jtg452 wrote:A longer jump wouldn't have a great impact on the cast of characters since practically all of them have received prolong.
Even 40-50 years wouldn't change much other than the Protectorship of Grayson if you are looking at the major players. Many of the Torch cabinet would be gone, too, but I would argue that Torch's government are minor characters in the current overall storyline.
Considering how the MA has been built up as the ultimate boogeyman that has been lurking in the shadows centuries, ferreting them out shouldn't be an easy or quick task. A generation or two is still very fast in the face of how much prep time the MA has had.
There are a couple of things that are going to mitigage against the Alignment being able to crawl back under it's rock pile.
The first one is that to this point the intent and plan was to use proxies of all sorts to shatter the league, criticaly degrade the ability of most capable Navys to be effective and get what amounts to a Civl War going amoung the systems that remain in the League. That isn't quite what happened. Oh, there was a lot of death and destruction but in terms of absolute power avaiable, the GA, it's friendly (by treaty or common design and concern) polities like the Andermand, Erwhon, etc and still the SLN. While the SLN is in no condition to take on- even if it wanted to now- the GA, it is more than able to deal with the majority of single system and probably breakouts of warlordism which will be operating with the same or similar tech levels as the SLN.
Second was that the RF was intended as a rally point for those either existing the League or Indpendents fearful of other threats (including the SL) now that the SLN isn't going to be the 800 lb gorilla enforcer of behavior. That is still going to happen to some extent but the equation has changed and there will be fewer defections from the League. There will also be more things like the GA and variations on what the RF is MARKETING itself to be doing. I use that word intentional because they are going to omit the part about implanting a whole set of changes into the medical, moral and philosophy sections of the various systems to convert them to what could be called (but will never be) Detweilerism. We even saw that one of the initial and already highly prepped systems to be an early RF (not of the original group) joiner because the leader had concerns and reservations and Albrect said "don't push".
Thirdly and probably most importantly is that the entire plan was designed to keep the Alighment compleatly invisible and out of the notice of anybody with it's operatons through moles, proxies and such so that NO ONE outside the organization was to know that it either existed or there was another player in galactic affairs that was puppet mastering things.
I'm sure that the Alignment is going to try to pull the rocks, scum and dead leaves back over itself but there are too many players who know they exist. All of those players also have very good and bloody reasons to want not only a piece of the Alignment but extract so much more than revenge and their enemies end. So at least the top 5 military if not political powers in the known human explored part of the Galaxy (Manticore, Haven, Grayson, The Andermani and, of course, what will shake out as the SL v. II) have their scouts out looking for the Alignment/ The Other Guys or whatever you want to call them and they are seriously motivated to 1st find them and 2nd probably to reduce them to a no longer outgassing ruin wherever they may be found (after extracting what can be had to keep pursue the the next instalment.
