Implenting Case Lacoon I & II after Oyster Bay

Bill Woods wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:We are back at our usual problem of not knowing enough and/or haven't been told. Places like Asgard, it has 3 termini, one of which leads to the Aldermani Empire. NO real information on the Asgard republic/kingdom/empire/whatever. Asgard has a connection to Matapan. Other than being the same name as a T-stop in the Boston area,

I grin every time I notice that on the starmaps.

Brigade XO wrote: no information, including what arrangements Manticore does or does not have for the Astro Control of that terminus and any defenses. Nothing on trade. The third terminus from Asgard is Midgard. Same thing, there is a wormhole; the map would indicate it is being used but nothing else. All of that is a relatively lot of detail with "important" trade routes but not much else. Is this an area that is going to become important? Is (or was) it going to be for challenges between the Aldermani and Manticore? Is Darius somewhere out there or is there a wormhole bridge out there that leads or links into the Alignment shadow wormhole network?

Do they really have a 'network'? They've got the Mesa–Visigoth bridge that everybody knows about, and the Mannerheim junction that almost nobody knows about, but are there any others?

Well, we know that the secretly control the Visigoth And Yildun junctions (because they secretly control the governments of said systems). Having Mannerheim control a third will place them in a very good spot for controlling movements.

I was talking about the actual secret (known only to the Alignment and some of the people in the military/top government of its cats paws like Mannerheim. The Visigoth-Mesa wormhole is well known (just not on our maps). It goes from point A to point B and is used primarily for commercial traffic. Anybody can show up at the Visigoth end (with the probable exception of other peoples navy) and pay to make the transit.
The Alignment has this whole secret network. One terminus out in the system near Mannerheim. There is the system with “the Twins” pair of wormholes. There is the one that goes to Torch. We don’t know how (or if) this system has a terminus near Darius though that would be a reasonable guess and would let Darius be way out beyond where anybody might be wandering around without the help of a perhaps 200 to 400ly wormhole bridge to get there.
Except for the other end of the Torch wormhole (which has a CA or BC squadron sitting on it in energy weapons range and instructed to shoot immediately (and perhaps check out the really tiny debris later) I would suspect that the Alignment is going to have some version of an Astro Control at each wormhole in the secret network EXCEPT the one over by Mannerheim. They would NOT want a dedicated platform there where it might be spotted (if the Mannerheim SDF couldn’t warn or chase off intruders) so the function would be handled by one of the Mannerheim ships on station. It is also even likely that they would use a ship at the other termini for the same reason. You can maneuver with a ship, even leave the system and unless an intruder saw a transit they wouldn’t have much of a clue as to why another ship might be there. These would also probably be warships- conventional to be sure- but still warships and at least in the BC range. You want lots of ability to deal with people wandering in. Heck, you might also use these shadow systems as practice areas for MAN ships of all the conventional, Streak and Spider designs, particularly to practice going through wormholes.
IF Darius is on the end of one wormhole in the secret network then the Alignment is going to have a traffic spike with the Houdini evacuations even if the escape groups are later concentrated before going into the network. Exactly the same logic for an Alignment dedicated Astro Control system holds as for all the other wormholes known: safe transit and keeping a real close eye on the fluctuation of the terminui.

Brigade XO wrote:I was talking about the actual secret (known only to the Alignment and some of the people in the military/top government of its cats paws like Mannerheim. The Visigoth-Mesa wormhole is well known (just not on our maps). It goes from point A to point B and is used primarily for commercial traffic. Anybody can show up at the Visigoth end (with the probable exception of other peoples navy) and pay to make the transit.
The Alignment has this whole secret network. One terminus out in the system near Mannerheim. There is the system with “the Twins” pair of wormholes. There is the one that goes to Torch. We don’t know how (or if) this system has a terminus near Darius though that would be a reasonable guess and would let Darius be way out beyond where anybody might be wandering around without the help of a perhaps 200 to 400ly wormhole bridge to get there.
Except for the other end of the Torch wormhole (which has a CA or BC squadron sitting on it in energy weapons range and instructed to shoot immediately (and perhaps check out the really tiny debris later) I would suspect that the Alignment is going to have some version of an Astro Control at each wormhole in the secret network EXCEPT the one over by Mannerheim. They would NOT want a dedicated platform there where it might be spotted (if the Mannerheim SDF couldn’t warn or chase off intruders) so the function would be handled by one of the Mannerheim ships on station. It is also even likely that they would use a ship at the other termini for the same reason. You can maneuver with a ship, even leave the system and unless an intruder saw a transit they wouldn’t have much of a clue as to why another ship might be there. These would also probably be warships- conventional to be sure- but still warships and at least in the BC range. You want lots of ability to deal with people wandering in. Heck, you might also use these shadow systems as practice areas for MAN ships of all the conventional, Streak and Spider designs, particularly to practice going through wormholes.
IF Darius is on the end of one wormhole in the secret network then the Alignment is going to have a traffic spike with the Houdini evacuations even if the escape groups are later concentrated before going into the network. Exactly the same logic for an Alignment dedicated Astro Control system holds as for all the other wormholes known: safe transit and keeping a real close eye on the fluctuation of the terminui.

Actually, we do know that one of the termini from that junction leads to Darius. Another leads to the twins, and the other two termini are nowhere interesting. The Alignment probably does not have anything in those two termini. And the text suggests that, as of the Harvest Joy expedition, the Alignment also did not have any permanent structures in the Twins.

The only problem with your post is the use of the term "network". The only secret wormholes that the Mesan Alignment have is the Felix Wormhole Junction (located near Mannerheim) and it's four termini. A network generally refers to several sets of wormholes with termini near each other, greatly multiplying the economic importance of each. Manticore is part of such a network, which includes the Manticore Junction, the Erewhon Junction, the Asgard Junction, and several others. So it is not strictly correct to say that the Alignment controls a secret wormhole network--it controls a single secret four-terminus junction.

Garth 2 wrote:A quick query, I was recently re-reading OBS and noticed something I hadn't considered before.

When Harrington approaches the Junction, she thinks upon the fact that the MWJ has one more termini then any other.

Wouldn't this therefore mean that there is at least one junction within Human space (and probably within the League)that has 5 termini.

Shouldn't this system be an economic powerhouse like SKM?
Also how will case Lacoon effect it, is it a member of the league or independent?

Manticore has been given every advantage possible with its Junction to be rich, powerful and indepedent. A Junction system with five hyperbridges may or may not make its host system nearly as rich or powerful as Manticore Binary. It really depends on how a matrix of factors play out. Let's review some of the more important factors that has allowed the Star Kingdom of Manticore to be an extremely rich single system polity able to punch out of its weight for three hundred years.

Manticore's Junction was discovered fairly early on, so trade routes had not yet stabilized and the ancillary supporting services (finance, warehousing, insurance, ship repair etc) had not yet started to cluster at highly useful nodes. A five terminus junction that was first exploited in 1860 is a major disruption to shipping patterns but the ancillary services will take a long time to follow the ships if there are only marginal value in moving. There are significant economies of scale and economies of expertise in the areas that Manticore has a 350 year comparative advantage, and displacing that advanatage is extremely expensive and uncertain. As a real world example, this is why Silicon Valley and the Route 128 Belt in Boston are technological hubs despite the amazingly high costs of operations. They have a cluster of skills that reinforce success.
Secondly, Manticore's Junction started off as three bridges that connected already stable and reasonably rich areas. The Trevor's Star Terminus dramatically reduced travel time to the Republic of Haven which already had its act together economically. The Sigma Draconis Terminus connected Manticore and thus the Havenite Quadrant to Beowulf and the Inner Core worlds. The Phoenix Terminus is not as valuable initially. The initial configuration of the Junction brought a rich and economically coherent segment of the Verge into the Core. The discovery of the Gregor Terminus brought another region that also had its economic act together into the near Core. Matapan, Basilak and Lynx did not connect rich, successful regions to the trade routes. What would have happened if the Manticoran Wormhole Junction had seven hyper bridges but all of them shot off 1,000 light years in the general direction of the Galactic North? It would be an important colony launching point for people who want to go north, but it would not be the heart of galatic commerce. If the five junction system had all of its hyper lines going out to the middle of nowhere, it would not be too valuable.

Third, it seems that the Manticoran Wormhole Junction is in a region of space where there is a reasonable amount of wormhole density. This creates massive network effects as Erewhon is "close" to Manticore via the Phoenix short-hop. Therefore Beowulf and Joshua are close, and the Junction network serves as a bypass route for two large, rich Core/Shell regions. Throw in the other feeder lines that we've been told about (Visigoth-Mesa, Idaho, Asgard, Erewhon etc), Manticore sits as the central node in the graph of travel times around the League Core and Shell. A 5 Junction system could either be part of this feeder system or it could be in an area of space with few other hyperbridges.

Fourth, when the Junction was discovered, Manticore managed to hold onto it. No one conquered Manticore for looting purposes (I strongly suspect Beowulf had a very visible hand in guaranateeing Manticoran independence early on). What would a system which has a five termini junction look like if either the Office of Frontier Security controlled the system before the discovery, or they were able to get their fingers into the system before the system was strong enough to avoid "accidental conquest"? We've been told in ART that OFS routinely skimmed off a significant fraction of Junction fees from the wormholes it controls/oversees which makes enriching the local physical and intellectual capital stock a very difficult proposition.

Fifth, Manticore was lucky that when it discovered a massive source of ecnomomic rent that it already had a functional political system that had good institutions. There is a very long history on earth of countries that are resource extraction or rentier societies that devolve into civil war because every faction is fighting for a piece of the pie. This is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse">the resource curse[/a]. If Manticore had the level of governmental competence as Silesia, it would be a failure even with all the other advantages it has. Rentier resources can exisit in well governed socieites (see Norway, UK, US) but it is usually easier for good institutions to develop first and then a resource boom than vice versa.

This is an incomplete list of the advantages that Manticore has with its Junction. The deck had been tilted for Manticoran success but that makes sense for it it was a back-water system with a Junction that connected it to the middle of nowhere, and its government if a front for OFS, we would never care about Lt. Harrington and her quest to make custom inspections more efficient at the Junction.

Here are some ideas for expanding the Lacoon concept:
Action Goal Intended & unintended consequences.

Lacoon 1 Recall Manty merchant marine from Sollie space
1. convince Sollies that Manties are not gonna roll over.
2. Remove merchant marines from the line of fire.
3. Free up skilled manpower for offensives against Sollies & MalAlign.

Mandarins discover the error of their ways but their belligerence keeps them calling plays from the same “tried and true” playbook for dealing with neo-barbs.

Sollie economy slows, then goes into recession because transportation stalls. “Who can destroy a thing controls it” – quote from Dune

Sollie citizens believe that govt can solve their problems and become more willing to swallow govt propaganda rather than believe their lying eyes or engage their brains.

Lacoon 2 Close key jump points to Solarian shipping. Raise the stakes Negatively impact the Solarian economy to force the Mandarins to take responsibility for their Navy’s actions. Manty’s begin prosecuting war with Sollies.

Sollie trans stellars attempt a coup that fails, solidifying the Mandarins power, but increasing their fear & paranoia. Sollie R&D starts to move forward, intending to close the technology gap.

Lacoon 3 Manty’s submit declaration of War to Chamber of stars.

2. Identify and target Sollie infrastructure, starting with military R&D facilities, like Technodyne.

3. Task commandos (ninjas) to infiltrate and provide covert assistance to revolutionaries in Verge protectorates (ie do what Firebrand pretends to do).

Keep the Mandarins and the Sillies off balance so they take too long to get their act together. Buy enough time for the Solarian Leauge ship to come apart before they can bridge the technology gap wth the Manicore Alliance.

Mandarins engage the theory of “the big lie”.

Sollies start raiding Manty shipping using Frontier fleet. Frontier fleet takes their frustrations out on any Manty ships they catch. Few survive the experience. MalAlign agents help bureaucratic inefficiency to keep Sollie technology in a “not invented here” mindset. This results in R&D stalling out.

Lacoon 4

1. Public relations campaign to discredit the Mandarins policies.
2. Publicize Frontier Fleet’s secret contingency files from their captured computers.
3. Expose corruption in OFS protectorates & client states including Manpower corporate records and client lists.

Create political division and possibly a constitutional crisis Verge systems try to declare independence.

Most Sollie citizens remain brain dead. However, Daud al-Fanudahi’s coalition makes contact with the Beowulf Biological Survey Corps.

Mandarins institute a military conscription program and begins a reign of terror to keep Verge (and core) systems from succeeding.

Lacoon 5 Initiate banking, corporate & infrastructure cyber warfare & espionage. Prosecute the war on multiple fronts, not just militarily. Destabilize the Solly economy. Follow the money trail to the MalAlign. Anarchy reins, people die & things get blown up. Manty’s get a lead on the Verdant Vista (now Torch) wormhole bridge terminus. Manty’s get wind of the Prometheus or Darius plots.