Hunting the MAlignment: MWW Clue's

I don't see how I am relying on reader knowledge rather than what would be available to the characters in the story.

Secondly, we know from textev that the computers on Torch that might have contained the records of wormhole exploration were destroyed during the uprising. I find it highly unlikely that the wormhole was not explored by Mesa/Alignment. As for whether or not it gets exploited commercially depends on what the discovers' vital interests are. It is almost certain that Mesa claimed Verdant Vista in order to control and claim ownership to the system with the wormhole itself.

For me at least I don't understand minimizing the risks here. You have a system in which Mesa has possessed in the past, an attempt to depopulate the planet and a wormhole in which an exploration ship has disappeared fate unknown. Just what is it about this whole picture that fails to excite a properly suspicious minister of defense when the Alignment is being portayed both here on the forums and in the books as the galaxy's most seious threat?

Don

n7axw wrote:I don't see how I am relying on reader knowledge rather than what would be available to the characters in the story.

Secondly, we know from textev that the computers on Torch that might have contained the records of wormhole exploration were destroyed during the uprising. I find it highly unlikely that the wormhole was not explored by Mesa/Alignment. As for whether or not it gets exploited commercially depends on what the discovers' vital interests are. It is almost certain that Mesa claimed Verdant Vista in order to control and claim ownership to the system with the wormhole itself.

For me at least I don't understand minimizing the risks here. You have a system in which Mesa has possessed in the past, an attempt to depopulate the planet and a wormhole in which an exploration ship has disappeared fate unknown. Just what is it about this whole picture that fails to excite a properly suspicious minister of defense when the Alignment is being portayed both here on the forums and in the books as the galaxy's most seious threat?

Don

You appear to be relying on reader knowledge that the Malign is on the other side of the wormhole.

n7axw wrote:I don't see how I am relying on reader knowledge rather than what would be available to the characters in the story.

Secondly, we know from textev that the computers on Torch that might have contained the records of wormhole exploration were destroyed during the uprising. I find it highly unlikely that the wormhole was not explored by Mesa/Alignment. As for whether or not it gets exploited commercially depends on what the discovers' vital interests are. It is almost certain that Mesa claimed Verdant Vista in order to control and claim ownership to the system with the wormhole itself.

For me at least I don't understand minimizing the risks here. You have a system in which Mesa has possessed in the past, an attempt to depopulate the planet and a wormhole in which an exploration ship has disappeared fate unknown. Just what is it about this whole picture that fails to excite a properly suspicious minister of defense when the Alignment is being portayed both here on the forums and in the books as the galaxy's most seious threat?

Don

Priorities, mostly. However much suspicion a person has, they can't allocate resources to allay all of it. Heck, the more suspicion you've got, the harder it will be to cover it.

Verdant Vista had two notable resources: a trove of pharmacological potential, and a wormhole. Either could account for interest, and that interest could have been a function of the total package as well. Me, I'll agree with you that the wormhole probably had the priority there, but there's at least that step there to lower the possible importance of the wormhole in Manpower's view, or that of their puppetmasters.

If they were much interested in the wormhole, it's still possible they hadn't explored it yet. Competent wormhole explorers aren't in the phonebook, and not everyone will work for Manpower. Again, I'll grant chances are better than even that they would have handled that already, but it's another step down for the wormhole being confirmed useful and valuable for the enemy.

Suppose, on behalf of Torch, that Manpower and/or the sinister force behind it had explored the wormhole. So has Torch. It ate their explorers. So either it's a natural killer wormhole; it's got a bunch of killers behind it who killed Manpower's explorers too; or it's got a bunch of killers behind it that is allied with them. That last is the only possibility that makes this a definite threat (though the prior one is kinda disturbing too), but you have to make a long list of assumptions (some of them aren't wild, granted, merely questionable). So you've got a likely scenario - assuming Manpower got around to the wormhole exploration at all - in which Manpower finds the wormhole is actually useless, but still has a built-in market for replacement slaves working the plantations. You get Verdant Vista appearing exactly as the Ballroom and company found it.

If you get to the point where you figure there are Manpower-friendly killers on the far side of an otherwise useful wormhole, you have to account for Manpower or the Dark Lord not using that wormhole, if they control the far end, to retake or burn Verdant Vista. Heck, if you suppose the same Dark Lord is behind Oyster Bay, they could have done so without anyone knowing, at such time that the wormhole on Torch's end was not well watched. No messing about with the PNE - or if they had to, it could have been mere cover.

So since they didn't, there's more reason to think that that is not a well-explored wormhole with forces of the Dark Lord behind it - unless it is somehow more important to keep it a deeper, darker secret for some future nefarious purpose. And then stick a large portion of Torch's tiny navy out there in hopes that it would suffice to stop that. A detachment that, incidentally, could be picked off in detail easily, and would be unavailable to defend Torch itself in case of sudden attack.

n7axw wrote:I don't see how I am relying on reader knowledge rather than what would be available to the characters in the story.

Secondly, we know from textev that the computers on Torch that might have contained the records of wormhole exploration were destroyed during the uprising. I find it highly unlikely that the wormhole was not explored by Mesa/Alignment. As for whether or not it gets exploited commercially depends on what the discovers' vital interests are. It is almost certain that Mesa claimed Verdant Vista in order to control and claim ownership to the system with the wormhole itself.

For me at least I don't understand minimizing the risks here. You have a system in which Mesa has possessed in the past, an attempt to depopulate the planet and a wormhole in which an exploration ship has disappeared fate unknown. Just what is it about this whole picture that fails to excite a properly suspicious minister of defense when the Alignment is being portayed both here on the forums and in the books as the galaxy's most seious threat?

Don

Priorities, mostly. However much suspicion a person has, they can't allocate resources to allay all of it. Heck, the more suspicion you've got, the harder it will be to cover it.

Verdant Vista had two notable resources: a trove of pharmacological potential, and a wormhole. Either could account for interest, and that interest could have been a function of the total package as well. Me, I'll agree with you that the wormhole probably had the priority there, but there's at least that step there to lower the possible importance of the wormhole in Manpower's view, or that of their puppetmasters.

If they were much interested in the wormhole, it's still possible they hadn't explored it yet. Competent wormhole explorers aren't in the phonebook, and not everyone will work for Manpower. Again, I'll grant chances are better than even that they would have handled that already, but it's another step down for the wormhole being confirmed useful and valuable for the enemy.

Suppose, on behalf of Torch, that Manpower and/or the sinister force behind it had explored the wormhole. So has Torch. It ate their explorers. So either it's a natural killer wormhole; it's got a bunch of killers behind it who killed Manpower's explorers too; or it's got a bunch of killers behind it that is allied with them. That last is the only possibility that makes this a definite threat (though the prior one is kinda disturbing too), but you have to make a long list of assumptions (some of them aren't wild, granted, merely questionable). So you've got a likely scenario - assuming Manpower got around to the wormhole exploration at all - in which Manpower finds the wormhole is actually useless, but still has a built-in market for replacement slaves working the plantations. You get Verdant Vista appearing exactly as the Ballroom and company found it.

If you get to the point where you figure there are Manpower-friendly killers on the far side of an otherwise useful wormhole, you have to account for Manpower or the Dark Lord not using that wormhole, if they control the far end, to retake or burn Verdant Vista. Heck, if you suppose the same Dark Lord is behind Oyster Bay, they could have done so without anyone knowing, at such time that the wormhole on Torch's end was not well watched. No messing about with the PNE - or if they had to, it could have been mere cover.

So since they didn't, there's more reason to think that that is not a well-explored wormhole with forces of the Dark Lord behind it - unless it is somehow more important to keep it a deeper, darker secret for some future nefarious purpose. And then stick a large portion of Torch's tiny navy out there in hopes that it would suffice to stop that. A detachment that, incidentally, could be picked off in detail easily, and would be unavailable to defend Torch itself in case of sudden attack.

JeffEngel wrote:

n7axw wrote:I don't see how I am relying on reader knowledge rather than what would be available to the characters in the story.

Secondly, we know from textev that the computers on Torch that might have contained the records of wormhole exploration were destroyed during the uprising. I find it highly unlikely that the wormhole was not explored by Mesa/Alignment. As for whether or not it gets exploited commercially depends on what the discovers' vital interests are. It is almost certain that Mesa claimed Verdant Vista in order to control and claim ownership to the system with the wormhole itself.

For me at least I don't understand minimizing the risks here. You have a system in which Mesa has possessed in the past, an attempt to depopulate the planet and a wormhole in which an exploration ship has disappeared fate unknown. Just what is it about this whole picture that fails to excite a properly suspicious minister of defense when the Alignment is being portayed both here on the forums and in the books as the galaxy's most seious threat?

Don

Priorities, mostly. However much suspicion a person has, they can't allocate resources to allay all of it. Heck, the more suspicion you've got, the harder it will be to cover it.

Verdant Vista had two notable resources: a trove of pharmacological potential, and a wormhole. Either could account for interest, and that interest could have been a function of the total package as well. Me, I'll agree with you that the wormhole probably had the priority there, but there's at least that step there to lower the possible importance of the wormhole in Manpower's view, or that of their puppetmasters.

If they were much interested in the wormhole, it's still possible they hadn't explored it yet. Competent wormhole explorers aren't in the phonebook, and not everyone will work for Manpower. Again, I'll grant chances are better than even that they would have handled that already, but it's another step down for the wormhole being confirmed useful and valuable for the enemy.

Suppose, on behalf of Torch, that Manpower and/or the sinister force behind it had explored the wormhole. So has Torch. It ate their explorers. So either it's a natural killer wormhole; it's got a bunch of killers behind it who killed Manpower's explorers too; or it's got a bunch of killers behind it that is allied with them. That last is the only possibility that makes this a definite threat (though the prior one is kinda disturbing too), but you have to make a long list of assumptions (some of them aren't wild, granted, merely questionable). So you've got a likely scenario - assuming Manpower got around to the wormhole exploration at all - in which Manpower finds the wormhole is actually useless, but still has a built-in market for replacement slaves working the plantations. You get Verdant Vista appearing exactly as the Ballroom and company found it.

If you get to the point where you figure there are Manpower-friendly killers on the far side of an otherwise useful wormhole, you have to account for Manpower or the Dark Lord not using that wormhole, if they control the far end, to retake or burn Verdant Vista. Heck, if you suppose the same Dark Lord is behind Oyster Bay, they could have done so without anyone knowing, at such time that the wormhole on Torch's end was not well watched. No messing about with the PNE - or if they had to, it could have been mere cover.

So since they didn't, there's more reason to think that that is not a well-explored wormhole with forces of the Dark Lord behind it - unless it is somehow more important to keep it a deeper, darker secret for some future nefarious purpose. And then stick a large portion of Torch's tiny navy out there in hopes that it would suffice to stop that. A detachment that, incidentally, could be picked off in detail easily, and would be unavailable to defend Torch itself in case of sudden attack.

It seems to me that my own arguments here are both cogent and reasoned. And I really don't have anything else to add at the moment. So, I guess we will just have to agree to disagree. Thanks for courtesy of your responses, by the way.

Don

fallsfromtrees wrote:

n7axw wrote:I don't see how I am relying on reader knowledge rather than what would be available to the characters in the story.

Secondly, we know from textev that the computers on Torch that might have contained the records of wormhole exploration were destroyed during the uprising. I find it highly unlikely that the wormhole was not explored by Mesa/Alignment. As for whether or not it gets exploited commercially depends on what the discovers' vital interests are. It is almost certain that Mesa claimed Verdant Vista in order to control and claim ownership to the system with the wormhole itself.

For me at least I don't understand minimizing the risks here. You have a system in which Mesa has possessed in the past, an attempt to depopulate the planet and a wormhole in which an exploration ship has disappeared fate unknown. Just what is it about this whole picture that fails to excite a properly suspicious minister of defense when the Alignment is being portayed both here on the forums and in the books as the galaxy's most seious threat?

Don

You appear to be relying on reader knowledge that the Malign is on the other side of the wormhole.

No. I was trying to rely on what the characters internal to the story can know about Torch and the wormhole from what is actually in the book.

Don

n7axw wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:If you get to the point where you figure there are Manpower-friendly killers on the far side of an otherwise useful wormhole, you have to account for Manpower or the Dark Lord not using that wormhole, if they control the far end, to retake or burn Verdant Vista. Heck, if you suppose the same Dark Lord is behind Oyster Bay, they could have done so without anyone knowing, at such time that the wormhole on Torch's end was not well watched. No messing about with the PNE - or if they had to, it could have been mere cover.

So since they didn't, there's more reason to think that that is not a well-explored wormhole with forces of the Dark Lord behind it - unless it is somehow more important to keep it a deeper, darker secret for some future nefarious purpose. And then stick a large portion of Torch's tiny navy out there in hopes that it would suffice to stop that. A detachment that, incidentally, could be picked off in detail easily, and would be unavailable to defend Torch itself in case of sudden attack.

It seems to me that my own arguments here are both cogent and reasoned. And I really don't have anything else to add at the moment. So, I guess we will just have to agree to disagree. Thanks for courtesy of your responses, by the way.

Don

You're welcome. Courtesy's free - I figure someone's got to be a cad before they don't have it coming. Simple disagreement doesn't merit denying it.

I wouldn't say there's no force to your arguments, either. I'm just saying that there are plenty of plausible scenarios - more of them, in fact - given what they know for figuring that that's just a nasty natural phenomenon and that covering against the small possibility that it's a strategic threat imposes strategic costs that Torch cannot afford. I wouldn't think a Torch planner was irresponsible entertaining some worries about the thing. Military planners responsibly consider some very wild ideas, but they can and should do that because planning is cheap and ships and deployment are not.

If they have a system that puts, say, a cutter out there tending some automated fire platform, enough to poke up something peeking through or demand a surrender - if they had a response available that was both potentially useful and not a significant fraction of the forces they have, vulnerable by itself and unavailable elsewhere - it'd be a fine thing to put there. I'm guessing they don't.

I do guess that Dr. Kare is going to keep looking into that thing from this side. It's got weird readings and it ate his friends. Or, alternatively, someone killed them. Either way, it's a professional curiosity and a personal issue. On-site sensors to study it would double as military surveillance of some sort. So that's a dual-purpose response, and easier to justify on either end for the duty it does on the other. If a little more commitment puts someone out there with something violent, all to the good.

I would imagine that Wix and Kare are back in Manticore by now. Do we have any evidence to the contrary?

Don

JeffEngel wrote:You're welcome. Courtesy's free - I figure someone's got to be a cad before they don't have it coming. Simple disagreement doesn't merit denying it.

I wouldn't say there's no force to your arguments, either. I'm just saying that there are plenty of plausible scenarios - more of them, in fact - given what they know for figuring that that's just a nasty natural phenomenon and that covering against the small possibility that it's a strategic threat imposes strategic costs that Torch cannot afford. I wouldn't think a Torch planner was irresponsible entertaining some worries about the thing. Military planners responsibly consider some very wild ideas, but they can and should do that because planning is cheap and ships and deployment are not.

If they have a system that puts, say, a cutter out there tending some automated fire platform, enough to poke up something peeking through or demand a surrender - if they had a response available that was both potentially useful and not a significant fraction of the forces they have, vulnerable by itself and unavailable elsewhere - it'd be a fine thing to put there. I'm guessing they don't.

I do guess that Dr. Kare is going to keep looking into that thing from this side. It's got weird readings and it ate his friends. Or, alternatively, someone killed them. Either way, it's a professional curiosity and a personal issue. On-site sensors to study it would double as military surveillance of some sort. So that's a dual-purpose response, and easier to justify on either end for the duty it does on the other. If a little more commitment puts someone out there with something violent, all to the good.

Jeff, I think I have to agree with Don here; not because your arguments are invalid, but because of one minor factoid I think will make the difference.

Jeremy X is the Minister of War for Torch.

Think about it; a man who has been the prime target for Manpower for decades does not stay alive (and active) without a fanatical dedication to security. And now he is responsible for the security of a society that he helped in no small way to bring about, and which has suffered one attempted genocide.

And he has a 'mystery' wormhole in his system; moreover, one that a spaceship with among the best-trained wormhole-exploring crew disappeared into.

Yes, the scientists have explained all the possible things that might have gone wrong, and that the likelyhood of some hostile force being on the other side is quite illogical....

But this is Jeremy X, and he doesn't like to take chances.

I think he's rotating a frigate out there, along with any FTL capability that the Manties (or even the Havenites or Erewhonese) have sent him.

So--just because it's Jeremy X.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

n7axw wrote:I would imagine that Wix and Kare are back in Manticore by now. Do we have any evidence to the contrary?

Don

Possibly..I don't think there is any textev either way.

But my thoughts are that (1) Here is a wormhole that is still a mystery in some respects, and (2) That has killed a number of their friends, and (3) There aren't all that many new wormholes being found in Manty space as far as we know, so where better to do research that Torch?

Which I admit is speculation, but hey, that's the name of the game here for at least another year, unless the MWW wants to drop by and gift was with a 'hint' that will keep us arguing for months....