The Alignment and the wormholes

We saw how much effect Lacoon (controll of all wormholes) was.

You don´t have to be a genius to imagine that.

The Alignment is a minority that has the target to control the majority of mankind.

Controling the wormholes is a lot of effect with relativ little afford.

The Alignment already controls the Visgoth and a wormhole on the Mannerheim territory via the RF.

The difficult question is, how would they get control over the Erewhon wormhole and "THE" Manticore wormhole junction?

If I remember correct, the Alignment tried to scatter the Solarian League with the haven forces. Even if the Alignment had control over the Legalists (or however the first Haven goverment form is written), after the coup de etat there should nearly all control died with the old goverment. Also it wasn´t planned, that haven survived that plan, so, even if haven had occupied Erewhon and Manticore, they wouldn´t keep it.

So, any ideas what plans the Alignment had to control the manticore wormhole junction (and Erewhon)? Remmember, they are planning for centuries, so there should be enough time to think of something, place agents etcetera.

The problem is: we don´t see anything! Why was the Alignment so surprised that manticore could survive an attack from Haven?
Why are the Alignment so surprised about the manticorian tecnology developments and military strategies?

If they had an well esteblished agent network at manticore they would know much more.

If I remmember the end of the high ridge goverment, a member of that goverment was buyed buy the Alignment, looks more than a short therm solution that a placement of long therm person with influence.

It seems to me that controlling the wormholes wouldn't advance the MAlign goal of rubbing Beowulf's face in the overthrow of the Beowulf Code and widespread adoption of genetic uplift of humans.

The MAlign was even looking at the break-up of the League in terms of how it would unsettle planets and give their puppets and policies inroads. The interstellar disruption was obviously overt (though pulled off by covertly manipulated cat's paws) but it was to create domestic fractures that the MAlign could then exploit covertly.

I don't see how the wormholes could really work to the same end. Somebody ending up in overt control of the wormhole network doesn't really discredit or shatter the League (with its adherence to the Beowulf Code). Sure it could provide a very nice funding source if you mostly leave them open to freight; but that's at best only a possibly enabling capability towards your goal. (And given how relatively public that funding stream is it'd be hard to get too much of it off the books and into secret MAlign projects)
But if they pull a Lacoon and prohibit traffic that causes economic disruption; but it also gives the affected worlds a public entity to come together in their ire at. It didn't split the League when Manticore did it, and I've no reason to think it'd do better if the MAlign or one of their puppets was the one to do it.

Basically the kind of control and power owning the wormholes gives you doesn't seem, to me, to line up well with the control and power the MAlign needs to pull off their long term plans.

Wormholes are not important because of the money you make with them! Wormholes are control!

Control of the econimic, because it shortens travel time for goods.

Military control because your ships can travel faster than your enemies.

And very important: information control. The wormhole shortcut and the improved hyperdrive of the Alignment ships give you time. Time to spread your vision of stories. Time to think how you present the story.

Maldorian wrote:Wormholes are not important because of the money you make with them! Wormholes are control!

Control of the econimic, because it shortens travel time for goods.

Military control because your ships can travel faster than your enemies.

And very important: information control. The wormhole shortcut and the improved hyperdrive of the Alignment ships give you time. Time to spread your vision of stories. Time to think how you present the story.

Time to get inside your opponent's decision loop.

Controling wormholes makes you highly visible. That is exactly what the Alignment is trying to avoid.
Remember that both Mannerheim and Visagoth are not identified with the Alignment and both had basic policies (anti-slavery for one) that ran counter to what Mesa was a about (the public Mesa, the genetic slavery mongering, corrupt transtellar, moral cesspool Mesa).

It was to be through the emergence of the RF- in the wake of the fragmentation of the League- that was to gather in other systems in a protective, defenseive alliance which would aspire to be what the League had fallen from just smaller and a have for systems. It's a COVER. The leadership and in the case of Mannerheim, a "conventional" navy that will be the core of the RFN with Alpha Lines manageing things.
It's all very much what was done to the League. Very few people know who is pulling the strings, certainly not the general population. The Alignment has already implanted much of it's philosophy into the mindset of the educational and administrative bodies of the planned initial dozen of the RF and will use them to suitabley infect and supplant with it's own goals those of the other systems that were to gather to the RF for self preservaion in the chaos that was supposed to follow the fragmentation of the League.

Sure, Beowulf is to get it nose rubbed in the ultimate rejection of the Beowulf Code, but that isn't going to happen overnight.

The Alignment was never to really come out of hiding. They were going to be puppet masters controling humanity and eventualy replacing all the "normals" with the creations of their own breeding programs and labs. The genetic improvement cast and stratification system with the Alphas at the top. Everybody else is just a tool to be used or discarded.- and those tools are supposed both like it and accept their place in the only life they can ever know or think about.

So, no, the Alighment doesn't want to pull a Lacoon II. They want a quiet (and who cares how much blood is spilled among the cattle) ascendence to Godhood and control at one vast remove from said cattle. If they start taking wormholes, lots of people are going to start getting very upset. Soon those outlandish conspericy theories of the GA (and now part of the SLN and the SL Judicial dept) are going to start looking not so crazy. So the Alignment is going to go back to having others quietly do their dirty work and try and stay off the Galaxy's stage before they bring somebody like the GA down on the a some place like Darius.

Controling wormholes makes you highly visible. That is exactly what the Alignment is trying to avoid.
Remember that both Mannerheim and Visagoth are not identified with the Alignment and both had basic policies (anti-slavery for one) that ran counter to what Mesa was a about (the public Mesa, the genetic slavery mongering, corrupt transtellar, moral cesspool Mesa).

I wrote "control the wormholes" not "own" them! The Alignment already has some control about the Visgoth and the Mannerheim wormhole, because Visgoth and Mannerheim are members of the RF.

So, place some puppets to have the control for you and make sure, that at the end, when the League falls apart that the wormholes are in your pocket and not in the pocket of someone else.

I think there are two phases for their plan to control the wormholes.

First, the original plan: have the PRH smash Manticore and then through its fingers in the Legislaturalist government, the MAlign would have indirect control of the MWHJ. Erewhon would become a League member and thus subject to League bureaucracy and corruption, allowing the MAlign to infiltrate. Though, TBH, I don't think Erewhon featured especially in their plans, aside from making sure it wasn't there to support Manticore.

After the Rob S. Pierre coup, they lost their fingers in the government. Nothing to be concerned about, though, since they thought they had time to re-infiltrate and the PRH was still in taters. After all, what was important was for Manticore to be gone so Beowulf to be isolated.

After the Theisman coup, the situation started to become complicated. At this point, they were closer to their launch point, but the RoH was recovering economically. But since control of the wormholes wasn't central to the plan, nothing to worry about.

When Pritchart offers an alliance instead of finishing of Manticore after Oyster Bay, all of a sudden things went off the rails, with no path or time to recovery.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I think there are two phases for their plan to control the wormholes.

First, the original plan: have the PRH smash Manticore and then through its fingers in the Legislaturalist government, the MAlign would have indirect control of the MWHJ. Erewhon would become a League member and thus subject to League bureaucracy and corruption, allowing the MAlign to infiltrate. Though, TBH, I don't think Erewhon featured especially in their plans, aside from making sure it wasn't there to support Manticore.

After the Rob S. Pierre coup, they lost their fingers in the government. Nothing to be concerned about, though, since they thought they had time to re-infiltrate and the PRH was still in taters. After all, what was important was for Manticore to be gone so Beowulf to be isolated.

After the Theisman coup, the situation started to become complicated. At this point, they were closer to their launch point, but the RoH was recovering economically. But since control of the wormholes wasn't central to the plan, nothing to worry about.

When Pritchart offers an alliance instead of finishing of Manticore after Oyster Bay, all of a sudden things went off the rails, with no path or time to recovery.

But even in that original plan I don't see that the MAlign cared about indirectly controlling the Junction beyond what use Haven could make of it during the conflict the MAlign intended to engineer between them and the League.
Whether Haven used it as a short term economic choke or simply as a way to move quicker than the League seemed largely irrelevant to the MAlign.

Their shorter term goals were Haven devastated or destroyed (and tarnished so they were no longer a shining beacon that people might rally around) and the League fractured into pieces that could coalesce around the carefully prepped RF planets. The confrontation between Haven and the League was only there to provide the domestic pressures to fracture the status quo and reorient the worlds of the League around smaller groups headed by hidden MAlign parties. That would let them move towards their primarily domestic agenda of widespread human genetic uplift. Once the League fractures I doubt the MAlign cared all that much about retaining control (however indirectly) of the Junction or the wider wormhole network.

Jonathan_S wrote:But even in that original plan I don't see that the MAlign cared about indirectly controlling the Junction beyond what use Haven could make of it during the conflict the MAlign intended to engineer between them and the League.
Whether Haven used it as a short term economic choke or simply as a way to move quicker than the League seemed largely irrelevant to the MAlign.

Their shorter term goals were Haven devastated or destroyed (and tarnished so they were no longer a shining beacon that people might rally around) and the League fractured into pieces that could coalesce around the carefully prepped RF planets. The confrontation between Haven and the League was only there to provide the domestic pressures to fracture the status quo and reorient the worlds of the League around smaller groups headed by hidden MAlign parties. That would let them move towards their primarily domestic agenda of widespread human genetic uplift. Once the League fractures I doubt the MAlign cared all that much about retaining control (however indirectly) of the Junction or the wider wormhole network.

Indeed, I think you're right: the MAlign didn't care about the Junction, except as a means to an end (isolating Beowulf) and a bonus for getting extra revenues to fund their projects. Which would explain why they never made any further moves to tip the balance any earlier.

"Coalesce around the carefully prepped RF planets" - do you think the planets are geographically (galactographically?) located at strategic positions? I don't see the MAlign choosing them at random or when the opportunity presented itself, so that probably is the case.

The MAlign plan, at the outset, before Manticore came along and didn't die, was simplicity itself.

1. Corrupt the governments of both the Solarian League and Haven.
These were the brightest spots in known space and natural places where the individual systems would gravitate toward, by turning them into the problem instead of the solution, the MAlign creates the need for the RF, making it the White Knight riding in to save everyone from them, The SL and Haven will only grow through conquest, which is unsustainable in the long term.

2. Use the RF to gain control of the wormhole junctions.
This was supposed to happen naturally, with several systems "primed" by either infiltration by MAlign lines generations ago, or by personal friendships between said infiltrators and nearby systems.
The goal of this was a widespread government that would be able to influence huge swathes of space, would be seen as a refuge from the SL and Havenite conquerers, but would actually have extremely short communications loops due to the wormholes.
This, by the way, also gives the MAlign the ability to pull a "White Haven" by moving military forces much more quickly than either SL or Haven.

3. I imagine that control of Erewhon and Manticore would have been critical to the original plan, as that would allow the MAlign's secret navy, the Lenny Dets, basically free access to just about anywhere.

Most everything else the MAlign has done has been a response to not only Manticore's survival, but their new tech advantage and de facto control of the wormhole network.