Post by dictatorputski on Jan 5, 2024 21:01:45 GMT
Bulwark imperial capital Centura: Kingspyre Palace
"You must be blind!" An augmented prosthetic arm swung out in gesture, its dawngold leafed inlay costing more than some people may ever own. "The galaxy is collapsing like a burning townhouse around us! We're watching the very foothold we've scrambled onto crumble into ash, and yet you see not our predicament!"
The voice echoed across a spacious hall stacked with benches on either side, traditionally used for debates among the upper echelons of imperial rulership. A response came in short order.
"You're exaggerating! Much of the galaxy continues to prosper! We can't simply turn tail and turn inwards because of conflict that barely concerns us!" More gestures flung across the room as if to carry the words with them.
"Oh, exaggerating?!" The first man immediately burst into a short bout of laughter, having heard the most perceivably ridiculous sentence he had in months. "TRILLIONS ARE DEAD, Lucan, TRILLIONS! Every channel of information that isn't congested by living souls is completely occupied by news of the dead. We're talking about Weapons of Mass Extinction, the crumbling of a thousand economies, an entire section of our known galaxy simply BLINKING from all available communications. How do you call that anything more than a just reason to cut ties." He knew it was usually considered crass, but he wanted to drive this point to such an extent that he dared turn his final gesture toward the emperor.
Vulkan was, by tradition, in the form of a serpent emerging from the floor of the hall at its high end. There were no lights in the room apart from him for the appropriate reason of easily being able to immediately grab everyone's attention at a simple increase of intensity. There was barely a reaction to the Noble's representative's statement however - apart from a slight shift backward, enough to send a slight warm breeze through the room. There wasn't any dismissal of the points being raised, but there wasn't any knowledge in the room that he'd already made up his mind.
In honesty though he was quite sick of all of this. Just a few weeks ago he was attending the declaration ceremony for the new name of their capital. A massive sprawlside poll had concluded its new name to be Centura; a testament to the world's position as an anchor around which the economy and government - perhaps the whole empire - orbited. It was a momentous occasion and though the orbital parade was a bit lacklustre, the cosnavy had scrounged together what reserves they could to show the people that the Bulwark endured. It was somewhat delightful to see the coat of arms hung from a hundred thousand barrels marched along the old highway, casting shadows below the decaton-yield fireworks in low orbit, but as with every ceremony of such scale, it was the crowds that pleased him the most. The sheer millions gathered at the surface of the city, the countless others watching over the datasprawl, it was a testament to the empire's success.
Yet now here he was, sitting in a half-lit room, watching men with too much power in their hands squabble about something that - to him - was frankly quite obvious. Isolationists vs Cooperatists. He glanced down at the dictator's stand, all five of them looked nearly as bored of this as he was. Yet still he was the ultimate judge of this directional debate and he would be remiss not to hear both sides.
A new individual stood up amongst the Cooperatists benches.
"Cut ties? You expect the empire and our emperor to cut ties with everything we've built up? 25% of our available military resources INCLUDING the Ovtonnan herself were sent into Borealia. MITA is still in need of what resources we can provide for the Mithran and the associated trade pacts. There are untold pairs of eyes glaring through our borders and we still don't know exactly how our allies look at us. If we were to Isolate we would be sacrificing so much, and for what? An illusion of safety?"
The argument was met with a small rancour of chatter and Aye's from around the hall. The individual speaking, who Vulkan recognised as a 2nd rank trade director; Edmund Thereborne, seemed to use the slight discourse as a leverage to continue speaking even before his opponent could reply.
"Think for a moment, if for some rotten reason we decided that abandoning all of that - leaving everything in deadwater - was the right way to go, we would be killing ourselves!" The director leaned forward, planting a hand on the desk before him and glancing down to check his papers as he raised a hand forward. "85% of our ancerium supply relies on foreign sources; all expansion would be halted and the sectors would fracture like stained glass! That's not even mentioning those outer colonies which rely on wealthy tourists; they're already struggling due to international paranoia. Do you really think cutting them off completely from their main source of income will go over smoothly? And oh yes, let us not forget that under the isolationist plot we would need to disconnect from the ancnet, so if some exterior CONA nation were to decide to declare war on us, WE WOULD NOT EVEN KNOW!"
There's a loud slap against fine wood as an isolationist member from the economic wing, Joseph Gilmare, stands up in protest.
"And what difference would it make! You said it yourself, the outer colonies are struggling, and it's only worsening as we bleed more of our own resources into affairs that don't concern us. Joining ICEC- or MITA is it now? was a mistake in the first place! It's a precise example of why we need to turn inward and pool all of our resources into developing the Bulwark itself! We can see clearly that our foreign investments have failed but that's only the fault of this cursed, tumultuous galaxy. If we can create an independence of ancerium supply away from that of other nations then we can solve our problems independently, as we have done for the past 2 centuries!"
Chatter picked up, now independent conversation had begun between both sides, indecipherable rowdy chatter to most.
"Foolish! a full quarter of those centuries were laden with suffering, we can't-"
The room lit up with a short, intense burst of white glow.
"Enough."
Vulkan had spoken, voices reluctantly simmered away and the men and women making up the argument sat down politely in order from least to most stubborn. Before continuing, he thought of the invaders, what would happen if they were left to fester. Only a small number of people in the room knew of the startide. And those that did weren’t authorised to speak of it, but their position on the Co-operatist side of the room made their opinion on it clear.
"The Co-operatist manifesto earns favour."
There was barely even a murmur at the decision. Whilst the Emperor wasn't infamous for his wrath, there was a high likelihood that interrupting him would look unprofessional at best, especially if said interruption was to rudely disagree.
"Whilst I understand the potential danger, we put ourselves at definite unnecessary risk by blinding ourselves to the further galaxy. Additionally, whilst unstable, our imported ancerium trade is vital toward the very survival of the territories."
There was a slight pause, and 4 claws unfurled toward the side of the Isolationists. It almost looked like one of them jumped in their seat.
"There is indeed a point to be made, however, in that overbearing reliance. It is predicted that our current trade partners will reduce the quantity and quality of their supply drastically as the war continues, therefore I am to propose a solution. In a charter drawn by the imperial treasury, the Naval Revitalisation Program is to relinquish several assets and a section of capital in order to fund and provide for a fleet of retrofitted high-yield ancerium harvester ships based upon designs observed within the Borealia region."
Silence quickly turned into whispered discourse; after all the Program had been in planning for years, now the emperor proposed gutting it? The cause seemed just, but the question remained about whether it was worth the deficit in security. General consensus was reasonable enough however: no matter a fleet's size, it'd be nothing more than a lump of metal without the ancerium fuel to move it around.
"Are there any objections?"
Hands slowly raised on the isolationist's side; they were likely to remain in this stuffy room for 2 hours more at the least.
Nonetheless, a mere week later their complaints would be repressed by an otherwise overwhelming majority. The imperial charter office, by order of the mantle, begins a written order which creates shockwaves through the cosnavy budget. Detailed amongst hundreds of pages of protocol and resource assignment mandates explaining the proposed need and creation of an entirely new fleet of third generation ancerium harvesters, constructed to scales large enough to hopefully exceed national demand for an extended period of time. Whilst a commercial fleet existed beforehand, these operations were undeveloped and small scale, yet would now serve as a structural basis for an entirely new state conglomerate for the production and management of ancerium harvesting.
The ‘golden chariot’ initiative as it was soon named, caused both uproar and celebration alike. Entire cruisers - still under construction - were seized from their future captains and systems in order to create glorified tanker vessels. Their unpainted armour carapaces slowly removed, dismantled and melted down to create raw resources meant for as yet undesigned collection arrays. Such a rushed operation was this, that office space hadn’t even been bought out beforehand, entire blocks needing to be organised and design teams re-allocated for the creation of this new organisation which didn’t even have a name.
At one point, the company director simply organised a brainstorm between 8 different state managers in order to quickly pump out some sort of identifiable name. After about an hour of back and forth they caved in on just using the initiative’s name.
There was unfortunately a deficit - both technologically and economically - in the creation of these new ships however, and this gap of funds and material would need to be made up somehow. Without many other convenient options, all eyes immediately turned to MITA. Millions of tonnes of raw resources and alloys sat in logistical silo’s, waiting on a construction system overburdened with delays and setbacks. As was now quite clear to have happened in hindsight, construction of the Mithran was pushed back years behind schedule and a practically stillwater investment with all its funds gathering dust. A perfect opportunity for something far more useful.
The RNEC will be bled dry to feed the countless ships of a bloated empire.
"You must be blind!" An augmented prosthetic arm swung out in gesture, its dawngold leafed inlay costing more than some people may ever own. "The galaxy is collapsing like a burning townhouse around us! We're watching the very foothold we've scrambled onto crumble into ash, and yet you see not our predicament!"
The voice echoed across a spacious hall stacked with benches on either side, traditionally used for debates among the upper echelons of imperial rulership. A response came in short order.
"You're exaggerating! Much of the galaxy continues to prosper! We can't simply turn tail and turn inwards because of conflict that barely concerns us!" More gestures flung across the room as if to carry the words with them.
"Oh, exaggerating?!" The first man immediately burst into a short bout of laughter, having heard the most perceivably ridiculous sentence he had in months. "TRILLIONS ARE DEAD, Lucan, TRILLIONS! Every channel of information that isn't congested by living souls is completely occupied by news of the dead. We're talking about Weapons of Mass Extinction, the crumbling of a thousand economies, an entire section of our known galaxy simply BLINKING from all available communications. How do you call that anything more than a just reason to cut ties." He knew it was usually considered crass, but he wanted to drive this point to such an extent that he dared turn his final gesture toward the emperor.
Vulkan was, by tradition, in the form of a serpent emerging from the floor of the hall at its high end. There were no lights in the room apart from him for the appropriate reason of easily being able to immediately grab everyone's attention at a simple increase of intensity. There was barely a reaction to the Noble's representative's statement however - apart from a slight shift backward, enough to send a slight warm breeze through the room. There wasn't any dismissal of the points being raised, but there wasn't any knowledge in the room that he'd already made up his mind.
In honesty though he was quite sick of all of this. Just a few weeks ago he was attending the declaration ceremony for the new name of their capital. A massive sprawlside poll had concluded its new name to be Centura; a testament to the world's position as an anchor around which the economy and government - perhaps the whole empire - orbited. It was a momentous occasion and though the orbital parade was a bit lacklustre, the cosnavy had scrounged together what reserves they could to show the people that the Bulwark endured. It was somewhat delightful to see the coat of arms hung from a hundred thousand barrels marched along the old highway, casting shadows below the decaton-yield fireworks in low orbit, but as with every ceremony of such scale, it was the crowds that pleased him the most. The sheer millions gathered at the surface of the city, the countless others watching over the datasprawl, it was a testament to the empire's success.
Yet now here he was, sitting in a half-lit room, watching men with too much power in their hands squabble about something that - to him - was frankly quite obvious. Isolationists vs Cooperatists. He glanced down at the dictator's stand, all five of them looked nearly as bored of this as he was. Yet still he was the ultimate judge of this directional debate and he would be remiss not to hear both sides.
A new individual stood up amongst the Cooperatists benches.
"Cut ties? You expect the empire and our emperor to cut ties with everything we've built up? 25% of our available military resources INCLUDING the Ovtonnan herself were sent into Borealia. MITA is still in need of what resources we can provide for the Mithran and the associated trade pacts. There are untold pairs of eyes glaring through our borders and we still don't know exactly how our allies look at us. If we were to Isolate we would be sacrificing so much, and for what? An illusion of safety?"
The argument was met with a small rancour of chatter and Aye's from around the hall. The individual speaking, who Vulkan recognised as a 2nd rank trade director; Edmund Thereborne, seemed to use the slight discourse as a leverage to continue speaking even before his opponent could reply.
"Think for a moment, if for some rotten reason we decided that abandoning all of that - leaving everything in deadwater - was the right way to go, we would be killing ourselves!" The director leaned forward, planting a hand on the desk before him and glancing down to check his papers as he raised a hand forward. "85% of our ancerium supply relies on foreign sources; all expansion would be halted and the sectors would fracture like stained glass! That's not even mentioning those outer colonies which rely on wealthy tourists; they're already struggling due to international paranoia. Do you really think cutting them off completely from their main source of income will go over smoothly? And oh yes, let us not forget that under the isolationist plot we would need to disconnect from the ancnet, so if some exterior CONA nation were to decide to declare war on us, WE WOULD NOT EVEN KNOW!"
There's a loud slap against fine wood as an isolationist member from the economic wing, Joseph Gilmare, stands up in protest.
"And what difference would it make! You said it yourself, the outer colonies are struggling, and it's only worsening as we bleed more of our own resources into affairs that don't concern us. Joining ICEC- or MITA is it now? was a mistake in the first place! It's a precise example of why we need to turn inward and pool all of our resources into developing the Bulwark itself! We can see clearly that our foreign investments have failed but that's only the fault of this cursed, tumultuous galaxy. If we can create an independence of ancerium supply away from that of other nations then we can solve our problems independently, as we have done for the past 2 centuries!"
Chatter picked up, now independent conversation had begun between both sides, indecipherable rowdy chatter to most.
"Foolish! a full quarter of those centuries were laden with suffering, we can't-"
The room lit up with a short, intense burst of white glow.
"Enough."
Vulkan had spoken, voices reluctantly simmered away and the men and women making up the argument sat down politely in order from least to most stubborn. Before continuing, he thought of the invaders, what would happen if they were left to fester. Only a small number of people in the room knew of the startide. And those that did weren’t authorised to speak of it, but their position on the Co-operatist side of the room made their opinion on it clear.
"The Co-operatist manifesto earns favour."
There was barely even a murmur at the decision. Whilst the Emperor wasn't infamous for his wrath, there was a high likelihood that interrupting him would look unprofessional at best, especially if said interruption was to rudely disagree.
"Whilst I understand the potential danger, we put ourselves at definite unnecessary risk by blinding ourselves to the further galaxy. Additionally, whilst unstable, our imported ancerium trade is vital toward the very survival of the territories."
There was a slight pause, and 4 claws unfurled toward the side of the Isolationists. It almost looked like one of them jumped in their seat.
"There is indeed a point to be made, however, in that overbearing reliance. It is predicted that our current trade partners will reduce the quantity and quality of their supply drastically as the war continues, therefore I am to propose a solution. In a charter drawn by the imperial treasury, the Naval Revitalisation Program is to relinquish several assets and a section of capital in order to fund and provide for a fleet of retrofitted high-yield ancerium harvester ships based upon designs observed within the Borealia region."
Silence quickly turned into whispered discourse; after all the Program had been in planning for years, now the emperor proposed gutting it? The cause seemed just, but the question remained about whether it was worth the deficit in security. General consensus was reasonable enough however: no matter a fleet's size, it'd be nothing more than a lump of metal without the ancerium fuel to move it around.
"Are there any objections?"
Hands slowly raised on the isolationist's side; they were likely to remain in this stuffy room for 2 hours more at the least.
Nonetheless, a mere week later their complaints would be repressed by an otherwise overwhelming majority. The imperial charter office, by order of the mantle, begins a written order which creates shockwaves through the cosnavy budget. Detailed amongst hundreds of pages of protocol and resource assignment mandates explaining the proposed need and creation of an entirely new fleet of third generation ancerium harvesters, constructed to scales large enough to hopefully exceed national demand for an extended period of time. Whilst a commercial fleet existed beforehand, these operations were undeveloped and small scale, yet would now serve as a structural basis for an entirely new state conglomerate for the production and management of ancerium harvesting.
The ‘golden chariot’ initiative as it was soon named, caused both uproar and celebration alike. Entire cruisers - still under construction - were seized from their future captains and systems in order to create glorified tanker vessels. Their unpainted armour carapaces slowly removed, dismantled and melted down to create raw resources meant for as yet undesigned collection arrays. Such a rushed operation was this, that office space hadn’t even been bought out beforehand, entire blocks needing to be organised and design teams re-allocated for the creation of this new organisation which didn’t even have a name.
At one point, the company director simply organised a brainstorm between 8 different state managers in order to quickly pump out some sort of identifiable name. After about an hour of back and forth they caved in on just using the initiative’s name.
There was unfortunately a deficit - both technologically and economically - in the creation of these new ships however, and this gap of funds and material would need to be made up somehow. Without many other convenient options, all eyes immediately turned to MITA. Millions of tonnes of raw resources and alloys sat in logistical silo’s, waiting on a construction system overburdened with delays and setbacks. As was now quite clear to have happened in hindsight, construction of the Mithran was pushed back years behind schedule and a practically stillwater investment with all its funds gathering dust. A perfect opportunity for something far more useful.
The RNEC will be bled dry to feed the countless ships of a bloated empire.