A Call to... Arms - Page 127

[icekatze]

hi hi

Also, I hope that the Tizaba depot has a bunch of torpedoes sitting in a cargo bay that they can toss out the side and fire off when the Umiak get close.

[orion1836]

Well given Beryl's xenophilia wouldn't be safe to assume her romantic interests could be based on something different?

Last time this came up I was able to turn up the text of the xenophilia disadvantage as defined in GURPS. I can't find it again, but from memory it was along the lines of you have to pass a willpower test or assume that anyone exotic to you wants to talk to you extensively about their exoticness, contrary to any evidence. It means you talk the ear off anyone new, not automatically that you want to bone all the aliens.

Of course, the sheets shouldn't be treated perfect representations of their character, but I think this still bears mentioning.

Via this site.

The disadvantage clearly states that the mechanical effect of failure on your xenophilia roll is that: you assume that the person/thing in question is interested in interacting with you socially.

Xenophillia becomes radically more dangerous when you have other disadvantages (lecherous, and gregarious being big stand outs) because that assumption that the xeno is trying to initiate social iteration will lead to triggering your other disadvantage (IE- the thing which man was not meant to know is growling at us; It's making a pass at me! Roll lecherousness or else 'accept' its seduction attempt)

[Overkill Engine]

.....wherein Beryl learns the Human idiom "Have a seat and talk about the first thing that pops up."

[Dahak]

Ashrain is one of the Emperor's grandnieces who has used her family's clout to jump castes and become a frontline Torrai Torret; one would think that Stillstorm, who is a well known and vocal political thorn on the Emperor's side would seek to sideline Ashrain at every turn

Ashrain chose to bring her ship out and join Stillstorm's raider group rather than sit in the reserve with the rest of the Imperial Guard. I suspect that choice set the tone for their relationship. Sidelining her is what the Empress was effectively doing, where as treating her like any other Torret fits better with Stillstorm's view of the world.

Stillstorm would probably prefer more of the Imperial Guard to follow Ashrain's example and come out and test their fighting quality.

[entity2636]

Is that the first time Beryl and Alex are touching? Last time Alex shook hands with Talon she seemed quite taken aback. Also, Alex seems not to receive a "tingling" sensation from touching Beryl as well.

Alex and Beryl have touched each other before, but only through clothing same as here, which is more or less OK even among loroi. It's the direct skin to skin contact that does stuff to their telepathy if two loroi are touching. With humans I think it's safe to assume that the tingling sensation Alex mentioned when touched by Fireblade trying to probe his mind is the perception of either an active telepathic contact attempt, probably via the "Psi Sense" skill, or of a "telepathic field" of a powerful enough telepath, sort of like one can sort of "feel" electric or magnetic fields above a certain strength. If no such attempt is made then you would not feel anything or Talon is just very weak at telepathy in general. This we do not know unfortunately.

[entity2636]

I think Stillstorm clearly has some blind spots in her reasoning, in terms of things she's not willing to consider. Not really unreasonable, but still there. Time will tell if that ends up coming back to bite her or not.

---
Honestly, I half expected the Umiak to drive on Azimol rather than Enedd.

But then again, I don't know what prime, juicy targets are at Enedd or beyond.

If Stillstorm has what appears to be blind spots in her reasoning to us, it is because she appears to only have limited information on the situation in general and has literally been caught with her pants down. As Beryl pointed out earlier, there are supposed to be multiple checkpoints and listening posts beyond Rallis that should warn the loroi fleet of enemy movements, but no warnings came through and noone was aware of the attack. Probably because the loroi rely mostly on their farseers and the umiak, now invisible to them, have managed to overrun and destroy said early warning stations. So far we see her simply reacting to what is going on in her immediate field of view and, to be honest, we can't really blame her. At least she's not outright panicking and hopefully won't pull some sort of glorious "It's a good day to die" kind of stunt.

As for why the bulk of the umiak fleet not flying toward Azimol, I think is because there is another task force which we do not yet know about headed for Azimol through Gora which is accessible from Rallis via, if I read it right, Eze and Barrol (see map on Page 121). At least I would pretty much expect there being such a task force given what we know so far.

It is curious what the actual objective of the umiak invasion is though... Still feels kind of too small to be a full "D-day" kind of invasion to end the war, no? Attempt to take the Azimol base and Enedd and kick the loroi out of this sector? Kikitik-27's somewhat personal campaign against Admiral 'Storm-witch' Stillstorm and/or to secure/destroy the Terran artifacts she's carrying?

[Vyrnie]

It is curious what the actual objective of the umiak invasion is though... Still feels kind of too small to be a full "D-day" kind of invasion to end the war, no? Attempt to take the Azimol base and Enedd and kick the loroi out of this sector? Kikitik-27's somewhat personal campaign against Admiral 'Storm-witch' Stillstorm and/or to secure/destroy the Terran artifacts she's carrying?

The supposition that the Umiak's primary goal is to wipe out the Loroi's knowledge of humans, and more specifically the human invulnerability to Loroi telepathy & farseers would explain the following:

- Why is the invasion force so small?

Because they don't want to tip the Loroi off they have the ability to evade farseers just yet. Everytime they commit a group of farseer-invisible Umiak they have to wipe out *all* Loroi engaged - every single one - or intelligence of the new Umiak development would make it back to Loroi command. Protecting intelligence by way of killing everyone that sees it is a valid strategy in this universe because intelligence only travels at the speed of ships - not light. We know that this has worked in multiple engagements so far because they passed through multiple farseer checkpoints and still got an ambush off, so not a single ship from earlier farseer systems made it over to the next one.

So their objective isn't "full-scale invasion of Loroi strongholds" its simply "kill the humans and turn them and their stuff into dust so no other Loroi can even find out they exist"

- How did Umiaks "suddenly" (as far we/Loroi know anyway) become farseer-invisible?

They vivisected the other group of scouts and figured out the mechanism that lets humans be farseer-invisible. Alternatively, they've always had this ability (through convergent evolution, which seems to be a theme in this story... hello sexually compatible space babes light-years away) but up till now they've successfully kept it under wraps.

- Why are the Umiaks attacking now specifically?

Seems too big a coincidence that humans show up with weird interactions with Loroi telepathy and the Umiak suddenly surprise the Loroi with a similar new found ability at the 11th hour after however many years the war has already been playing out. Either they just got it, or they came across a reason to think the Loroi might figure out they've always had it to whatever extent.

- Why is Kikitik-27 so much more competent than other Umiak? Or at least why is Kikitik-27 focused so much more on staying alive than other Umiak?

Because his mission is to safeguard knowledge of the Umiak access to farseer-invisibility, more strategically important mission objective gets more competent commander assigned. Or at least whatever commander does get assigned it has objectives other than "Well, we make Umiaks and Umiak-bullets faster than they make Loroi and Loroi-bullets... throw the kitchen sink at them and then ram them or something!"

- But what about Kikitik-27 past run-ins with Stillstorm & Friends?

The better explanation would be that Kikitik-27 was a naturally rising star in the Umiak military command, and his past run-ins with Stillstorm were what got him assigned the unit of farseer-invisible people (after Umiak command found the other human group) for the objective of protecting the new-found Umiak secret.

The weaker explanation would be that Kikitik-27 has always had the objective of protecting the Umiak secret (that they've always had) but hes a hot-headed idiot that likes getting into skirmishes to pass the time instead of laying low and conserving strength for his primary task. He only revealed the unit of farseer-invisible Umiak hes always had now because he was passing time before and now hes serious.

Note: I haven't actually read through Arioch's posts/clarifications on the forums yet, and its been... some time since I read the earlier parts of the story. So this really is just a supposition, don't shiv me if I'm wrong... also my tinfoil hat is really tight.

[raistlin34]

Well as to the presumed future avoidance of "romantic" developments that is a bit unrealistic but whatever.

I've seen this sort of thing repeated a few times (that supposedly I said there will be no "romantic" relationship of any kind in the story), but I don't recall saying this and I can't find a record of my saying it. I do recall saying something to the effect that those expecting to see graphic depictions of sexual activity are going to be disappointed, but that's not the same thing.

I'll just leave this here.

Aaaahh...how sweet. And the style is very similar to the original.
(I still ship Alex with Talon)

[sunphoenix]

Well as to the presumed future avoidance of "romantic" developments that is a bit unrealistic but whatever.

I've seen this sort of thing repeated a few times (that supposedly I said there will be no "romantic" relationship of any kind in the story), but I don't recall saying this and I can't find a record of my saying it. I do recall saying something to the effect that those expecting to see graphic depictions of sexual activity are going to be disappointed, but that's not the same thing.

I'll just leave this here.

Hey, just out of curiosity... who/what site do you use for your third-party hosting for pictures? I'm looking for a free service... if possible.

And yes..very sweet.. but there ARE two versions of this.. same picture but one is in a lighter hue than the other.

[boldilocks]

Hey, just out of curiosity... who/what site do you use for your third-party hosting for pictures? I'm looking for a free service... if possible.

And yes..very sweet.. but there ARE two versions of this.. same picture but one is in a lighter hue than the other.

https://imgur.com/ is the one I've used.

[boldilocks]

I've seen this sort of thing repeated a few times (that supposedly I said there will be no "romantic" relationship of any kind in the story), but I don't recall saying this and I can't find a record of my saying it.

Batten down the hatches boys, we're gonna be getting some hardcore full frontal romance by the end of this chapter, says word of god!

[sunphoenix]

Well as to the presumed future avoidance of "romantic" developments that is a bit unrealistic but whatever.

I've seen this sort of thing repeated a few times (that supposedly I said there will be no "romantic" relationship of any kind in the story), but I don't recall saying this and I can't find a record of my saying it. I do recall saying something to the effect that those expecting to see graphic depictions of sexual activity are going to be disappointed, but that's not the same thing.

lol.. its JFK all over again...soon they'll be making conspiracy theories about the artist/writer in the grassy knoll.

Remember ~ 'Back and to the side...', there MUST be two artist/writers~ Arioch and Arioch 'Alleged {but still unproven}'... {snicker}!

I'm sure Arioch you will keep it all in good taste after all what is a good space opera without a little romance?

Outsider Opening - Low

{sigh}... someday.

[D1ff3r3nt]

Well as to the presumed future avoidance of "romantic" developments that is a bit unrealistic but whatever.

I've seen this sort of thing repeated a few times (that supposedly I said there will be no "romantic" relationship of any kind in the story), but I don't recall saying this and I can't find a record of my saying it. I do recall saying something to the effect that those expecting to see graphic depictions of sexual activity are going to be disappointed, but that's not the same thing.

lol.. its JFK all over again...soon they'll be making conspiracy theories about the artist/writer in the grassy knoll.

Remember ~ 'Back and to the side...', there MUST be two artist/writers~ Arioch and Arioch 'Alleged {but still unproven}'... {snicker}!

I'm sure Arioch you will keep it all in good taste after all what is a good space opera without a little romance?

Outsider Opening - Low

{sigh}... someday.

One day, honestly with what we have it still is better than Continuum and Discovery.

[icekatze]

hi hi

If Stillstorm has what appears to be blind spots in her reasoning to us, it is because she appears to only have limited information on the situation in general and has literally been caught with her pants down.

.. Still feels kind of too small to be a full "D-day" kind of invasion to end the war, no?

To say that someone has no biases or faults in their reasoning, being a perfectly logical and rational actor, would be an incredibly bold claim. Stillstorm is limited by a lack of information, sure, but if she was Laplace's Demon, she wouldn't need reasoning at all. Stillstorm seems to have a somewhat two dimensional (in the psychological sense), one or the other, perspective. That is honestly something that most humans do too, so it's not unreasonable. I imagine it would be more difficult to engage in lateral thinking when your worldview is defined by "true or false, honest or lies."

Perhaps if the Umiak can slip through the Loroi perimeter, they stand a good chance of laying waste to the Loroi's industrial capacity further inward?

The supposition that the Umiak's primary goal is to wipe out the Loroi's knowledge of humans, and more specifically the human invulnerability to Loroi telepathy & farseers would explain the following:

- Why is the invasion force so small?

I'm not sure that the invasion force is very small. If 6 divisions is enough to challenge the Tinza sector fleet in Sala-128, such that they need to call for reinforcements, then a total of 14 divisions between Sala-128, Sala-101, and Leido is a significant invasion force.

Furthermore, I am not sure the Umiak need to keep their farseer invisibility secret anymore. If they were worried about the secret getting out, they might well have thrown their entire space fleet into the action for a winner-take-all final showdown. However, that doesn't seem to be how the Umiak roll. As Clicky-27 said, without the farseers, the Loroi's defensive strategy is ruined. They could play the long game as they have been at this point, and if the Loroi don't develop a counter to the stealth tech, they've got a good chance of winning anyways.

However, a good reason to not send their entire fleet is that the Loroi are still likely to get the word out via couriers that the Umiak have this new advantage. From the Loroi perspective, having lost their farseer advantage, a full-scale all-or-nothing invasion of Umiak territory may now be unavoidable. And if the Loroi are forced into such a strategy, the Umiak can accept the move on their own turf where they have the supply line advantage. All they need to do is sufficiently scare the Loroi into going all in, or damage them enough in the opening move that they don't have the resources and end up getting whittled away.

- How did Umiaks "suddenly" (as far we/Loroi know anyway) become farseer-invisible?

They vivisected the other group of scouts and figured out the mechanism that lets humans be farseer-invisible. Alternatively, they've always had this ability (through convergent evolution, which seems to be a theme in this story...

Those are possibilities, but highly unlikely ones.

First, the Terran scouts were out there simultaneously. It would be a remarkable feat for the Umiak to capture a scout, figure out their telepathic resistance, develop a way to copy that resistance, apply it to multiple divisions worth of ships, send those ships on a circuitous route around the front-lines, all before the Bellarmine made first contact.

Second, I can't think of any reason why the Umiak would hide an ability to mask themselves from telepathy, if they had it. If they had such an ability, I would think that the Loroi would have lost the war during the First Siege of Seren.

[entity2636]

Furthermore, I am not sure the Umiak need to keep their farseer invisibility secret anymore. If they were worried about the secret getting out, they might well have thrown their entire space fleet into the action for a winner-take-all final showdown. However, that doesn't seem to be how the Umiak roll. As Clicky-27 said, without the farseers, the Loroi's defensive strategy is ruined. They could play the long game as they have been at this point, and if the Loroi don't develop a counter to the stealth tech, they've got a good chance of winning anyways.

However, a good reason to not send their entire fleet is that the Loroi are still likely to get the word out via couriers that the Umiak have this new advantage. From the Loroi perspective, having lost their farseer advantage, a full-scale all-or-nothing invasion of Umiak territory may now be unavoidable. And if the Loroi are forced into such a strategy, the Umiak can accept the move on their own turf where they have the supply line advantage. All they need to do is sufficiently scare the Loroi into going all in, or damage them enough in the opening move that they don't have the resources and end up getting whittled away.

Agreed, it would be nearly impossible for the umiaks to keep their "stealth" ability secret beyond the first contact with the loroi if the loroi wanted to spread this information. You just need to radio your nearest jump point courier to relay the new intel and it will spread at almost the speed of light, but such intel is sure to cause a massive panic.

I don't think the loroi are that stupid or desperate to launch an all-or-nothing counter invasion, especially now when they are not getting fresh intel on enemy strength and movements anymore. Semoset failed miserably even with all the farseeing and a much stronger loroi navy than they have now. IMO what they should be doing is dig in and start working on a solution to the intel problem.

- How did Umiaks "suddenly" (as far we/Loroi know anyway) become farseer-invisible?

They vivisected the other group of scouts and figured out the mechanism that lets humans be farseer-invisible. Alternatively, they've always had this ability

They didn't all "suddenly" become farseer invisible, from how I understand the story. SG51 first ran into an "invisible" umiak battle group in Naam. Then the Tinza fleet was jumped by another "invisible" battle goup in Sala-128 and now it turns out we have a third invisible group coming into Leido and God (Arioch) only knows how many more are out there.

As Icekatze said, it's not outside the realm of the possible, but highly unlikely the umiak have reverse engineered their stealth from the Terrans, given how little time has passed since the Terran First Contact Mission launched (3 months tops). I also don't believe that they always had this ability but chose not to use it. It's not how the umiak work.

Another in my opinion more likely scenario is that the umiaks have studied their loroi POWs until they figured out how their telepathy works and how to block it. Perhaps the umiak now have their own loroi farseers too and thus could get the jump on the Tinza fleet and catch SG51 docked at Leido...

[WalexB]

I'm kind of a fan of Stillstorm. She does seem like a no-nonsense, "I'm here to kick Umiak butt any way I can," sort of person, and I don't think she's lived as long as she has by putting politics over a more pragmatic approach.

Not quite on a personal level, she is a deeply damaged person in two ways: as a survivor and veteran she had seen a lot of death, including practically all of her officers and troops several times over, and IIRC there was a mentions that she lost people she really was close to (family? mates?) in the attack that created the wastezone.

Honestly, I half expected the Umiak to drive on Azimol rather than Enedd.

Everything is up for grabs here. So far the story has been a stalemate: farseers and fast ship groups have allowed the Loroi to stop Umiak attacks, but there have been two major development: the Umiak have conquered several "Librarian" worlds in a side attack and the Umiak seem to be able to evade farseers presently. Also there have been several human missions sent out. Potentially some of the human expeditions have found the Umiaks and humans are being used to pilot ships that then get undetected by the farseers, or the Umiaks have found new tech on the Librarian worlds.

Then there is the ominous pending issue of which (presumably third) party destroyed Alex's ship, and the even more ominous long-term question of what exactly is the role of the "Well of Souls" blackhole in the story. Plus there is the obvious enormity that as shown by the shoes story the Loroi seem to be genetically modified humans like the other nearby "soia-lyron" blue specieses seem to have been genetically modified from other races, as the Barsam guy seems to have been impressed by, and which blow the theory that the Loroi are descended from the Soia (unless those were ancient humans).

Then there is the issue of what will happen when news reach Earth that there are many planets full of human-compatible elf females that have a 1-10/1-20 ratio to males, are permanently on the pill as far as humans are concerned, and nearly all those depicted so far are quite cute. Especially if they see the three "sexy fireblade" pictures in the "Pinups, Holiday Greetings, Wallpaper, etc." section of the "Insider" page

[orion1836]

Aaaahh...how sweet. And the style is very similar to the original.
(I still ship Alex with Talon)

Also, it is the original style, lol. Check the insider.

Hey, just out of curiosity... who/what site do you use for your third-party hosting for pictures? I'm looking for a free service... if possible.

Unfortunately, I don't have a recommendation. I hotlinked directly to Arioch's site.

[WalexB]

(I still ship Alex with Talon)

Well, the logo of the story is an image file called "fearsomefoursome14.jpg", and look at pages 72 where Alex is between Beryl and Fireblade, 104 (Beryl and Tempo), but also 116 (Alex, Beryl and Talon) and 123 (Alex, Beryl and Talon).
I understand that Loroi females are used to share males given the sex ratio, and only the richest or most powerful have a steady (and usually shared) relationship with one, most Loroi females have random temporary associations booked through agencies at least while in the military.

My expectation is that a story with one cute young human guy and loads of blue skinned space elf girls has not been setup to remain "strictly professional", and that poor Alex will have to find the stamina to have a steady relationship at least with some of the main trio, and then some other interested parties as they appear and disappear along the way (will the empress want a taste of the best the Scout Corps can offer? :->).
Part of the issue in the story is that Loroi military females, especially pilots, have a very high death rate. Talon and Spiral may not be with us for long, even if they have been sent on this mission away from the front lines to protect their experience so they can train new pilots.

[dragoongfa]

As amusing as the concept of a Loroi harem would be I seriously doubt that will be the case (and I say that as a guy that finds the Harem trope of certain ecchi anime fun). Now there is good, solid ground for a proper romantic situation; with a full blown genocidal war raging on and with frequent life and death situations it is natural for people to seek some physical intimate contact with someone of the opposite sex and word of God is that Alex has the 'attractive' trait in his still unreleased GURPS sheet.
Although I have 'shipping' ideas of my own I expect that any developing romantic situation(s) will be natural and well written enough to make sense for the characters involved. My only hope is that the Loroi part of the romantic relationship realize early that human males pair bond and are not reasonable when someone tries to take their chosen girl(s) from them. The bad romantic stories that the Loroi have revolve around a male and a female becoming too attached and obsessed with each other but that's how human romance works, with the two parts getting emotionally attached and connected to one an other.

[CrimsonFALKE]

Well as to the presumed future avoidance of "romantic" developments that is a bit unrealistic but whatever.

I've seen this sort of thing repeated a few times (that supposedly I said there will be no "romantic" relationship of any kind in the story), but I don't recall saying this and I can't find a record of my saying it. I do recall saying something to the effect that those expecting to see graphic depictions of sexual activity are going to be disappointed, but that's not the same thing.

I'll just leave this here.

oh my!