luxury of its
> approach, RC does not have that luxury, because the Hivers pushed them
> into expanding prematurely, and once they got committed to that, they were
>> riding the tiger and there was no getting off. Once you attract
> attention
>> to yourself, you invite attack, so you have to push out and defend
> forward
>> (best defense = good offense). However, I know that now that I've said
> this, the Red/Blue meme is going to take on a life of its own because no
> one is going to be able to resist it. (This is also a good way to spot
> lurkers on this list, and where they're funneling their digests.)
>>
>> But anyway, Regency comes to your planet, topples your TED, and
>> immediately starts investing, buying up whatever crap you make, and
> pulling you into the economy. On the other hand, RC comes in, topples your
>> TED, kills a bunch of people in inevitable collateral damage, steals all
> the cool stuff, and might not come back, except to steal other cool stuff,
>> which may harm the locals who had depended upon it. Does the RC try to
> help uplift the locals? Yes, but given their resources they can't do as
> much of it as the Regency, it is much more shoestring, and oh, by the way,
>> requires them to go steal more new stuff from somebody else to support
> the
>> uplift project. Is what the RC is doing "for the greater good?"
> Arguably,
>> yes. Is what the RC doing going to seem high-handed, violent, unfair,
> and
>> capricious to the locals that the RC "preys on" to fuel the "greater
> good"
>> economy? Yes, hence "Star Vikings." While the Guild may be the ones
> running around teaching the vocabulary words, "Star Viking, Longships,"
> the intent behind that capability is embedded in the Hiver manipulation,
> with the goal that, "look at how much we had to suffer to recover to where
>> we are now, let alone the war that put us there to begin with, this has
> taught us that We Must Never Fight Again(TM)." The idea is that it might
> be nice to be an omelette, but if you were one of the eggs that went into
>> the omelette, you would not remember the chef fondly.
>>
>> There are other little clues to this throughout. There's an adventure in
> S&G or PoT that players rightly regarded as chilling, where the RC took
> some important thing that the locals needed. Also in S&G I put in a quote
>> from Ritter, "I didn't say Smash and Grab, I said stash what you've got
> and grab some more. I'll never hear the end of this." And Ritter is right,
>> the title of the book is Smash and Grab, and that's another example of
> how
>> the Hiver manipulation turned "reformation" into "Star Vikings." (As we
> know, the actual Reformation turned into the 30-Years war, another
> example.)
>>
>> Now, back to manipulation, we said above, "over-enthusiasm," which then
> became, "oh crap, now we've called attention to ourselves." That
> over-enthusiasm was caused by their astrographic isolation, and intel they
>> were getting from the Free Traders? Yes. BUT, were there Hiver
>> battlefleets out there protecting the DL, allowing them to get to where
> they thought space was kind of safe? Were some of the Free Trader
> reports
>> coming in as Hiver intelligence digests: "We've talked to a bunch of FTs
> the past year, and in summary they say XYZ."
>>
>> And a step further. Some of the DL ships that disappeared without a
> trace,
>> is it because they were snapped up by a Hiver shadowing force to ensure
> they didn't return? Where are those ships/crews now? Back to trailing in
> some Federation Navy holding cell? Atomized to eliminate evidence? Do the
>> Ithklur of "Hands Across the Truth" know about this and want to tell
> someone? We clearly published somewhere that, "we are not going to
> officially say what happened to all of these ships." I also know in
> reality that whenever a publisher or TV show or movie says this, they
> always eventually do in response to public clamor. So, while I knew that
> it would eventually happen, either act of commission on GDW's part, or act
>> of omission by failing to see that someone else published it (e.g.,
> licensee), the intent was to NOT do that for as long as possible.
>>
>> The plan was NEVER to publish or officially establish any of that,
> because
>> part of the mystery of Hivers and manipulations is that you allow them
> to
>> remain the subject of speculation. I was going to expose "the
> underbelly"
>> of Hiver politics through another means, in the epic adventure that
> never
>> happened, which showed an earlier "Terminal Manipulation" which would
> allow players to think, "whoa," and look over their shoulders more. But
> just as introducing Yaskoydray made the Ancients boring, showing all the
> Hiver puppet strings makes them less interesting then if you just wonder
> about them.
>>
>> And here's the other thing to pull from that. The Hivers were backing
> the
>> RC, not the Regency, and when the two met the Hivers would have some
> opinions about that. Also, there was an established early strain of
> psionic Hivers which would fit with advocates of the RC POV not being
> present to argue historiography.
>>
>> Back to the FTs, as I said in an earlier post, we were clearly falling
> behind in fleshing them out as well as we had initially intended, and
> probably would not have caught back up.
>>
>> Re: DL tech, not sure what you mean by Tech/Starport backwater. If you
> mean did their 1201 tech come from direct Hiver improvements? Yes, the
> Hivers brought them up through various means. Here we run afoul of the
> "Traveller TL model," which is at best murky and ambiguous, as it
> clearly
>> does NOT mean that you can produce all you need there. There are all
> kinds
>> of lo-pop worlds with high tech, and they obviously don't build all that
> stuff there, but rely on trade. Economics is hard in this one real world,
>> so expecting a game to have a perfect economic model for 20,000 worlds
> 4000 years from now is silly. But the idea is that the Hivers could
> provide key technologies, such as power plants, industrial tooling, etc.,
>> which would have pulled DL up higher than they otherwise were.
>>
>> I think that covers it all, provides some food for thought, and perhaps
> more questions.
>>
>> Dave