Schlock Mercenary V: You're Missing Something Wonderful

[guttering flame]

So what is 'Commissary 14'?

[memnarch]

So what is 'Commissary 14'?

Well, a commissary is "a store that sells food and basic household supplies on a military base or in a prison", so........

[Wayson]

So what is 'Commissary 14'?

A battleplate has A LOT of people on it, normally. Dependents, military personnel, etc. It's only logical that they'd need multiple commissaries to avoid a single one being swarmed nonstop (e.g. Wal Mart on Black Friday, but EVERY DAY). Schlock is being offered the contents of an entire commissary as a bribe. :O If you don't know what a commissary is, it's the military base version of a supermarket.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

So I was binging recently, and Howard's post about his narrative conventions was pretty neat. I definitely appreciate how he doesn't suddenly pull plot threads out of the distant past, because it's a bear to keep track of years of daily plot.

[ti'esar]

So one thing I don't quite get about this subplot: how exactly did Vog wind up this way anyway? The whole reason he originally wound up with Emm and her group was that she preferred having a willing advisor to vivisecting Schlock.

[NEO|Phyte]

So one thing I don't quite get about this subplot: how exactly did Vog wind up this way anyway? The whole reason he originally wound up with Emm and her group was that she preferred having a willing advisor to vivisecting Schlock.

Consider the type of person Emm is, and you'll probably have your answer. Hell, Bunnigus wanted a look at Vog's brain after hearing about it.
:edit: also, if you look closely, she doesn't say a willing advisor, just "willing help with project laz'r'us". I suspect that Vog was always destined for that tank, Emm just pretended otherwise until the Toughs were off on their merry way.

[Marnath]

Why does the doctor say it's surprising how much Vog's brain is like Schlock? His people accidentally created the Amorphs after their spare tubs of brain goo evolved. We already knew it was literally the same substance.

[memnarch]

Why does the doctor say it's surprising how much Vog's brain is like Schlock? His people accidentally created the Amorphs after their spare tubs of brain goo evolved. We already knew it was literally the same substance.

Not quite. Amorphs started as self-repairing distributed storage systems for supercomputers. That's a little different than a selectively engineered matrix made of similar material.

[Mando Knight]

Also, when developing a "self-repairing distributed storage system" for a computer, making something that functions like your species' brains is a fairly good place to start.

[guttering flame]

I'm thinking the fleet doctor wanted to get rid of the competition after Vog's little speech. Lesson: don't try to make waves if you don't have the firepower to back it up.

[Bulldog Psion]

So one thing I don't quite get about this subplot: how exactly did Vog wind up this way anyway? The whole reason he originally wound up with Emm and her group was that she preferred having a willing advisor to vivisecting Schlock.

DeHaans and Emm, along with Xinchub, are the reasons I classified the UNS as being just as barbaric, violent, monstrous, and dictatorial as the Ob'enn for a long time.

Heck, although the latest book seemed to be trying to portray them as slightly more normal, Mr. Taylor did his work too well for that. I still think that they're worse than a combination of Mordor, the Nazis, and the Galactic Empire, and can't see why their fall due to a civil war would be such a bad thing.

Are they supposed to be just as monstrous as the Ob'enn, or more so? Or are they supposed to be civilized, wtih a few bad apples? If Mr. Taylor was attempting to portray the latter, he kind of slipped up and showed the former instead, IMO.

[Discus-Spinner]

That segment of the UNS are a black ops/intelligence unit of a major government in a transhumanist future where the population apparently prefers a safetech cultural model. Ethically, they're shafted from every direction.

Plus, it's easy to be in favour of a civil war until the gigadeaths hit double figures.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

can't see why their fall due to a civil war would be such a bad thing.

I'd give them better-than-even odds that they'd end up back at the top of the pile during and after a civil war. A civil war actively promotes the kind of backstabbery efficiency that they have to fig-leaf hide in normal times. In a civil war, they'd drag everyone down to their level, and then beat them with experience.

Grey Wolf

[factotum]

Are they supposed to be just as monstrous as the Ob'enn, or more so? Or are they supposed to be civilized, wtih a few bad apples? If Mr. Taylor was attempting to portray the latter, he kind of slipped up and showed the former instead, IMO.

I don't see that? We've seen three (maybe four, if you include the purple lady whose name I forget) real lowlifes in the UNS. Seems a bit unfair to judge a nation including thousands of billions of people from the actions of so few of its members!

[John Campbell]

I don't see that? We've seen three (maybe four, if you include the purple lady whose name I forget) real lowlifes in the UNS. Seems a bit unfair to judge a nation including thousands of billions of people from the actions of so few of its members!

Xinchub, Emm, DerHaans, Kowalski, that blonde colonel whose name I forget... and there haven't been any real counter-examples until the just-concluded storyline.

One of the big effects of that storyline is that it took the UNS out of the hands of people like that and put it in the hands of someone we know, who's been fairly sympathetically portrayed, and established some heroic supporters for her, like Bala-Amin and the dude who was going to sacrifice his battleplate to save Dom Atlantis.

[Discus-Spinner]

Note that Kathryn was UNS military intelligence before she got out for good and suficient reasons. She may be somewhat typical of the more general type - not a saint by any means, but not a truly evil person or terribly inclined to slaughter millions if she's the one making the decisions.

We've seen some rather horrible UNS Intelligence senior officers because the Toughs have had a string of run-ins with dodgy bits of UNS Intelligence, and this is the sort of story where the serious opposition's leaders tend to be seriously in need of fighting.

[Godskook]

DeHaans and Emm, along with Xinchub, are the reasons I classified the UNS as being just as barbaric, violent, monstrous, and dictatorial as the Ob'enn for a long time.

Heck, although the latest book seemed to be trying to portray them as slightly more normal, Mr. Taylor did his work too well for that. I still think that they're worse than a combination of Mordor, the Nazis, and the Galactic Empire, and can't see why their fall due to a civil war would be such a bad thing.

Are they supposed to be just as monstrous as the Ob'enn, or more so? Or are they supposed to be civilized, wtih a few bad apples? If Mr. Taylor was attempting to portray the latter, he kind of slipped up and showed the former instead, IMO.

The shortlist of players you mention all admit to keeping things secret from the rest of the UNS. Compare to the Ob'enn, who do what they do publicly, with cultural affirmation(same with every other group you mentioned). So yeah, different.

Its the equivalent of watching a bunch of shows about the Yakuza and concluding that all of Japan is full of gang-members.

[tonberrian]

Also, when developing a "self-repairing distributed storage system" for a computer, making something that functions like your species' brains is a fairly good place to start.

I think it's the other way around, really. Vog said that they replaced their brains, to make them not go mad.

[Bulldog Psion]

The shortlist of players you mention all admit to keeping things secret from the rest of the UNS. Compare to the Ob'enn, who do what they do publicly, with cultural affirmation(same with every other group you mentioned). So yeah, different.

Its the equivalent of watching a bunch of shows about the Yakuza and concluding that all of Japan is full of gang-members.

Well, their apparently standard shipborne fighting men, UNS Marines, have been shown as fascist, cold-hearted killers verging very closely on psychopaths. Witness Xinchub helpless with laughter over the phrase "innocent Marines," not to mention the whole thing with Kevin and the other scientists way back when. Xinchub doesn't seem to view his past as anything clandestine, while DeHaans appears to have a staff of at least 10 professional torturers at his disposal, in addition to himself. I think that a modern naval commander keeping a dozen torturers on their aircraft carrier would draw some comment and investigation, but it seems to be so standard in the UNS that nobody cares.

Up to this moment, the UNS has had a "merciless, torturing, mass-murdering despotism" vibe to me.

I never meant that every person in the UNS was a monster. I merely felt that it was run by a cruel, totalitarian, and rather monstrous regime, with an equally brutal military. They don't seem like any "war crime" would bother them, or that they would even have such a legal concept.

I may be wrong; but Howard sure seems to have shown them as a pretty horrible government, which has absolutely zero idea of the value of life or "sapient rights."

[Gnoman]

Well, their apparently standard shipborne fighting men, UNS Marines, have been shown as fascist, cold-hearted killers verging very closely on psychopaths. Witness Xinchub helpless with laughter over the phrase "innocent Marines," not to mention the whole thing with Kevin and the other scientists way back when. Xinchub doesn't seem to view his past as anything clandestine, while DeHaans appears to have a staff of at least 10 professional torturers at his disposal, in addition to himself. I think that a modern naval commander keeping a dozen torturers on their aircraft carrier would draw some comment and investigation, but it seems to be so standard in the UNS that nobody cares.

Up to this moment, the UNS has had a "merciless, torturing, mass-murdering despotism" vibe to me.

I never meant that every person in the UNS was a monster. I merely felt that it was run by a cruel, totalitarian, and rather monstrous regime, with an equally brutal military. They don't seem like any "war crime" would bother them, or that they would even have such a legal concept.

I may be wrong; but Howard sure seems to have shown them as a pretty horrible government, which has absolutely zero idea of the value of life or "sapient rights."

The government of Luna cared so much about "sapient rights" that the Toughs were able to subvert an entire regulatory process just because Ennesby was an Artificial Intelligence instead of a computer. Indeed, nearly every time the Toughs interact with the open branches of the UNS government, those branches come out looking pretty good - planning to arrest Elf for something she was obviously guilty of, paying them to non-lethally take down a couple of street gangs, winning a lawsuit against lawyers that tried to blow up the Moon, etc. This last story arc demonstrates this quite well, with a UNS admiral quite willing to sacrifice himself and an entire battleplate crew because he remembered that a soldier's first (and, in the end, only) duty is to take bullets for civilains.

There's something very important you're missing when you look at this rather nasty group. You very rarely see any of them interacting with anyone high-up in the government. The one time we do, Xinchub quite blatantly suggests that the Deputy Elephant faces criminal charges if that operation falls apart. When the simplest details of Xinchub's dealings become public knowledge, only the lucky coincidence that the Toughs happened to run across a biocidal robotic race and just happened to send that race's ship to Earth where Xinchub becomes a hero for destroying it saved him from a treason trial. Meanwhile, executing his vendetta against Tagon requires bribing a judge, using legal loopholes and sabotage in an attempt to kill them instead of simply using his firepower or having them arrested on trumped-up charges

Emm, Xinchub, and the rest are clearly an illegal operation, a rogue branch of intelligence that operates under their own laws, using their own means, and relying on the chain of command and rank to get the rest of UNS Intelligence or the Fleet to back up whatever dirty op they're running, while never leaving enough evidence in one place to let the ordinary rank-and-file figure out how dirty they are - essentially a UNS version of the United Federation Of Planets Starfleet Section 31.

[ti'esar]

Emm, Xinchub, and the rest are clearly an illegal operation, a rogue branch of intelligence that operates under their own laws, using their own means, and relying on the chain of command and rank to get the rest of UNS Intelligence or the Fleet to back up whatever dirty op they're running, while never leaving enough evidence in one place to let the ordinary rank-and-file figure out how dirty they are - essentially a UNS version of the United Federation Of Planets Starfleet Section 31.

I wouldn't say they were quite as independent from the legal government as that analogy suggests. But yes, I would agree that I had always gotten the impression that Xinchub and Emm's bunch operated largely without any real oversight and shouldn't be taken as representative of the UNS as a whole. I do think it would be fair to describe the UNS as corrupt or dysfunctional - it was, after all, on the verge of a civil war - but I wouldn't compare them to the Ob'enn or the like.

Pretty much everybody associated with Project Laz'R'Us seems pretty rotten, though.

[Godskook]

Well, their apparently standard shipborne fighting men, UNS Marines, have been shown as fascist, cold-hearted killers verging very closely on psychopaths. Witness Xinchub helpless with laughter over the phrase "innocent Marines," not to mention the whole thing with Kevin and the other scientists way back when. Xinchub doesn't seem to view his past as anything clandestine, while DeHaans appears to have a staff of at least 10 professional torturers at his disposal, in addition to himself. I think that a modern naval commander keeping a dozen torturers on their aircraft carrier would draw some comment and investigation, but it seems to be so standard in the UNS that nobody cares.

Of those links, all but one are from the Xinchub/Emm branch that I've already pointed out as being a rather obviously non-representative and non-controlling group(as pointed out by Howard).

The link to "innocent marines" is different...but it proves an awkward point: You're wrong. First, to address the direct part, sure, the phrase "innocent Marines" is funny, but y'know who the list of "not innocent" people includes? Breya, Tagon, and Petey. This is hardly a damning accusation to hurl. Second, it very obviously points out a very large group of UNS soldiers who are both A)not from the Xinchub/Emm branch, and B)nowhere near like what you're characterizing UNS soldiers to be like(Basically the opposite).

I never meant that every person in the UNS was a monster. I merely felt that it was run by a cruel, totalitarian, and rather monstrous regime, with an equally brutal military. They don't seem like any "war crime" would bother them, or that they would even have such a legal concept.

The UNS was never represented as being run by Xinchub/Emm & crew, and every UNS representative outside those 1-2 divisions has not been on their level of monstrous.

[Bulldog Psion]

This last story arc demonstrates this quite well, with a UNS admiral quite willing to sacrifice himself and an entire battleplate crew because he remembered that a soldier's first (and, in the end, only) duty is to take bullets for civilians.

I'd just like to point out that ruthless cruelty in suppressing enemies of the state does not preclude acts of individual heroism and/or trying to keep taxpayers alive. Some of history's worst despotisms still contained brave and conscientious people who worked hard to keep things running and were sometimes willing to die for others.

I agree that Mr. Taylor probably doesn't mean to have the UNS as bad as the Ob'enn, but viewing them almost exclusively through the lens of practically all the high-ranking UNS brass we've seen, they give the impression of a murderous tyranny whose only limits to action are those imposed by physics, not ethics.

Very likely, I'm wrong, but to me, Petey seems like the only "power" that isn't as villainous as Nazis (leaving out minor independent planetary governments, that is).

The link to "innocent marines" is different...but it proves an awkward point: You're wrong. First, to address the direct part, sure, the phrase "innocent Marines" is funny, but y'know who the list of "not innocent" people includes? Breya, Tagon, and Petey.

Well, the "innocent marines" quote context was whether it was wrong to summarily execute them without a trial. Xinchub's reaction -- and Tagon's effective agreement -- suggested that they are such low-life killers and scum that just mowing them down is morally neutral at worst. I don't know if I'd say that Breya and Petey at least are actually deserving of summary execution, as that whole scene indicated every single last marine was.

[ti'esar]

I'm really dubious that Tagon agreeing that "innocent Marines" was a funny phrase should be extended to him agreeing that the marines - who spent the next book working with him, after all - deserved summary execution.

[Fjolnir]

Honestly the thing is that "Innocent Soldiers" can by some people be considered an oxymoron right now so the fairly Amoral characters laughing about "Innocent Marines" is par for the course.

Also the Blonde lady is Krum, Kowalski's former handler.

[Godskook]

Well, the "innocent marines" quote context was whether it was wrong to summarily execute them without a trial. Xinchub's reaction -- and Tagon's effective agreement -- suggested that they are such low-life killers and scum that just mowing them down is morally neutral at worst. I don't know if I'd say that Breya and Petey at least are actually deserving of summary execution, as that whole scene indicated every single last marine was.

That's not what that suggested, and if you examine actual behaviors of the marines being talked about over the course of the comic, they're pretty good guys.

Also, "not legally guilty" is not the only meaning of the word innocent. As I read that strip, they're not referencing "legal innocence" in that dialog, but rather a more "completely unexposed" sort, which is a pretty hilarious thing to describe marines as being. Same with mercenaries, even fully law-abiding ones. And just because its hilarious doesn't imply that its representative of truth, kinda like the phrase "military intelligence", which has also appeared in the comic as a joke(does that imply that all military is stupid to you?).

Finally, Tagon and Petey are guilty of things, yet you're perfectly comfortable ignoring that while impuning the UNS for elements known to be non-representative, or jokes. Why doesn't that seem like a double-standard to you?

[Discus-Spinner]

I took the joke about "innocent marines" as being on an exact par with all the lines about Tagon commanding a whole lot of sociopaths. This comic acknowledges that soldiers have by definition to be a rough, tough bunch; the best of them preserve an ethical code and direct their violence in what are generally regarded as appropriate directions, the worse of them are cold-blooded hired killers, and there are some in the middle who are usually okay but ... worrying. You just can't expect them to be "innocent" as the word is often used.

Likewise, the UNS clearly has a problem. It's a huge, sprawling, hideously over-complicated government system which has been going long enough to lead to all sorts of compromises. It's so big that a relatively small renegade faction within just one of its branches can easily command more firepower and influence than most planetary governments. That doesn't prove that the UNS "are" a bunch of Nazis, any more than Richard Nixon proved that 1970s America was a fascist state. It just means that a mere shipload of mercenaries who run foul of one small faction within the UNS security apparatus are in deep, deep do-dos.

[Bulldog Psion]

Finally, Tagon and Petey are guilty of things, yet you're perfectly comfortable ignoring that while impuning the UNS for elements known to be non-representative, or jokes. Why doesn't that seem like a double-standard to you?

Where did I state that Tagon and Petey are not guilty of things? I am unable to find this in my posts, but if I did post it, please point it out, and I will probably disagree with myself.

I have merely stated that the UNS has been portrayed for 95% of the comic's run as being pretty much as monstrous and despotic as the Ob'enn. I also wondered whether this was deliberate on Mr. Taylor's part, or whether it was simply an artifact of his writing style.

Among the major powers we've seen (limited to the UNS, the Ob'enn, the Gatekeepers, and Petey), three of the four appear to have no ethical limits whatsoever. They will slaughter, summarily execute, and torture casually, without a qualm, in order to achieve their goals. Petey, on the other hand, attempts to limit the damage he does; this doesn't mean he never kills or mindrips, but he does so as sparingly as possible.

The other powers seem to be willing to torture and kill large numbers of prisoners quite readily if it's even slightly convenient to them to do so.

Heck, I'm not even trying to debate whether it's right for them to do so or not. I don't particularly care as long as the story is good. But it's kind of interesting to me, actually, that the fictional universe depicted seems to be made up mostly of murderous despotisms. Even the vacation planet was pretty much openly run by a nasty police state.

The Fleetmind appears to be the one benevolent dictatorship among a universe filled with malevolent dictatorships.

[ryuplaneswalker]

I took the joke about "innocent marines" as being on an exact par with all the lines about Tagon commanding a whole lot of sociopaths. This comic acknowledges that soldiers have by definition to be a rough, tough bunch; the best of them preserve an ethical code and direct their violence in what are generally regarded as appropriate directions, the worse of them are cold-blooded hired killers, and there are some in the middle who are usually okay but ... worrying. You just can't expect them to be "innocent" as the word is often used.

Likewise, the UNS clearly has a problem. It's a huge, sprawling, hideously over-complicated government system which has been going long enough to lead to all sorts of compromises. It's so big that a relatively small renegade faction within just one of its branches can easily command more firepower and influence than most planetary governments. That doesn't prove that the UNS "are" a bunch of Nazis, any more than Richard Nixon proved that 1970s America was a fascist state. It just means that a mere shipload of mercenaries who run foul of one small faction within the UNS security apparatus are in deep, deep do-dos.

Mind you they repeatedly Run Foul of that small faction, several times, without even trying.

Oh and there was that time The Toughs actively Extorted the Sol Sytem Government into paying them not to come into the system with the Post Dated Check Loan, that could not have made any friends with the good factions who would likely have sided with them against that small faction, and have more or less done zip to get anyone back in those good graces, that and the toughs almost seem to constantly fall bass ackwards into causing very important events that alter the shape of the Galaxy in some way or another.

Re : UNS Civil war, look at the events of the comic as a whole has taken place over 4 years, and in that time, The Teraport has been invented, A war with another Galaxy has started, the creation of TWO completely unfettered AI lets use the word Nationstates here since there is really not a good word for what the Fleetmind really is, the discovery of a Race that had enough spare energy to make ships out of Fuel, and the announcement of an Ancient race which is giving every Sapient Species in the galaxy Immortality, one of these things happening is enough to throw things into a bit of Chaos, but these events are piling on top of each other, I would be surprised if any Governmental body is really stable all things considered with the exemption of The Fleetmind and Lota.

[Godskook]

Where did I state that Tagon and Petey are not guilty of things? I am unable to find this in my posts, but if I did post it, please point it out, and I will probably disagree with myself.

I didn't say you stated as such. My point is that you're blatantly applying a double standard in how you judge evidence. "Not innocent marines" = "evil, malevolent, cretins" while "guilty Petey" = "great guy!".

I have merely stated that the UNS has been portrayed for 95% of the comic's run as being pretty much as monstrous and despotic as the Ob'enn. I also wondered whether this was deliberate on Mr. Taylor's part, or whether it was simply an artifact of his writing style.

This actually not true. Its not even true if you said 5%. Xinchub, Emm and company have always represented themselves as being outliers, and every time we've been exposed to the UNS distinctly outside their branch, the UNS comes out much less horrible.

Among the major powers we've seen (limited to the UNS, the Ob'enn, the Gatekeepers, and Petey), three of the four appear to have no ethical limits whatsoever. They will slaughter, summarily execute, and torture casually, without a qualm, in order to achieve their goals. Petey, on the other hand, attempts to limit the damage he does; this doesn't mean he never kills or mindrips, but he does so as sparingly as possible.

1.Petey has fewer ethical limits than any of the others as a governing body. He even says as much.

2.These gatekeepers? Pretty sure they're one of the good guys.

3.The UNS appears to have a lot of ethical limits. First because Xinchub knows he's operating outside those limits, and second because even -he- has limits(however tenuous).