Q99 wrote:You can make paranoid assumptions, but it is simply making paranoid assumptions as justification.
There's logic behind this so I will try to explain.
They eat fresh fruit/vegetables and leaves/rotting garbage/compost
They eat cooked or raw meat.
We are told they love to garden and cook.
If they liked raw meat as much as cooked meat, why would they enjoy cooking?
If they liked compost/leaves as much as fresh fruit, why would they love to garden?
Although it is possible that they like to do these things because it lets them create food for others to enjoy...
As there is no actual mention of that being their motive, it seems more likely to me that they, like us, enjoy fresh plants and cooked meats..
The difference is obviously not as much, it may be a very slight preference compared to "we will only eat this unless we'er about to die" preference with us. But it still seems like a preference exists.
We are also told they love drinking more than eating, and this is clearly the 'alcohol' sort of drinking.
To make this, they will need fresh fruits like grapes, far as I know you can't make alcohol out of rotting leftover foods.
In this area, their preferred food, they are in direct competition from humans over foodstuffs. They also get drunk almost immediately. But even normal food is digested faster than it takes to pass through a human's system.
One major factor lacking here, in establishing how much of a threat they are, is just how much food they do eat. If it says that in WB30, I'm not noticing.
They're not the first race to overlook an important factor like that. We do sometimes see it:
*PF2p304 Ogres 3x that of healthy and husky warrior human
*PF2p306 Trolls 5x that of average human adult
Aside from these two I can't remember anything else. The amount of food that a being requires could be a major factor when considering the effect an increase in their numbers has on other species in the same region.
If the CS is aware of them, I can see reason for them to more highly prize (higher bounty) the kill of a Troll or Ogre than that of a Dwarf or Orc.
I'd figure giants/wolfen and all that also eat massive amounts, and that smaller guys like Gnomes wouldn't eat very much, but it'd be nice to know the exact numbers.
Slurmphs aren't as big as Ogres, so based just on size I wouldn't expect to see more than double human appetite. However: these guys are MDC, they heal fast, they regrow limbs, they breed fast, they leave parts of themself behind whenever they move about (possibly more if done intentionally). I get that a good deal of this is water mass but it has to have some physical component, and that spells calories to me.
Logically you'd expect people to have to eat more when they are healing from injuries (especially limb regrowth), or if they were growing young inside them (enhanced caloric need of pregnant mothers) and it's possible that maintaining a tough MDC body also has very high calorie demands (think of the higher metabolism that muscular people have, who are still softer than these guys)
Q99 wrote:a species known for saving children and pets.
In this respect the Swamp Sludger certainly sounds better than cat-eating Slurmphs. However the whole "taking your weapons, firing them into crowds" bit really balances that out. The CS probably have more confirmed evidence of stuff like this happening than rescued children/pets. They might write off rumors of the latter as conversationist propoganda.
Q99 wrote:Slurmphs are known for being incredible farmers, increasing food supply.
Yet it doesn't seem like they're giving it away. Much of it is for their own benefit, and when they sell the rest on the market, they make money for themselves, which they could use to buy up land (or weapons to steal land with) for their own farming interests. All of this as they grow in number more and more and gain more power to battle humans. They're friendly enough now, but who says they'll remain so if they become the majority?
The Slurmphs explicitly can and will eat "rotting corpses". We are not given further details as to their nature. Is it small like "fur covered roadkill" or cats? Or are we talking HUMAN corpses? What if they start offing humans so they can ferment us like the wines they enjoy?
They may not seem too dangerous, but they can whip pieces of themself at us to blind us or make us drop our weapons. They can cause our land vehicles to crash with their subtle slime-skids. If they commit crimes, it would seem very difficult to tell them apart (they do not have any clear identifying features, only 4 beauty variations) and very difficult to imprison them (no bars unless super-thin openings, walls would be ideal)
Q99 wrote:They also do so off coalition-proper land.
right, because they're kept from doing so
Q99 wrote:What demons or real monsters could those soldiers have been going after rather than hunting down Slurmphs across multiple largely-empty states?
Hunting them down isn't that time-consuming. They have a lower maximum speed than humans and leave an easy to follow trail. Their need for water means you can rely on them traveling in the direction of some after a given amount of time. Although the downside to this is, it seems like they could hide underwater very easily to avoid detection...
The CS slaughtering them doesn't necessarily mean they were organizing hunts though, they probably just have a kill-on-sight policy for them like the Kremin. The Slurmphs just breed so much, and don't educate their young to avoid the CS, so they probably just come ambling into CS territories and start eating our stuff just like the Sludgers.
Even though these guys can learn OCCs, it makes you wonder: who do they learn them from? Can they gain them on instinct? Do the parents show up again after a year to teach them once they're done their underground burrowing? There's no mention of this. Do they rely on other species to raise them in their stead, like a cuckoo? If this doesn't happen, how are they going to learn morality, to not take from others, to respect land rights?
Q99 wrote:Even the anarchist demons are known to be violent and often kill people. Not all anarchists are the same, after all, an anarchist human or D-Bee is unlikely to eat me when it's hungry.
Although it's true that having the same alignment doesn't guarantee identical behavior, I see no reason to think Anarchist Dyvalians are necessarily more inclined to violence than we are. If they do it more often, it is merely due to being stronger and there being fewer consequences to them to act on impulse. An Anarchist Human has to worry about getting killed, they can't bio-gen / teleport / morph / fly to escape consequences as easily.
I'm no so sure that a Slurmph is unlikely to eat us if they get hungry though. Maybe they just cut us up into cat-sized chunks and wait for us to ripen in the sun before chowing down. Instead of killing us directly, consciously or intently, they can just get blackout-drunk and have no moral consequence attached to any violence they infilct. It need not even be direct violence: maybe like how a drunk might spit or curse, a Slurmph will throw slime in people's eyes or under their tires so that they walk into traffick or drive onto sidewalks. Sabotage city defenders so that an invading Brodkil can rip us apart, us deprived of slimed Vibro-Blades and hard-to-handle laser rifles.
What a Slurmph might contribute in lowering food production time: don't they add burden back by making a mess so people need to clean up their tools to be able to grip them?
Q99 wrote:seeing someone fight demons should do the exact opposite of making you think they're bad.
The CS likely has had experience with observing LLWs losing control of their Shadow Beasts, Shifters losing control of their demons, Necromancers losing control of their Vampires. Thus the "they were in league but lost control or were betrayed" approach. The NGR isn't changing their instincts just because Brodkil and Gargs are not going at it. Now will Nemo think highly of the Naut'Yll for clashing with Splugorth.
Q99 wrote:So they don't do as much as we'd like and are stoic bastards. Anyone who thinks that is deserving of genocide, is pretty evil.
The CS is not interpreting it that way though, they're interpreting it as them being monster-wrangler generals. Koschei (Mystic Russia) spend a lot of time on strategy/plotting/management/smithery yet they are still the most hated demon among the Warlords because of how it is perceived they are masterminding things. This is how Death (Africa) behaves too.
Makes me curious about the timeline regarding when the CS put the kill-order on the Kremin and when the NGR participated in the air-raid aspect of the Gathering of Heroes. Either via their allies or via studying Tarn's writings (albeit I am unclear just how involved she ended up being or what she may have written about it, or if she encountered any of the horsemn at all) or some other intelligence, the CS could learn to be more way of seemingly 'pacifist, fight only in self defense' guy who grimly appear on the edge of battlefields and don't try to help you.
Q99 wrote:It only leads easily to that impression if one is looking for an excuse to wipe out not-them groups on principle.
Not at all. In the heat of battle there is often a 'with us or against us' vibe. Unless someone is demonstrating clear actions that they are allied (damaging your enemy, putting themselves at risk to prevent you harm) you're going to view them as a potential threat. They're not YOUR reserve troops... so maybe they're the reserve troops (or the leaders) of the enemy.
Q99 wrote:They're late-comers, there's been no evidence they're behind attacks/not been seen directing attacks
Directions can be given subtly in the age of modern technology (scrambled radio), telepathy, or invisible messengers. The CS would not rely on needing evidence to establish commander/obeyer relationships. They would have to get in the habit of extrapolating these things based on less direct evidence. This also happens a lot in spycraft.
Q99 wrote:I'm thinking more the US military's treatment of Native American's.
In this case the CS are the natives and the Slurmphs are the outlanders though =/ I'm thinking more like a rat population.
Who's to say the majority of the deaths are from killing adult Slurmphs anyway? What if they kill the uneducated youths who just go around wildly eating food? The ones who haven't yet learned to farm or interact civilly with other species? What if these psychics are sensed out and dug up by Psi-Hounds as food for Psi-Stalkers? They might just seem like high-PPE plus bonus ISP wormlets at that point.
Q99 wrote:most of the D-Bee entries single out Coalition soldiers as ones who are known to attack them
Soldiers who may not even be CS citizens. Possibly newbie grunts serving a term to get themselves and their families accepted, and more violent than actual CS citizens because they have been victims of D-Bees on the dregs of society, eager to get revenge, prove themselves.
Q99 wrote:They're also known to be highly peaceful, and they've been around enough that there's pretty much no chance of being ignorant about many being non-mages.
To disprove them being Mystic Invisible you'd have to capture them long enough for such a spell to expire. You'd also have to verify they don't have a Diabolist-created Permanence Ward on them to know that it would expire.
If creatures seen with magic half the time don't have it, maybe the CS figures they just haven't reached their supernatural life stage where they develope magic yet. Or even if not perceived as CoMs, they have a strong impulse to learn magic so those who haven't are predicted to eventually succumb to its temptations due to some kind of mental defect. Those melonheads are horny for magic! Some are also joining the FoM and being aggressive/forceful. The ones who went to Tolkeen are clearly following suit, surely it's only a matter of time before those who went to Lazlo do as well.
Q99 wrote:That sounds like you're describing encouraging ignorance.
Not at all. CS citizens can still be very skilled when taught in person or via video.
Q99 wrote:most pre-rifts stuff is off limits, remember?
Aliens and wizards have brought all kinds of lies, they are capable of creating illusions. The CS must assure that any claims of history are properly vetted for accuracy. They are responsible teachers. Reckless rumor-mongers like Erin Tarn create the 'clickbait' of Rifts Earth, spreading anything on the grapevine as canon, often without vetting it for accuracy. She instills people with a dangerous sense of certainty that they know the world when they do not.
The CS empowers people with a valuable sense of doubt. The capabilities of an individual to assess reality are limited, much better to let the scientific minds at the head of the CS do so collectively, to rely on their expertise which has kept you safe.
Pre-Rifts materials are full of all kinds of dangerous things. Instructions on dangerous magic might be hidden in innocent-seeming children's tales like Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. They may give a false sense of comfort with dangerous beings like elves or goblins, making them seem like allies when the CS knows members of both races have hurt humans.
There is also stuff like 'The Anarchist's Cookbook' which could be used to create bombs and hurt people. The CS wants to limit exposure to dangerous stuff like that, keep Demolitions creation to the military, so that the people who have access to it are verified as stable and held accountable to monitoring and proper safety training.
It's not like the CS is dedicated to keeping all pre-Rifts material banned forever, they just need to protect people from it until they can properly go through it all and see what is true and what is safe to transmit to them. Obviously they can't be transmitted in their original written forms since paper allows scrolls to be transported too easily.
The CS will get around to making videos of everything in order of importance once it has the time and resources. No doubt this will begin once they have safely taken back Earth for Humanity. Until then, the study of Pre-Rifts material must be minimal, because time and resources need to be spent on more important tasks.
In the mean-time, citizens should just turn over all pre-Rifts material to the CS who will safely stockpile it and keep it from being dangerous in the wrong hands. The CS will organize it and preserve it so when the time comes and it is time to study these things, they will be able to do so with far more accuracy and trustworthiness than rogues like Erin Tarn have done. They will not rush to judgement, to gain fans, like Tarn has done. They want to be responsible scholars.
Alrik Vas wrote:People who believe they are doing the right thing, even if it's evil, can be called fanatics.
Nothing wrong with
Fanatacismcosmicfish wrote:I am curious, is this xenophobia your own, or are you just trying to present what you think a "typical" Coalition citizen would say?
Both. People accept that good-aligned humans can do net-bad things yet somehow I'm to think that the good alignments some D-Bees have will prevent them from harming us?
cosmicfish wrote:If they have resources to launch a genocidal war against Tolkeen then they have resources to spare - they are just choosing them to allocate them killing humans rather than saving anyone.
The Coalition War on Tolkeen is not genocidal. They just contained a genocidal general or two doing genocidal front-line atrocities without approval from upper management.
It may be costly in resources in the short-term, but it is in the interest of human safety, both for CS and surviving independent cities, to get rid of a hot-bed of Shifters.
The CS has already seen exactly what happens when this is allowed to go on, when the army of winged demons were summoned by accident in the Great City and killed many of its citizens and then came and attacked the Burbs. They have seen how this power corrupts people, when it led the arrogant Federation to attack who they thought were their inferiors.
cosmicfish wrote:this dim view of selfish alignments easily tips the majority of Coalition military into the "bad guy" zone
I don't agree with that. The majority of the Coalition citizens are 'good and selfish' which is better than "unprincipled and anarchist" (selfish). I expect this applies to CS citizens in the army as well. I can accept that warriors may gravitate to less-good more-evil alignments, but we may see this in more armies than the CS. We certainly see it in Headhunter Techno-Warriors.
cosmicfish wrote:in SoT, 55% are specifically identified as falling into three groups comprised of Anarchist and evil individuals.
I would like if anyone recalls a book/page for this so I can review the context in which this is presented.
cosmicfish wrote:it may simply indicate that actual genocide is at most a once-in-decade event
The UN's Genocide Convention came into effect 1951, so more like there seems to be a 34 year gap where it wasn't applied to anything. I could be ignorant of more applications that are not written about on Wikipedia during that interim and if so, I can amend this criticism.
The incredibly broad definitions of genocide allow you to apply this to all kinds of things. For example, the Korean War, which was still ongoing and didn't end until 1953.
What the lack of genocide-calling shows is that, even if the definition is super-broad to allow the UN cart-blanche to call whatever they want a genocide, they have still been reserved in using that freedom to label something a genocide, likely because unless something is so super-bad that it reminds you of Nazis, people will find it odd that you're calling it a genocide and look into why you have such a broad definition to allow it.
Broad definitions like this and them surviving in the Coalition States could actually be used as propoganda tools. When any death of a human or destruction of a human resource can be labelled a genocide, you can push a "they're starting genocides against us, we must wipe them out first" rhetoric.
cosmicfish wrote:The US of the 50's wasn't launching wars against African nations
US allies were:
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau_Mau_Uprising
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reprisal_operations
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis
Admittedly the US was too involved with Asia to deal with Africa, but that's more like threat-prioritization. Like how CS isn't currently attacking Lazlo.
cosmicfish wrote:He wasn't talking about competition, he was referring to an attempt to use economic strength in a deliberate attempt to destroy a population.
It is possible to mask an attempt to destroy competition as competititon. That the phrase 'friendly competition' exists shows that it is not inherently so.
cosmicfish wrote:you don't seem to have a grip on what Lemkin was talking about here. The destruction of personal security has to be real not just perceived
"Dignity" is hardly a real physical resource, so it already includes intangibles. That said, the CS has already had their personal security destroyed by attacks against the Burbs and then on Chi-Town not to mention maurauding monsters around North America attacking them and attacking humans they're trying to rescue. They can acknowledge that some of these may come under their own power or vua random rifts, but mages are compounding this problem.
Shifters started with "Summon Lesser Being" but not "Protection Circle". Now in RUE they start with 'Dimensional Portal' but not 'Close Rift'. That says something about priorities. Chameleon/Concealment/ShadowMeld/TimeSlip ..Call Lightning. Sounds a heck of a lot like there's an entire class of spellcasters out there who want to hide and lob lightning bolts and demons at us with impunity, not make the world a better place. Perhaps even link to an alien intelligence and summon them too, for the sweet power boost.
The CS has no reliable means of discerning who is a Shifter and who is a Ley Line Walker, far as I know. Plus LLWs can all learn these spells too. That all Shifters know them means they must be very widespread and easier to find compared to other magic only randomly possessed by people with spell selections.
For there being so many mages out there with bad intentions, low priorities, the mages of other classes seem remarkably unconcerned with being told apart from them. Instead they just live together, implying they're completely okay with this kind of reckless behavior. Sure, some places ban Necromancy. Big whup. They're not even the main problem, skeletons/mummies/zombies just do as they're told. They're not the same level of predators that shifters summon.
cosmicfish wrote:unless I missed something in the books about massive, coordinated, magical attacks on the CS of the last half century, this is perception and not reality
WB16 (Federation of Magic) p28 "around 60 PA, Alistair Dunscon returned" p29 "Immediately after his return, acts of terrorism and magical guerilla warfare had been leveled at Chi-Town and CS outposts throughout the Mid-west." No mention of it having stopped. Even RMB in present-day had been subject to this for decades. They didn't start to get Psi-Hounds until 17 years later. That's a whole generation of kids being born and reaching adulthood while being subject to terrorism with nowhere near the countermeasures the CS has now.
cosmicfish wrote:The dignity he was talking about was basic human dignity, like not making starved Jews run around naked so that their fitness for work camps could be assessed.
You think the Federation of Magic didn't do stuff like that? They're allied with the Splugorth, you think their slaves do much better? Rare pampered ones maybe but for the most part they're being fattened up as dragon chow or doing mining or something. Tolkeen was part of this Federation. Them pulling out and abandoning Nostrous can be seen as a wise move not to make an immediate enemy of the CS, or (like what Alistair did to Tolkeen later) letting their magical rivals weaken themselves so they can be the top dog. Neither is endearing or inducing of forgiveness for the part they played prior to that. It didn't seem like a big moral gambit considering how low they sunk once more, if they had ever climbed higher than the Great City to begin with.
cosmicfish wrote:pg 29 of CWC says that "teaching the peasant masses and illiterate citizens of the CS (even those of the middle and lower levels) how to read, write, mathematics and pre-Rifts history (or any history that differs from the official CS version)" is punishable by at least 15 years in prison, up to the death penalty.
Notice "and" not "or". Is there any indication that teaching mathematics alone is punishable by this?
As indicated earlier, teaching reading/writing/history gives the unprotected masses too much vulnerability to scrolls and being misled by lies or bad research. The government is controlling this for their safety.
cosmicfish wrote:If that isn't encouraging ignorance, what is it?
Banning the internet or social media. The CS has both of these, don't they? It's just image/audio based.
cosmicfish wrote:Ignorance is quite simply defined as a lack of knowledge or information, and that is a canon list of knowledge and information that CS citizens are specifically denied, and that list covers, well, a ton.
Just because you don't allow all information right away to everyone doesn't mean you're promoting ignorance. It's all about the order you introduce it to people in. It should be done carefully so that people have the tools to process information.
The CS might hold, for example, that children should be taught logic before they can celebrate Christmas, so they know Santa is just a game and that if a guy really did magically come down your chimney on flying deer, he's probably a dangerous wizard and you should jam a fire-poker into his neck.
Or: they might teach them about the dangers of mishandled e-clips (and how they can explode if overloaded) far in advance of teaching them how to fire guns powered by them.
Humans can become literate in the CS, this is just restricted to a class of people who are well-prepared to handle the responsibility and burdens that come along with it. People who absolutely need to know it, since it is such a huge security risk, since it allows people untrained in magic to cast ANY spell if the appropriate paper-thin scroll is snuck in. It's cheaper to buy a Scroll of Dimensional Portla than it is to pay someone to teach you to cast it.
