Spoiler Alert!!! New book possibilities/probabilities

It'll have to be an orbital strike. That, or the MAlign puts on its Stupid Evil Hat and unleashes a bioweapon on Beowulf.

Meshakhad wrote:It'll have to be an orbital strike. That, or the MAlign puts on its Stupid Evil Hat and unleashes a bioweapon on Beowulf.

While 10 million is a lot of people objectively, it is a pretty small WMD that could limit itself to so few casualties in a mature, crowded planetary population in the Honorverse.

The league fleet that they will send, what is the maximum of hteir crew compliment? If they do launch against the planet or seen to, then the alliance is totally free to massacre their ships completly. So while mesa would love to get at beowolf, do they truly want the league navy diminished so quickly. Their plan was for the navy to trim each other down, so who ever won, would be easy to deal with in the future. If the league looses too many ships now, then the alliance will gain supremacy and could have an intact enough navy to inferfere with their plane.
The question is, do they want the league to be shattered, or do they want to deal with an enemy that knows of it existance? THey are abanndoning mesa, so the alliance doe not have any other target to their knowledge to send their fleet to. They want the league to be gone, so they can build their empire from the ruins.
i am betting the force that goes to beowolf, will be most of the available ships currently in the core. If removed, most naval ships in the core would be the SDS of each planet, and they dont have to obey yet. Their fleet would be highly dispersed.

I suspect that the Alignment doesn't really care how fast the SLN gets destroyed. The faster it gets killed off, the quicker the members of the League and a lot of other systems are going to get into the conflicts that have been already talked about. Systems finally acting on competition or attempts to take over neighbors. System rulers (existing or new) becomming warlords and trying to carve out empires. Systems held under tyrants or being controlled by Transtellars and other parties (like OFS) that rise up and throw off those governments- thereby breaking the flow of money and bases of operations power from whomever was controling from off-planet.

The faster this happens, the more likely that the RF individual members are going to build the series of alliances that will lead to the RF and the implentaion of the moral and societal precepts of the Alignment.

That the BSDF, RHN & RMN- particularly BSDF- might go "Old Testament" on any SLN ship in the system would actually be benificlial in other ways for the Alignment. Consider that it is quite likely that not only the actual ship(s) involved in targetting the planet will get destroyed in the spasm of retaliation, the chances that any information about Alignment involvement will get wiped away should there be multiple sets of agents involvled. It will also make it harder to pin the actions on any one or more living people on site.

Along with everything else, this would remove even more experienced SLN personnel from the pool of either the SLN or any of the successor systems/empires governments and their local naval forces. Remember when the Grayson ships engaged at Basilisk after the vidio of Honor being hanged? The BSDF could possibly shift to not just "no mercy" but NO QUATER, and obliterate any SLN target in the system- those fighting or even those who attempt to surrender when they discover how badly they are outmatched after the destruction is inflicted on the planet and the orbitals in the system.

Our discussions have addressed the position that even with combined forces, Manticore, Haven and the GA plus Beowulf cannot possibly subdue and govern the SLN systems and the holding under the OFS and it's friends. Even if the entire SLN fleet(s) committed to forcing Beowulf to stay in the SLN is destroyed, the situation remains that the GA will not be able to force miliary or civil control on the balance of the SL.

Brigade XO wrote:The faster this happens, the more likely that the RF individual members are going to build the series of alliances that will lead to the RF and the implentaion of the moral and societal precepts of the Alignment.

I get the impression that the Renaissance Factor worlds aren't going to be looking for "Allies;" they're looking for protectorates and/or systems for assimilation into a single star nation/empire.

Weird Harold wrote:I get the impression that the Renaissance Factor worlds aren't going to be looking for "Allies;" they're looking for protectorates and/or systems for assimilation into a single star nation/empire.

No, allies are good.

Brigade XO wrote:Along with everything else, this would remove even more experienced SLN personnel from the pool of either the SLN or any of the successor systems/empires governments and their local naval forces. Remember when the Grayson ships engaged at Basilisk after the vidio of Honor being hanged? The BSDF could possibly shift to not just "no mercy" but NO QUATER, and obliterate any SLN target in the system- those fighting or even those who attempt to surrender when they discover how badly they are outmatched after the destruction is inflicted on the planet and the orbitals in the system.

Our discussions have addressed the position that even with combined forces, Manticore, Haven and the GA plus Beowulf cannot possibly subdue and govern the SLN systems and the holding under the OFS and it's friends. Even if the entire SLN fleet(s) committed to forcing Beowulf to stay in the SLN is destroyed, the situation remains that the GA will not be able to force miliary or civil control on the balance of the SL.

Unless I've badly misread the Beowulfans, I don't think that's going to happen. They are aware of and more than half of them believe in the Mesan Alignment. They will know who is responsible for starting the whole thing - and it's not the SL or the SLN. The descendants of Leonard Detweiler are the guilty party.

Yes, it won't go nice for any SLN ships involved in the attack. But it's essential that they capture the perpetrating ship(s) as undamaged as possible, so they can investigate exactly what happened.

Filareta's flagship was destroyed. If it had not been destroyed, investigators could have accessed the ship's records and gotten enough to see that Filareta's ops officer was under nanite control and the flag bridge was bombed long before any GA missiles hit 11th Fleet.

Imagine if Filareta's flag captain had been sent to Sol, with full copies of those records handcuffed to his wrist.

kzt wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:I get the impression that the Renaissance Factor worlds aren't going to be looking for "Allies;" they're looking for protectorates and/or systems for assimilation into a single star nation/empire.

No, allies are good.

Probably a little bit of both - with a belief that they will be absorbing everyone into a future polity the RF will be controlling.

Given there are currently 12 RF members, if each convinces 3 other planets/systems to enter a mutual defense/trade agreement - (just in the event that everything falls apart), the future polity will be ~50 members.

Manticore, with ~55 moderately developed planets on average, is currently the 2nd largest Verge polity (or 3rd largest polity in Human space since you are either SL or Verge).

from HoS

The formal borders of the Star Empire include twenty member star systems, thirty-four protectorate star systems, and the wormhole junction, with seven mapped termini. The capital planet, Manticore, shares a binary star system with the planets of Sphinx and Gryphon.
With twenty-two habitable planets and over twenty-seven billion people, the Star Empire of Manticore is the largest by total area and, including the populations of the protectorate star systems, boasts the second largest population of the Verge star nations.

However, the theoretical ~50 RF nation above will have a higher population and technological base on average than Manticore so should be a larger economy and nation. When the dust clears, it could easily be the 2nd largest remaining polity (behind Haven).

All because they are going to play the "friends stick together" card.

Not to get fully away from Beowulf, but talk of the RF and polity sizes got me thinking about Maya. One thing I will be real interested in seeing is how the Maya Sector continues with the Sepoy Option.

The Maya Sector is very well positioned to expand their influence on that side of SL space and become a stable region post-SL. IF they are able to expand their reach to Phoenix, they would have a trade network that is likely second only to Manticore (Joshua - Beowulf trade run with the various Wormholes linking the rest). They are ideally situated to be attractive to both Manticore and Haven as a trade partner, and possible ally - or at the least friendly - polity.

Finally, although this isn't yet known.. The Torch wormhole will one day be very attractive and useful both for hunting the MAlign, but also for trade. A Maya Sector free of the SL that has already (twice) helped the freed slaves on Torch and is located in the same region may be an attractive partner for Torch long term, and further serve to ingratiate Maya into the good graces of the SEM, Beowulf, and Haven.

The thing is they planned for maya to burn in the plan, returning later when the time is right. While very potential enemy and competition is slugging it out, they would be building their power base to take the fight to them.

While I doubt the alignment can be fully destroyed, if their membership is know and Felix discovered and surveyed. They the alignment would just be another faction..

So a ship gets discovered at Beowolf, or those scientists will stop at parley station. Leading to the big secrets being found.