Honorverse ramblings and musings

Fox2! wrote:

saber964 wrote:Hear is a thought. Do you think Treecats will be able to join the SEM military now that they've come out of the closet as far as there intelligence is concerned.

At the very least, providing some sort of military status would put them under the protection of the Deneb accords, if they and their two-legs are taken prisoner.

In theory, yes. But I wonder how it work out in practice, Most people in the honorverse are not familiar with the cats and would simply regard them as pets. How much actual protection would they get under those circumstances?

Don

One thing I've never understood is why every basically pirate encountered in the honorverse is evil incarnate. Yes I'm sure some pirates were that bad IRL but they didn't all slaughter the crews of the ships they took so why is it all the ones we see in the honorverse are basically monsters and examples of the most horrible kinds of pirates?

Roguevictory wrote:One thing I've never understood is why every basically pirate encountered in the honorverse is evil incarnate. Yes I'm sure some pirates were that bad IRL but they didn't all slaughter the crews of the ships they took so why is it all the ones we see in the honorverse are basically monsters and examples of the most horrible kinds of pirates?

You've watched too much Pirates of the Caribbean.

In any case, there's textev(I think) of some pirates who like to play the role of the "gentlemanly buccaneer", down to returning their captured passengers to a neutral port. Less of a profit margin involved for them, obviously.

Fox2! wrote:

saber964 wrote:Hear is a thought. Do you think Treecats will be able to join the SEM military now that they've come out of the closet as far as there intelligence is concerned.

At the very least, providing some sort of military status would put them under the protection of the Deneb accords, if they and their two-legs are taken prisoner.

Most military mascots are carried on strength as NCOs so if anything they would probably be discounted as such by others.

munroburton wrote:

Roguevictory wrote:One thing I've never understood is why every basically pirate encountered in the honorverse is evil incarnate. Yes I'm sure some pirates were that bad IRL but they didn't all slaughter the crews of the ships they took so why is it all the ones we see in the honorverse are basically monsters and examples of the most horrible kinds of pirates?

You've watched too much Pirates of the Caribbean.

In any case, there's textev(I think) of some pirates who like to play the role of the "gentlemanly buccaneer", down to returning their captured passengers to a neutral port. Less of a profit margin involved for them, obviously.

Ransoming them or allowing them to escape in life pods are other options. If you can pull off the ransom, there's more profit in it; if you let people live at all, you earn less monster cred and monster cred makes you a priority to hunt down and kill.

We get stories for dramatic events. They won't be representative samples. On the other hand, pirates were, are, and presumably will be very rough sorts. If your lifestyle depends on at least a certain brutality, if you will be treated as a total brute, and if nothing much is stopping you from being a total brute - you will tend to be a brute. Non-brutes will not go into the field.

If you just want to wear an eye-patch, say "arrr!" and "matey" a lot, and stick it to The Man, there are plenty of other opportunities for you if you don't also appreciate the joys of rape and murder.

saber964 wrote:Hear is a thought. Do you think Treecats will be able to join the SEM military now that they've come out of the closet as far as there intelligence is concerned.

Fox2! wrote: At the very least, providing some sort of military status would put them under the protection of the Deneb accords, if they and their two-legs are taken prisoner.

n7axw wrote: In theory, yes. But I wonder how it work out in practice, Most people in the honorverse are not familiar with the cats and would simply regard them as pets. How much actual protection would they get under those circumstances?

Treecats aren't the only non-human sapient species in the galaxy. Relatively few people have met one, but the existence of such probably isn't in dispute. And while atrocities are possible (cf. Cordelia Ransom) I'd expect most Sollies to accept the claim at face value. It'd help if the cats have toolbelts and badges, so they give the immediate impression of not being animals. Type-to-speech gadgets would help too; they can't expect many people to learn sign language.

Besides, now that a lot of treecats are taking an active role without being adopted partners of human spacers, they need some official status to get quarters and to be put on celery.*




*Celery, geddit? Oh, sometimes I slay myself.

Bill Woods wrote:

saber964 wrote:Hear is a thought. Do you think Treecats will be able to join the SEM military now that they've come out of the closet as far as there intelligence is concerned.

Fox2! wrote: At the very least, providing some sort of military status would put them under the protection of the Deneb accords, if they and their two-legs are taken prisoner.

n7axw wrote: In theory, yes. But I wonder how it work out in practice, Most people in the honorverse are not familiar with the cats and would simply regard them as pets. How much actual protection would they get under those circumstances?

Treecats aren't the only non-human sapient species in the galaxy. Relatively few people have met one, but the existence of such probably isn't in dispute. And while atrocities are possible (cf. Cordelia Ransom) I'd expect most Sollies to accept the claim at face value. It'd help if the cats have toolbelts and badges, so they give the immediate impression of not being animals. Type-to-speech gadgets would help too; they can't expect many people to learn sign language.

Besides, now that a lot of treecats are taking an active role without being adopted partners of human spacers, they need some official status to get quarters and to be put on celery.*

*Celery, geddit? Oh, sometimes I slay myself.

Punderful!

Wikia wrote:Liberty-class light cruisers were sold by the Solarian League to the People's Republic of Haven (Jayne's)

I'm stumped. Why was Haven ever interested in SLN junk? Unless it was at a time when Haven was hoping to reverse engineer certain Solarian tech?

And surely this means that Manticore had come face to face with League junk already.

Many were resilient in trying to figure out what to do with captured SLN junk.

Something occurred to me. What did Erewhon do with its lineup of SLN ships after joining the Manticoran Alliance? And why wouldn't Manticore have taken that opportunity to "observe" SLN hardware?

I got the distinct feeling, perhaps erroneously, that the capabilities of SLN ships came at the Manties cold, when in fact they had come into conflict with SLN ships against Haven and as the current ships of an ally - Erewhon.

Even though they were just cruisers, the RMN could have learned much. No?

cthia wrote:Many were resilient in trying to figure out what to do with captured SLN junk.

Something occurred to me. What did Erewhon do with its lineup of SLN ships after joining the Manticoran Alliance? And why wouldn't Manticore have taken that opportunity to "observe" SLN hardware?

Erewhon bought Solarian-built ships. There's no textev that what they bought was the same designs that Technodyne & co. built for the SLN, and even if it was, Manticore might reasonably have assumed Erewhon got 'export' versions downgraded from what they'd sell to the SLN.