The Maya Crisis...

OrlandoNative wrote:

Erls wrote:C- That Harvest Joy made translation and was attacked in whatever system it landed in. Now this one is really interesting, because not many actors would attack a wormhole survey ship when they know how important a wormhole is. I don't even think Admiral Byng would have attacked it: He would have demanded their surrender and their data so he could cash in on 'finding' a new wormhole in Solly space! So, under this thought, wherever it ends is controlled by someone who doesn't want to be found. Pirates, secret naval base, Mesa, etc...

In one of the books, it's noted that humanity *has* found other sentient species so far in the galaxy. Other than the treecats and the Medusans, however, nothing is really said as to their technology levels, aggressiveness/teritorialness, or even their spacial locations. We tend to forget about aliens, other than treecats, since the Honorverse novels are basically human-centric and definitely Manticore-centric. But it's a big galaxy out there, most of which is not yet explored by humans. It's approximately 100,000 lightyears in diameter, and the farthest noted explorations are only about 2,000 light years out from Sol.

So while a hostile *human* intervention would probably be considered more likely, without knowing where the wormhole ended up, it's still only *one* possible scenario for (C).

In House of Steel there are 27 sentient beings, including the Gremlins of Beowulf Amphors of Barstool(extinct) and the Barthoni (only species to have a multi-planet presence besides treecats)

SWM wrote:The Mandarins might not care about legality, but the members of the League do, as I've said several times. The Mandarins will try to avoid doing things that will get the League members angry at them.

How "members of the League" feel about legality hasn't caused the "Mandarins" to even pause once, so far. Beowulf may care, and maybe even other systems, but look at the voting in the Assembly for investigating Beowulf's alleged "treason". About 25% might have cared. Not exactly a huge majority there. Beowulf's anger certainly hasn't changed any League policies to date, though.

The members of the League have *zero* control or oversight into the Federal *system*, as has been noted many times in the text up to now. Since only *one* member world's veto in the Assembly kills any proposed legislation or motion, the likelyhood of getting anything passed there to give the member worlds such control or oversight is virtually nil. It actually surprises me that they ever passed the Eridani Edict; I would suspect shock and possibly the attacker not being a League member would be the only explanation.

OrlandoNative wrote:

SWM wrote:The Mandarins might not care about legality, but the members of the League do, as I've said several times. The Mandarins will try to avoid doing things that will get the League members angry at them.

How "members of the League" feel about legality hasn't caused the "Mandarins" to even pause once, so far. Beowulf may care, and maybe even other systems, but look at the voting in the Assembly for investigating Beowulf's alleged "treason". About 25% might have cared. Not exactly a huge majority there. Beowulf's anger certainly hasn't changed any League policies to date, though.

The members of the League have *zero* control or oversight into the Federal *system*, as has been noted many times in the text up to now. Since only *one* member world's veto in the Assembly kills any proposed legislation or motion, the likelyhood of getting anything passed there to give the member worlds such control or oversight is virtually nil. It actually surprises me that they ever passed the Eridani Edict; I would suspect shock and possibly the attacker not being a League member would be the only explanation.

They weren't always as corrupt as they are now; the EE was passed early on, I guess.

Rob

drothgery wrote:But the Court did not have its own police force, let alone an army answerable to them (in probably over 90% of the members of the League, SDF forces are locally superior to the SLN, if only because LACs & forts > nothing).

Mmmm, where do you get the 90% figure? Perhaps a fair percentage of the Core Worlds may have SDF's; but there's really been no mention of them being created by systems outside the Core.

Even *if*, however, such "local superiority" exists, what good is it? The SLN can individually crush any "local superiority" anytime it wants to. Beowulf has (for sure) 36 SD's. Probably most other Core World systems have about the same. So the SLN sends in 200 in the system it wants to "pacify". With most of the news services in Abruzzi's pocket, it might even be able to do so without causing much of a stir until it was all over.

That option is only deterred (or possibly deterred) in Beowulf's case due to a Manty presence already nearby that the SLN knows it can't match, no matter how many ships it commits. But like the Mandarins noted about rebellion in the Shell or Verge, most locations *don't* have Manties nearby to help them, and in those cases the SLN won't have trouble enforcing the Mandarin's mandates.

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:
They weren't always as corrupt as they are now; the EE was passed early on, I guess.

Rob

Corruption doesn't really matter. The League constitution gives any member system the right to veto any legislation or ruling proposed in the assembly. Unless there were only a very few member systems at the time the Eridani Edict was passed, it's hard to see how even *it* got the 100% approval it would have needed to be enacted. Obviously the political entity that attacked the Eridani system with WMD couldn't have been a League member, I can't really see them voting in favor of anything that would have required their total destruction as a consequence of their actions.

Now, given that the League has thousands of member worlds, the likelyhood of any 100% consensus is (realistically) zero. If only because there's always one person in any large group that just wants to be obstinate.

OrlandoNative wrote:

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:
They weren't always as corrupt as they are now; the EE was passed early on, I guess.

Rob

Corruption doesn't really matter. The League constitution gives any member system the right to veto any legislation or ruling proposed in the assembly. Unless there were only a very few member systems at the time the Eridani Edict was passed, it's hard to see how even *it* got the 100% approval it would have needed to be enacted. Obviously the political entity that attacked the Eridani system with WMD couldn't have been a League member, I can't really see them voting in favor of anything that would have required their total destruction as a consequence of their actions.

Now, given that the League has thousands of member worlds, the likelyhood of any 100% consensus is (realistically) zero. If only because there's always one person in any large group that just wants to be obstinate.

Eridani Edict got passed as a result of a League (I think) world getting annihilated. It was widely publicized and at the time, the League populace was more involved - but even now, if you get enough public support behind something everywhere, the League can't ignore it.


Eridani was also just one of many worlds that had been smashed at the time - and for the League, it was the figurative last straw. It's quite possible that there were previous attempts to pass something like the Eridani Edict that had failed in years before Eridani was hit.
Plus, let's be honest, it would have been extremely difficult to object to something like the Eridani Edict. Even an isolationist argument against would wind up being something like "it's not our problem - neither we nor our allies have been affected, let somebody else deal with it", and then Eridani happened, and even an isolationist wouldn't've said that it wasn't the League's problem.

It was also done as a constitutional amendment, which isn't subject to the same blocking.

OrlandoNative wrote:Corruption doesn't really matter. The League constitution gives any member system the right to veto any legislation or ruling proposed in the assembly.

I know we were basically told that, but it's clearly not the complete story or the vote on "motion AD-1002-07-02-22, to impanel a special commission to investigate the alleged treason of the system government of Beowulf in aiding and abetting an enemy of the Solarian League" in ART would almost certainly have been vetoed by one of the "two thousand nine hundred and three opposed"; yet the motion was carried and not vetoed...

Jonathan_S wrote:

OrlandoNative wrote:Corruption doesn't really matter. The League constitution gives any member system the right to veto any legislation or ruling proposed in the assembly.

I know we were basically told that, but it's clearly not the complete story or the vote on "motion AD-1002-07-02-22, to impanel a special commission to investigate the alleged treason of the system government of Beowulf in aiding and abetting an enemy of the Solarian League" in ART would almost certainly have been vetoed by one of the "two thousand nine hundred and three opposed"; yet the motion was carried and not vetoed...

Seems to me that delegations have four options whilst voting: aye, abstain, nay, veto. It'd be possible to abstain or vote against a motion without deploying the veto - IIRC, somewhere it says that League members have come up with methods of discouraging persistent vetoers.

munroburton wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:I know we were basically told that, but it's clearly not the complete story or the vote on "motion AD-1002-07-02-22, to impanel a special commission to investigate the alleged treason of the system government of Beowulf in aiding and abetting an enemy of the Solarian League" in ART would almost certainly have been vetoed by one of the "two thousand nine hundred and three opposed"; yet the motion was carried and not vetoed...

Seems to me that delegations have four options whilst voting: aye, abstain, nay, veto. It'd be possible to abstain or vote against a motion without deploying the veto - IIRC, somewhere it says that League members have come up with methods of discouraging persistent vetoers.

This a curious fact that Beowulf couldn't veto the motion. Perhaps the veto is limited to mayor legislation. This vote was about an investigation committee. Or RFC needed it for the story ...