The Final Fate of the Mandarins

How much of the damage to the league will be done by mesa, by manticore or even by the league it self? A few small hits in the right place by mantidore or mesa, and it is possible that the league could bring itself crashing down. In the end, the league might it own worst enemy.

SYED wrote:How much of the damage to the league will be done by mesa, by manticore or even by the league it self? A few small hits in the right place by mantidore or mesa, and it is possible that the league could bring itself crashing down. In the end, the league might it own worst enemy.

One thing to note is that there's a disconnect between Albrecht Detweiller's expectation of the Maya Sector and Barregos' and Rozsak's planning. Albrecht is expecting Barregos to kick off the revolt among the Verge and Shell, while Barregos seems to want to wait until the disintegration is well under way.

Other than that, I expect that the MAlign has created enough fault lines that the disintegration could start in any of a number of places, on any of a number of pretexts.

JohnRoth wrote:

SYED wrote:How much of the damage to the league will be done by mesa, by manticore or even by the league it self? A few small hits in the right place by mantidore or mesa, and it is possible that the league could bring itself crashing down. In the end, the league might it own worst enemy.

One thing to note is that there's a disconnect between Albrecht Detweiller's expectation of the Maya Sector and Barregos' and Rozsak's planning. Albrecht is expecting Barregos to kick off the revolt among the Verge and Shell, while Barregos seems to want to wait until the disintegration is well under way.

Other than that, I expect that the MAlign has created enough fault lines that the disintegration could start in any of a number of places, on any of a number of pretexts.

Where do you get the idea that Detweiler expects the Maya Sector to kick off the revolt in the Verge? I didn't get that impression at all. Did I miss some text?

I'll plunk down for the forced out or run away options as most likely. For the run away ones, as others have mentioned, it's not likely a bolthole prepared just in case neobarbs up and topple history's most powerful and dominant polity and it's all your fault - what kind of crazy talk is that?! They'd be escape options in case of other extremely unlikely but at least conceivable things - horrific political scandal, a transtellar out for your head, law enforcement suddenly able to work on your level, whatnot. They'd just be ones you'd also be prepared to employ when the unthinkable happens too.

But they're still answerable to every other power base in the Solarian League, in an informal way, or to the actual elected officials in some wild theoretical sense. (Which is wild crazy talk too - just less wild, from their perspective, than the neobarb upheaval.) The rest of the bureaucracy and your corporate sponsors will not take kindly to the continued active career of an embarrassment after a certain point - especially if they can throw you to the wolves in some fashion that may both save League face and get the neobarbs back out there and no longer upsetting things.

That's an unlikely scenario, of course - such a scheme actually managing both those effects - and it's a lot less likely when the Mesan Alignment is certain to have assets in place to make it fail. But hey, desperate and blinkered people will do things armchair politicians would not.

To get where they are the mandarins had to have made plenty of enemies, with the fall of the league, their protection would at the very least be weakened. WHile they might try to run and hide, but they have, are and will cost and cross too many people for that to happen for too long.

To get where they are the mandarins had to have made plenty of enemies, with the fall of the league, their protection would at the very least be weakened. WHile they might try to run and hide, but they have, are and will cost and cross too many people for that to happen for too long.