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How many Alpha line individuals are in the RF systems?

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Re: How many Alpha line individuals are in the RF systems?
Post by Annachie   » Sun Dec 28, 2014 5:29 am

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Weren't the Dertwilers described as Star Lines?
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Re: How many Alpha line individuals are in the RF systems?
Post by kzt   » Sun Dec 28, 2014 6:34 am

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I think I vaguely recall that alphas, gamas etc are all star lines.
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Re: How many Alpha line individuals are in the RF systems?
Post by Brigade XO   » Sun Dec 28, 2014 10:38 am

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We have seen several references to the Long Term Planning Board but have no idea who makes up that Board or anything other than they make the choices on what is done to the various lines, at least the Star Lines. We see that Albrect was paired up with his wife and while we don't actualy know if they have any children (other than "his" sons who we find are clones).
So who is creating/maintaining the Detweiler Alpha Line?
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Re: How many Alpha line individuals are in the RF systems?
Post by JeffEngel   » Sun Dec 28, 2014 11:28 am

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Brigade XO wrote:Just how many people of how many Alpha lines are on those planets for the RF?

We have been told that the top leadership family of each of the RF have been on-planet for generations. So how many other local families are Alpha lines and how many people in support positions might there be? We have seen that a number of officers of the Mannerheim System are at last Alphas.

How is the Alignment building up an maintaining these lines? Who are they marrying to maintain the "improvements" that represent the Alpha lines? Has the Alignment gotten deep enough penetration of the health and medical institutions in these systems that they can covertly keep the Detweiler Code running without the knowlege of anybody who actualy matters from realizing that they maniplulating the genetics of the top of the ruling group and others?

I suppose that it is possible that the Alignment could get enough people in place so that they could replace the embryos of the leadership (with their knowledge since they are Alignment) with ones that have been "improved" with the latest of what the Long Term Planning Board and Alignment Departments want. Spouses don't actually have to be told, particularly if it has become normal to do genetic screening/cleaning & tweeting (but not tell the spouse all of the tweeking) of what is going on and so you avoid having all of those "ordinary" and probably dominant genes getting in the way of the Alpha modifications for new generation.

That several thousand people does't make a blip in a population that runs to a billion is understood, but there has to be a major support structure to keep pushing the Alignment development, breeding programs, and enfocement of programs running to plan. But how big is this operation on these planets?

New spouses, and adopted children, can always be introduced as "liberated slaves". Manpower's slaves are all, after all, results of the same general breeding program; if they look for distinctive genetic markers (without knowing too-too-much to look for), they'll find exactly that. That would help cement the RF system's anti-Mesan creds.
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Re: How many Alpha line individuals are in the RF systems?
Post by JohnRoth   » Sun Dec 28, 2014 7:52 pm

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Interesting thread. A few observations.

There's probably some mechanism that makes the core of an "alpha line," etc breed true, in the same sense that the Meyerdhal modifications and the scrag modifications breed true. They don't mix.

We aren't really told what the difference is between the alpha, beta and gamma lines is. They're probably intended for three generic roles, in the same sense as the Hindu role division that's called the caste system, but we don't know that for sure, or what those roles are.

I think the "star lines" are highly successful experimental lines that will eventually be merged back into the base, not a separate set of lines that are outside of the alpha, beta, gamma system.

To answer the original question, though, I'd say there are no more than a couple of hundred families on a given planet, and probably not that many. The essential issue here is that children have to be examined and tested before they're let into the family secret and issued their Evil Overlord badges and Secret Decoder rings. We know that they've lost their cadre on any number of planets, which suggests that they don't have huge numbers to work with, or at least didn't originally.

On the other hand, at least on Mannerheim, they have enough for the officer corps of a fair number of warships, which suggests the higher end of the range.
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Re: How many Alpha line individuals are in the RF systems?
Post by SWM   » Sun Dec 28, 2014 8:20 pm

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JohnRoth wrote:I think the "star lines" are highly successful experimental lines that will eventually be merged back into the base, not a separate set of lines that are outside of the alpha, beta, gamma system.

My interpretation of the text is that the "star lines" is a generic term for all alpha, beta, and gamma lines.
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Re: How many Alpha line individuals are in the RF systems?
Post by Weird Harold   » Sun Dec 28, 2014 10:21 pm

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JohnRoth wrote:To answer the original question, though, I'd say there are no more than a couple of hundred families on a given planet, and probably not that many.


I don't think there is any way to quantify the question in hard numbers.

If R/W American radicals can be believed, 1% of the population has most of the money and makes (or at least influences) all the decisions. I think 1% is about the minimum required to control a population or government.

5% is probably more likely, although that would probably be mostly beta and gamma types. When you're talking about populations in the billions, even a fractional percentage is more than "a couple of hundred families" unless those "families" are huge clans numbering in the thousands.
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Answers! I got lots of answers!

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