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Forging Ahead (GURPS Interstellar Wars/Celestial Forge)

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You know, what happens if a Feudal State, stuck to FTL Couriers with Slow FTL gets FTL Comms?

The Vilani Empire ... How likely would a full scale civil war be, if all those Feudal leaders below The Emperor declare they don't actually want to listen to him in real time? They were quite happy with how The Empire was ruled before that. And while people are saying, "If the Emperor declares Jump, then his citzens will already be jumping," that ... Well, The Vilani are biologically human, right? Humans don't work like that, and an Empire ruled by a far off and distant Emperor suddenly having The Emperor able to properly rule?

This does sound like the recipe for, "Civil War!" in my opinion, if thinking realistically.
 
SemiSaneAuthor said:
You know, what happens if a Feudal State, stuck to FTL Couriers with Slow FTL gets FTL Comms?

The Vilani Empire ... How likely would a full scale civil war be, if all those Feudal leaders below The Emperor declare they don't actually want to listen to him in real time? They were quite happy with how The Empire was ruled before that. And while people are saying, "If the Emperor declares Jump, then his citzens will already be jumping," that ... Well, The Vilani are biologically human, right? Humans don't work like that, and an Empire ruled by a far off and distant Emperor suddenly having The Emperor able to properly rule?

This does sound like the recipe for, "Civil War!" in my opinion, if thinking realistically.
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The way their society works, the Emperor can't even say jump. The Emperor is just the head of the council. IIRC, it is something like the Emperor can appoint most of the council, and serves for life. When the emperor dies, the council then votes one of its members into the position. Non-emperor-appointed positions include the heads of the military and such.

Looking it up, the council was made up of the Army Head, Navy Head, three appointees from each of the three major government bureaus, and four people appointed by the Emperor himself. The Emperor can only interact with the 15 council members, not anyone lower on the totem pole. Similarly, the five factions of the council each could only interact with each other through the Emperor and the Council. When the Emperor died, the Council promoted from within itself, while each group would select to replace their councilman.
 
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I dont think they would even comprehend revolting like that. The empire has been around thousands of years by extremely precise social engineering. Hyper conservative both biological and by culture. Deliberate rule by precedent because the government is designed so only the most important issues even have time to be addressed by leadership and the Shadow Emperor. Collectivism that exalts the group and their culture specifically as triumph that must be maintained and anything that harms the whole will see you deposed. Ambition is channeled to strive against each other for power but inside the system. Trying to leave is near inconceivable and they have a well funded police to root out anyone who would want it.
 
Blade4 said:
I dont think they would even comprehend revolting like that. The empire has been around thousands of years by extremely precise social engineering. Hyper conservative both biological and by culture. Deliberate rule by precedent because the government is designed so only the most important issues even have time to be addressed by leadership and the Shadow Emperor. Collectivism that exalts the group and their culture specifically as triumph that must be maintained and anything that harms the whole will see you deposed. Ambition is channeled to strive against each other for power but inside the system. Trying to leave is near inconceivable and they have a well funded police to root out anyone who would want it.
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I mean, less police than Secret Police, but I agree.
 
I think the big issue is that all of the foundational social engineering that went into the Vilani Empire was based around the technology available at the time- and with the full acknowledgement that sufficiently disruptive future innovations could invalidate that baseline. Hence the carefully cultivated, intentional lack of technological progress.

Frankly, those long-dead sociologists really knocked it out of the park with the multi-millenia durability of the system they set up. Toss a fundamental shift like FTL comms into the mix, though, and all their assumptions go out the window.

The Empire might not collapse, of course- might even strengthen. But what comes out the other side isn't going to be what it started out as.
 
RedX said:
Frankly, those long-dead sociologists really knocked it out of the park with the multi-millenia durability of the system they set up.
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You know it says a lot about my Supspension of Disbelief, when super tech, magical fiat powers that give supertech among other things, the general Sci-Fi tech shown of the setting so far, and Vilani Empire Super-Social Engineering ... And it's the Super-Social Engineering that is giving me trouble. Humans just don't do that, along with not over those time scales, unless you change what it means to be human then I'm going, "HOW!?" as a thing.
 
The Unicorn said:
The point is that it's not actually possible.
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What? What does this mean? Do you mean to says it's impossible for a covert attempt at stealing it? How? Like I'm genuinely curious as to how you came to that conclusion.

The Unicorn said:
This means that Terra will never actual trust the Vilani to stick to their deal. In such a case of course they wouldn't agree to the deal, but that's a very different argument than what you were making before.
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Yes? So the deal won't happen period no matter how much the Vilani begs. Also yeah the black box may not need replacement parts but the consulate will, it can be for the security or just mundane computers for the consulate.

So what if it's different the point remains the same, if you were on Terran shoes how will you manage the logistics of a consulate all the way on the other side of the Imperium?
 
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