Making your own rules

kzt wrote:

drothgery wrote:Yes, but those people want there to be something to rule afterwards.

You know what totalitarians say about eggs and omelets? Though it's always works out more like, to quote Panait Istrati on the USSR, "All right, I can see the broken eggs. Where's this omelette of yours?"

I'm fairly certain the Alignment doesn't understand the degree of chaos they're unleashing in blowing up the League, and would not be able to control said chaos even if the Grand Alliance wasn't actively opposing them. But they damn well understand the dangers of letting the EE violation djinn get out of the bottle.

drothgery wrote:I'm fairly certain the Alignment doesn't understand the degree of chaos they're unleashing in blowing up the League, and would not be able to control said chaos

I'm pretty sure that the inner core of the onion -- i.e. the Detweilers -- know almost to the system, just how much chaos breaking up the Solarian League will involve. They have no intention of controlling the chaos, but rather intend to hide within the chaos in small pockets of stability on the fringes, like the Renaissance Factor.

drothgery wrote: even if the Grand Alliance wasn't actively opposing them.

The Grand Alliance is actively trying to destroy the Malign, but that doesn't mean they're opposing any forcce of factor pulling the Solarian League apart. The Grand Alliance's immediate goal is the elimination of the SL as a threat/nuisance. In that regard, their aim and the aim of the MAlign coincide.

drothgery wrote:But they damn well understand the dangers of letting the EE violation djinn get out of the bottle.

The Detweilers don't believe that they would ever be held accountable for an EE violation even if they ordered it -- as they did for Torch. Their only concern over the "EE Genie" is to make it appear as if somebody else opened the bottle -- preferably someone stateless so there is no target for SL retaliation.

phillies wrote:With respect to the Eridani Edict, I continue to await someone in the ISLN high command noticing that the major threat enforcing the Edict -- the ISLN will come and whomp you -- is not stunningly meaningful with respect to nations with which the SL is already at war.

This is perhaps even more the case if the last effort to whomp Manticore was most noteworthy for losing the ISLN fleet involved.

I think the idea is that even with the SLN out of the picture, even totally morally bankrupt people will hesitate, since even if the SLN can't retaliate someone is likely to.

Which is not to say it won't happen around the edges - Grayson/Masada is probably not the only pair of feuding planets with deep hatreds between them.

But, I rather doubt turning the Honorverse into a series of planet-destroying conflicts where everyone loses is really the way it's going to go.

Lord Skimper wrote:Plus why would the MAlignment want to have the people alive? They can just make a beta or theta line to inhabit the planets, its not like they want PSH running around. PSH from the Pure Strain Human from Gamma World.

This is an absolutely key factor in the Alignment's thinking. They intend to replace RSHs with their own, genetically modified creations, not perform some type of retroactive genetic engineering on them. The more mortality, the merrier.