I would like to point out that on the New Romulus map, details have changed. There are burned tree stumps everywhere, and scorch marks on some of the ruins. This is New Romulus after the attack. No Iconians. No Heralds. They were driven off. But at the time, it didn't seem like that. Considering that the combine forces of the Alliance lost a quarter of their ships in one day, it must have seemed like the Iconians were invading New Romulus. So I will pose a question to you. If someone invaded the United States, and was landing troops on Virginia Beach, what do you think contingency plans require the President to do? The answer, of course, is to board Air Force One and get out of the way to maintain the chain of command. The United States is more then Washington D.C. and Virginia, and the Romulan Republic is more than Mol'Rihan.
Also...and this is key....EVERYONE at that meeting was dejected. Not just D'tan. Tom Paris is slumping. The bloody Klingons are slumping. Kagran is right there front and center, and there are too other dejected Klingons looking like their mommies served them their favorite pet targ for supper. Meanwhile, its the commander of the RRF who is giving the required "We will not give up" speech. Note that it's the "totally-not-badass" Romulan calling for resistance to the end, while the Klingons applaud.
You need to read about what a raid is as it pertains to a military operation.
There is no info or implications that Hakeev would of betrayed the Iconians... he was a loyal servant and saw them as gods almost.
At the time, yes. But eventually that illusion would disappear. The more the Romulans worked with the Iconians, the more they learn. The more they learn, the more they adapt.
The Romulans would never have settled for being pawns of the Iconians. Even if Hakeev did, someone would replace him who had the gall to overthrow their 'masters' and establish themselves as the superior power in the galaxy.
The Iconians played to win, though. They knew their betrayal was inevitable.
Hakeev had the right idea of working for the Iconians, if it meant betraying them later. The Iconians likely knew this, which is why Sela was put in the position she was in.
Why continue to work with him if you knew he was going to betray you?
...
You mean you aren't a real Iconian?
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though. JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
Just from what I've seen on-screen. Romulans desire being told what to do. There are leaders and there are followers. Freedom is not something I think they are truly interested in. They can say they want freedom, but really I just see romulans desiring the illusion of freedom. The illusion of power to the people.
Then it just comes down to the people in power pandering to that illusion. Slavery is freedom. Weakness is power.
Ok, you're missing a lot of stuff here. Read the Path to 2409 - that contradicts what you say entirely, hence the struggles for independence. Also, STO draws heavily from the Rihannsu series by Diane Duane, up to and including the language. There's a lot you're missing in this discussion. A read-through of Memory-Beta would be useful.
The Romulan people have survived for as long as they have because of constant renewal and progress. The RSE was faltering before Sela, for sure - but she did nothing to change that course, and then just consolidated the power that was left. In this case, the RSE was so broken under her leadership that - for the first time in basically a millennium - the entire state was scrapped.
I see that evidence everywhere. I see the writing on the wall. The KDF and Federation feared Sela and her ability to take and hold territory. They willingly watched as Romulans slaughtered one another. They were just waiting for the dust to settle.
When D'Tan came out on top, the Federation and KDF clung to him because he was spineless and he was easy to bully. If D'Tan was truly concerned with the Romulan people, he'd have made some decisive action that conflicted directly with the Federation and KDF.
Instead, it seems like every other word out of his mouth is about how important those two factions are to the Romulan Republic. He's little more than a puppet. A mouthpiece. The Federation pulls the strings on his right hand. The KDF pulls the strings on his left hand, and they make him do the freedom and legacy song and dance like a marionette for the broken and brainless Romulans who want to see the Romulan Republic Show.
Some people are capable of seeing the strings. Some people are convinced the puppet is alive like Pinocchio.
Analogies don't equate to evidence. You're making the same claim over, and over, and over again, without actually saying anything. You need to actually provide some evidence to be at all convincing.
A military that Jarok doesn't recognize. A military that Sela, in turn, does not recognize. Because both were concerned equals in that one brief moment, it really came down to who was willing to take the lead.
Jarok saw a threat and refused to do something about it. Instead she followed Sela's orders because Sela is a natural leader. Jarok fell into the natural romulan mindset of being told what to do by her betters.
Jarok recognizes her own Republic Fleet, of which she is flagship commander. And she followed the lead of the player character - who outranks her - who ordered her not to shoot.
There is no info or implications that Hakeev would of betrayed the Iconians... he was a loyal servant and saw them as gods almost.
Yep, and he sacrified his own people to the servants of these gods. If Hakeev had any inclination that Romulans were ever to turn the tables on the Iconians, handing over your own people as lab rats doesn't help.
Jarok recognizes her own Republic Fleet, of which she is flagship commander. And she followed the lead of the player character - who outranks her - who ordered her not to shoot.
This is where we shall disagree
Jarok is not under the command of the players character she is the commander of a REPUBLIC warbird during a time if war she had the chance to take the inititive but failed to do so.
She tends to do this over and over when a situation arises where she could take the initive during a fight she defers to whomever is around usually the player.
Sure the script is written that way i do understand but you would expect more from a comander of a flagship to take the initive and show what the pride of the republic stands for.
Look at koren for all the BS that she is when push comes to shove when the momment arises she does take the initive heck even shon does it only jarok defers to others.
As a proud romulan i would think she would want to show the might of the romulan people and not just defer to others.
Yep, and he sacrified his own people to the servants of these gods. If Hakeev had any inclination that Romulans were ever to turn the tables on the Iconians, handing over your own people as lab rats doesn't help.
He flat out said that the only way he sees surviving the coming war is serving the Iconians.
Jarok is not under the command of the players character she is the commander of a REPUBLIC warbird during a time if war
And romulan player characters out rank her, so they are in fact in charge. For Klingons and feds Jarok is part of a the scifi version of an international military task force so that might give the player character some leeway Besides not launching a confrontation with your allies who are going to turn Sela over to her any way is smarter than the sort of Romulan chest thumping that never helps.
And romulan player characters out rank her, so they are in fact in charge. For Klingons and feds Jarok is part of a the scifi version of an international military task force so that might give the player character some leeway.
This i agree with ^^
But what about those times when its a fed or KDF player?
Thats when initive comes to mind i think there shouldve been times when she is with fed or kdf players where she takes the initive.
But when she defers like if the fed or kdf player were romulans then she comes off looking weak.
But when she defers like if the fed or kdf player were romulans then she comes off looking weak.
Why she gets Sela in the end and avoids a confrontation with her governments allies that they don't really need seeing as it wouldn't get them anything they weren't already going to get by cooperating.
Really it would just be the typical Romulan chest thumping they usually engaged in before picking a fight with the federation and getting their faces stomped on for the trouble*.
*Which is why I laugh when ever someone tries the various "The Star Empire was way better than the Republic" arguments becuase the Romulan Star Empire was a joke for most of its onscreen history and the Federation was constantly handing them their asses.
Why she gets Sela in the end and avoids a confrontation with her governments allies that they don't really need seeing as it wouldn't get them anything they weren't already going to get by cooperating.
Really it would just be the typical Romulan chest thumping they usually engaged in before picking a fight with the federation and getting their faces stomped on for the trouble*.
*Which is why I laugh when ever someone tries the various "The Star Empire was way better than the Republic" arguments becuase the Romulan Star Empire was a joke for most of its onscreen history and the Federation was constantly handing them their asses.
Personally i like the republic far better then the RSE for the simple reason of were getting to better see and understand romulan culture.
I just wish the devs wouldve made jaroktake more of the initive when paired with the KDF or Feds but then again im not a dev right?
Anyways just wish that one oversight wouldve been addressed when they made jarok and paired her with klingons and feds.
At the time, yes. But eventually that illusion would disappear. The more the Romulans worked with the Iconians, the more they learn. The more they learn, the more they adapt.
The Romulans would never have settled for being pawns of the Iconians. Even if Hakeev did, someone would replace him who had the gall to overthrow their 'masters' and establish themselves as the superior power in the galaxy.
The Iconians played to win, though. They knew their betrayal was inevitable.
Made me think of the Romulans' entry in the Dominion War. Yes, we all know about Sisko's deception and all. But I thought that the RSE's belief that the Dominion would leave them alone after they shatter the Federation and Klingon Empire was completely naive. If that happened, the Dominion would very well dictate what was going to happen whether the Romulans' liked it or not. Because what other significant power in the quadrant would help them against the Dominion that had shattered the alliance?
And romulan player characters out rank her, so they are in fact in charge. For Klingons and feds Jarok is part of a the scifi version of an international military task force so that might give the player character some leeway
More or less, that's it yeah. Because of the alliance, there's an allied rank structure in place. Not set in stone, mind you... but it works in this case.
Made me think of the Romulans' entry in the Dominion War. Yes, we all know about Sisko's deception and all. But I thought that the RSE's belief that the Dominion would leave them alone after they shatter the Federation and Klingon Empire was completely naive.
Not sure if the Romulans ever did find out about that... I play as not being aware of that, when in-character or trying to play out the story debates like this one.
Either way, I think all 3 of the major powers probably learned their lesson. They're better united than they are standing apart, whenever there's a clear 'external' threat.
Once the Iconian War is over, I'd be shocked if there isn't a return to the unstable relations between the 3.
Well, it killed off the RSE pretty effectively. A system that destroys what it's there to support? Yeah, that's pretty horrible.
The RSE still controls half of romulan space. They aren't down for the count, yet.
Ok, you're missing a lot of stuff here. Read the Path to 2409 - that contradicts what you say entirely, hence the struggles for independence. Also, STO draws heavily from the Rihannsu series by Diane Duane, up to and including the language. There's a lot you're missing in this discussion. A read-through of Memory-Beta would be useful.
So, not the Romulans of the Star Trek TV series and movies.
The Romulan people have survived for as long as they have because of constant renewal and progress. The RSE was faltering before Sela, for sure - but she did nothing to change that course, and then just consolidated the power that was left. In this case, the RSE was so broken under her leadership that - for the first time in basically a millennium - the entire state was scrapped.
Renewal and progress is a fancy way of saying social darwinism. Sela made the RSE powerful and staved off the threats of the Federation and KDF from claiming Romulan territory for themselves.
Once Sela was out of power, guess what? KDF and Federation once again get free reign over Romulan territory. It's exactly why Sela was necessary.
Analogies don't equate to evidence. You're making the same claim over, and over, and over again, without actually saying anything. You need to actually provide some evidence to be at all convincing.
Of course. This is mostly speculation and opinion. I've laid out what facts there are and I draw conclusions based on them. If I took things at face value, this would be a pretty boring conversation.
Jarok recognizes her own Republic Fleet, of which she is flagship commander. And she followed the lead of the player character - who outranks her - who ordered her not to shoot.
She's not a fantastic leader, then. Tuvok was willing to open that Iconian Gateway with or without the player's authorization (even if you outranked him). Jarok on the other hand is a natural beta personality who simply does what she's told.
Yep, and he sacrified his own people to the servants of these gods. If Hakeev had any inclination that Romulans were ever to turn the tables on the Iconians, handing over your own people as lab rats doesn't help.
Like I said... omelettes and eggs. Sometimes great sacrifices are needed for true progress.
Made me think of the Romulans' entry in the Dominion War. Yes, we all know about Sisko's deception and all. But I thought that the RSE's belief that the Dominion would leave them alone after they shatter the Federation and Klingon Empire was completely naive. If that happened, the Dominion would very well dictate what was going to happen whether the Romulans' liked it or not. Because what other significant power in the quadrant would help them against the Dominion that had shattered the alliance?
I've always seen Vreenak as knowing more than what he let on. It's been my opinion the RSE was fully prepared to engage the Dominion if they ever turned against them. There are enough superweapons and deus ex machina plot devices in Star Trek that the RSE would theoretically have little effort in playing a trump card against the Dominion.
I have a feeling Garak knew that as well, but was unwilling to inform Sisko about it (since it was not relevant).
If S31 could create the morphogenic virus and use it against the Founders, there's nothing stopping the Tal Shiar from creating and deploying a similar weapon. They just would have done so after the Dominion wiped out the Federation and Klingon Empire, then picked up the pieces.
As Vreenak said, what Sisko described was just "Speculation and theory". Sisko had no way of knowing what, if any aces the RSE had up their sleeves in preparation for the Dominion -- but I think it's naive to believe they had no possible foresight of being 'surrounded' by the Dominion on all sides, and took absolutely no steps in secret to prepare for that.
I've always seen Vreenak as knowing more than what he let on. It's been my opinion the RSE was fully prepared to engage the Dominion if they ever turned against them. There are enough superweapons and deus ex machina plot devices in Star Trek that the RSE would theoretically have little effort in playing a trump card against the Dominion.
I have a feeling Garak knew that as well, but was unwilling to inform Sisko about it (since it was not relevant).
If S31 could create the morphogenic virus and use it against the Founders, there's nothing stopping the Tal Shiar from creating and deploying a similar weapon. They just would have done so after the Dominion wiped out the Federation and Klingon Empire, then picked up the pieces.
As Vreenak said, what Sisko described was just "Speculation and theory". Sisko had no way of knowing what, if any aces the RSE had up their sleeves in preparation for the Dominion -- but I think it's naive to believe they had no possible foresight of being 'surrounded' by the Dominion on all sides, and took absolutely no steps in secret to prepare for that.
The flipside to that though is just how much the Dominion knew about the RSE. Changeling infiltration hit the Alpha & Beta Quadrants big time. Before the Dominion War even started, Jem'Hadar were boasting how much they already knew of the sectors and the major players there. We're talking about guys that threw the Federation into a security panic, drove a wedge in the Federation-Klingon Alliance, and suckered the regions' two best Intelligence arms, the Obsidian Order and Tal Shiar into committing large amounts (absolutely unprecedented level of cooperation between rivals) of their forces to be destroyed in a trap in the Gamma Quadrant. The two organizations were at their peak power before that disaster. Yet the Dominion fooled them both.
I get the impression Iconians would rather all Romulans be wearing a death's head and a double Siegrun.
I've heard of worse ideas on the STO forums.
But no. I just prefer Romulans being villainous schemers, not Federation Lapdogs. People have different opinions on how Romulans should be portrayed in STO, and there's nothing wrong with that.
I'm actually pretty okay with the Romulan Republic. I just have differences of opinion.
And once they were removed, there was the potential for new leaders to come to power. Instead, they gave up their power instead of seizing it. Completely wasteful.
The Elachi could be manipulated. Just like with the Borg technology, the RSE has the power to dominate any species it comes across, if we are united. If we fail to unite as one, then we lose our ability to dominate.
The Elachi are really just an example of how fracturing the Romulans into the Empire and Republic lead to misery on both sides.
The RSE was already fractured. And, as I have pointed out elsewhere, the RSE reaction to the Republic was the typical totalitarian kneejerk overkill, which led to more and more defeats for the RSE.
In time, I think the Romulans could have even subjugated the Iconians and adapted their technology for themselves -- unfortunately, it does not seem like that was meant to be. Another reason the Iconians felt it was important to divide and conquer the Romulans. The RSE using adapted Iconian technology against them would be problematic.
And while Sela may not be perfect, she does get results. The RSE only fractured when the Iconians kidnapped her, which really only speaks more of her brilliance. If she gets removed, the whole thing falls apart -- so everybody is forced to rely on her.
The RSE fractured before she ever sat on the throne. Does the name "Imperial Romulan State" or the name "Empress Donatra" ring any bells? The RSE never recovered from that schism.
No, it's actually not. Romulans left Vulcan for freedom. For almost 2 millennia, they did well enough without the fascist police state that we saw the beginnings of in TNG. Romulan is "Balance of Terror," and "The Enterprise Incident." THAT is Romulan, not Tomalak and that gang of perpetually constipated, jackboot-wearing, inept thugs, who were a symptom of the cancer eating away at the RSE from the inside, because of the STUPID idea that nobility is passed through DNA. It's rather like saying that the child of a Supreme Court Justice should inherit his/her parent's job, without regard for intelligence, education, competence, or anything else necessary to do the job.
Just like before, she can just disappear into the shadows. She's out there. Lurking. Biding her time. She was able to free herself by hacking into Gaius' brain -- she's extremely resourceful. More people should be afraid of the fact she escaped, not that she apparently has lost everything.
She came from nothing, and became Empress. She can do it again if she wants to.
She would need people willing to follow her, and unfortunately for you, your persppective was never the majority in Romulan culture. By TNG, the population had become terrorized into submission by the sadism of their leaders. By the end of TNG, the Tal'Shiar was pushing the envelope on how terrorized the population could become. The writing was on the wall almost from the first appearance of the Romulans in TNG. That kind of government will not endure, especially among a people who became who they are because they refused to be forced to bend the knee to a false orthodoxy.
She cares about the health of herself. Which is admirable. Without the Empress, there is no Empire. So to look out for her own safety is to look out for the safety of every Romulan. If she's healthy, the Empire is healthy.
The RSE has not always had an Emperor or an Empress. For a rather extended period, in fact, the RSE was led by a Praetor. At one point, the Senate even abolished the office of Emperor, but retained an imperialistc form of government and style of engaging with others.
The Romulans need a dictator to rule over them. They crave it. They demand it. That is the life they have known. To give freedom to a people who have thrived for the last few centuries (if not longer) under an oppressive dictatorship is dangerous.
On the contrary, the "strong man" (or "strong woman") style of leadership in the RSE has not been around for centuries. The TOS episodes occurred less than 100 years before the dawn of TNG. The RSE was not a totalitarian state at that time, and indeed, the Romulan people are nothing if not independent. They need no half-witted half-breed to lord it over them and dictate to them. They need the freedom for which they left Vulcan in the first place. Love of Freedom is what is most characterisitic of the name "Romulan." Rather than submit to the establishment's distorted "religion" made from perverting Surak's philosophy, they LEFT to retain their own freedom of conscience (and among them were followers of Surak, too). Your view of Romulanity is far too colored by TNG and the later series, without regard for the evidence of TOS and TAS, to say nothing of the deuterocanonical sources like Diane Duane's novels (from which STO took a huge dose of inspiration). There was dictatorship, yes, but not ab origine, and had the movies not stolen the "Honorable Warrior" schtick from the Romulans and given it to the previously-little-more-than-cutthroat-pirate Klingons, we might have gotten to see the Romulans become what they were supposed to become from their first appearance. We even still get hints of it in TNG. The ending of "The Chase" is but one of the more obvious examples, and is a clear homage to the end of "Balance of Terror." That "one day" should have come much sooner than it did, but it has happened now, and all your lamentations are but music to my ears. Sela will die, and I hope I'm the one who ends her.
What should be important is that the dictator is on 'our' side.
Except that such a scenario is nearly an intrinsic impossibility. Sela is on Sela's side and nobody else's. That should be obvious to all but the most eager goosesteppers in the RSE.
If that alliance ends, the Voth and/or Undine will burn what's left of the Romulan Republic off the surface of the Solanae Dyson sphere. You might think a fence keeps the dog in, but in truth it keeps the rest of the predators away from the dog.
Yeah, except that in 2410, the Republic IS the Romulan power, and the citizens and military personnel of the Republic don't bend over for anyone. Not Sela, not Hakeev, not the Elachi or the Iconians or the Feds or the Klinks. We will fight for our freedom as long as any of us breathes. Live free or die. That should be the motto of the Republic, because that's what the Republic mentality is. This mentality is not capable of defeat. Death would not be defeat. Slavery would be. Going back to kissing Sela's buttocks would be. When one dies fighting for freedom, that is victory, for that person dies free, unbent, unsubmitting, defiant to the end. THAT IS WHAT IT MEANS TO BE ROMULAN, not your obsessive desire to be collared by an incompetent failure who cannot even speak to another person without tones of condescension. Sela will die. Sela must die. And if the Republic has to go through you to kill her, I'll lead the charge.
As niece of an Emperor and an Empress, I am far more "entitled" to take the throne than Sela, but I don't want it. I won't take it. I refused to even let my true name be known to the public for years before the rediscovery of ch'Mol'Rihan and for over a year after. I saw the writing on -- and the cracks in -- the wall even before Shinzon's rebellion. The Star Empire had its time, and for most of that time, it was glorious, but empires have a shelf life, and the last hundred years or so of the RSE have been obvious decadence and corruption, as the structures and culture which had once been so justly proud crumbled due to the ineptitude of the leadership. They cared not for the Star Empire, in abstract or concrete. They cared for themselves at any price, including selling out the Star Empire and its people to a species which had been gone for some 200,000 years and were unlikely to return any time soon, without the kind of mindless devotion given to them by the sociopath Hakeev.
The Federation and KDF allow us to be at the table. They allow us to field our own fleet. They allow us to have our home (as long as they get a piece of the action), and as long as there's a KDF and Federation friendly leader in charge.
We TOOK our place at the table, and we continue to lead the Alliance in new ventures. The Alliance turned to OUR intelligence agencies. The Alliance wouldn't even exist without us. The Feds and Klinks would still be having small territorial skirmishes and the Iconians would have rolled over the entire galaxy by now, had it not been for the New Romulan Republic.
If D'Tan wasn't such a spineless coward with rose-tinted glasses, the KDF and Federation would never have allowed him to lead the Romulan Republic. They want somebody they can easily tell what to do.
The Feds and Klinks had nothing to do with D'Tan becoming leader. We military personnel who formed the Republic in the years prior to the attacks on Virinat elected him. They have nothing to do with him remaining in office. WE maintain him in office. I have yet to see the Feds or Klinks tell D'Tan to do anything. In fact, he has defied them more than once. Your propaganda will not be true by repetition. You and your bunch of mindless goosesteppers have repeated these asinine claims since before we started building the new city on ch'Mol'Rihan, but we're still here, D'Tan is still our leader, we have grown in size and strength, we have a new homeworld in place of the one the totalitarian regime you so idolize destroyed, and our territory has expanded to include many worlds liberated from the tyranny and terror of the travesty that the RSE became.
There can be a lot of sabre-rattling, but at the end of the day, the Romulan Republic exists because the other two factions in power allow it.
No, the Republic exists because WE fought for it, and will continue to fight for it, as long as we breathe. The Republic exists because Freedom is a far greater motivator than fear. The Republic exists because people who remembered what it meant to be "Romulan" took that name back from the decadent Star Empire and told them to go "ampersand percentage sign" themselves. The Republic exists because ROMULANS and REMANS cast off the shackles which your beloved idiots were trying to bind us with. And shot them in the face. In the face. Maybe I'll get lucky and manage to take Sela's head to add to the trophies on the wall in the bar of our main starbase. But that face might scare new recruits. It is rather repellant, even without the unRomulan color of the hair framing it.
She wanted to. But she didn't. Jarok has no spine. She saw a threat to the safety of the Romulan Republic in front of her and instead of seizing the opportunity, she allowed the alpha wolf to tell her what to do.
She has plenty of bark, but no bite.
Alpha wolf? You mean the player character, even when that player character is a Romulan Republic Forces officer? The whole episode was wonky because THIS Alpha Wolf wanted to shoot Sela on sight, too. I would never have agreed to take her prisoner. From the moment I first saw her in the mission, I was trying to target her. If the Devs had not prevented me from doing so, I would have ended her then and there.
The chief governing passion of the collective Romulan and Reman psyche is love of freedom. Love of freedom is incapable of defeat. That is why the Star Empire is gradually being wiped out, and why it will eventually be only history. That is why the Republic is the future of Romulan power. That is why Sela is a failure and will continue to be a failure. And that is why Sela will die, by my hand if I have anything to say about it. The Republic is invincible, not because we can destroy any enemy, but because no enemy will ever rule us. We will die first. You should recognize actual nobility when it presents itself, instead of licking the boots of those who cannot even hold power once they take it. See, stabbing someone in the back only requires opportunity and will. Neither is sufficent qualification to lead.
A worthy leader is one who cares about the well-being of his or her people, and maximizes their opportunities by maximizing their freedom within order. One who cares only for himself or herself is not a leader, but an enemy.
And for someone whose knickers are in such a twist over Romulans being merely allied with the Federation and the Klingons, constantly attempting to portray this as "submission," you certainly are overly eager to submit yourself to someone's dictates. So I guess being allied with others has been translated in your NuSpeak to "Freedom is slavery." I suppose it's little wonder, though, because to you and your type, "Ignorance is strength."
Yeah - have to admit, a LOT of BotA felt a bit 'forced'.
I mean, for example, I wanted to stay and defend the Starbase - but got forced warp-out instead.
And I would have made the decision to go to ch'Mol'Rihan, not Starbase 234. How does it even make sense to try to "head them off at the pass" when they can open gates right inside the Mol'Rihan system without having to come through Starbase 234? As a high-ranking officer of the RRF, my first duty would be to defend my people and their world, not a starbase of another power inside territory which is almost exclusively Romulan and shouldn't even be there in the first place.
And I would have made the decision to go to ch'Mol'Rihan, not Starbase 234. How does it even make sense to try to "head them off at the pass" when they can open gates right inside the Mol'Rihan system without having to come through Starbase 234? As a high-ranking officer of the RRF, my first duty would be to defend my people and their world, not a starbase of another power inside territory which is almost exclusively Romulan and shouldn't even be there in the first place.
Starbase 234 was there for a long time. Only recently the Republic seems to have expanded into former Federation territory, now surrounding Starbase 234 and even claiming the Jouret-System and by extension the Iconian gateway located there.
The Federation seems to have ceded these territories to the Republic, but kept Starbase 234.
Not in this case, no. The ability to slit the throats of your opponents does not guarantee a complimentary ability to lead an Empire. The system as a whole became flawed. Leaders would rise and fall not on their prowess as a leader or their ability to command - they'd simply kill their opponent, and sit pretty on the throne.
You can't wrestle an empire out of someone's hands without actually knowing a thing or two about ruling yourself. The reasons are many, but one stands out: By sucking at ruling you are stepping on the toes of everyone who has interests or an agenda of their own while at the same time making the common people hate you, plus you already set the precedent for killing rulers to take their place being an acceptable form of selection. Cue coup d'etat. And how are you going to stop the pretenders to the throne when you suck at ruling, the people hates your guts, and you stepped on the toes of your capable generals and ministers? Dynastic china called this the mandate of heaven. Long story short, the idea was that if you suck so much at ruling that some random upstart manages to rally enough support to actually challenge your power you deserve to be killed and replaced as you had lost the mandate of heaven, the divine authority to rule the empire.
the power of a ruler comes not from himself but from his ministers, generals, and people. When more ministers, generals, and people are pissed at you than are happy with you - How are you going to rule? You can't manage an empire without ministers, you can't enforce the law or defend your frontiers without generals, and you can't have an economy without laborers. It becomes a slippery slope: Discontent breeds discontent and then you have a coup d'etat.
To think it falls down to 'simply kill their opponent, and sit pretty on the throne' is ridiculous. You don't take an empire without prowess as a leader and the ability to command. You need an army, you need political and financial supporters, you need to convince your enemy's ministers and generals to either switch sides or look the other way so that both your armies won't get decimated in battle just for another pretender who just waited for the right time to sweep both you and your enemy aside and take the throne himself, and you need to have enough popular support for enough people to walk to the fields and factories afterwards to produce the wealth and resources you need both to strengthen your claim and keep your supporters fat and content in your pocket.
So, not the Romulans of the Star Trek TV series and movies.
You RSE-lovers have been spouting this lie since LoR came out. It wasn't true then, and it's not true now. "TOS Romulans" ought to be "nuff said," but even in TNG and the later series we see the same ideals among people like Doctor R'Mor and Alidar t'Jarok and several others. Considering that the average Romulan lifespan is 250 Earth-years, a mere 70 Earth-years of inept government and fascist police state isn't going to ingrain itself into the collective Romulan psyche to such an extent that they forget who they were before, and in fact is only doomed from the start, because they DO remember who they were before and have gone back to that now, even futher back than TOS, back to what inspired the Sundering in the first place.
Renewal and progress is a fancy way of saying social darwinism.
No, your "ideal" of backstabbing in order to become ruler is social Darwinism. That "the strong shall survive and rule" is exactly what social Darwinism means.
Sela made the RSE powerful and staved off the threats of the Federation and KDF from claiming Romulan territory for themselves.
Sela made the RSE powerful? Really? When was this? That's not what "Path to 2409" says at all. The RSE was powerful in the 2260s. By the era of Picard and company, the RSE was showing its age. How else could Picard, of all people, outwit and humiliate Romulan commanders at almost every turn? I mean, Tomalak, for Keras' sake. The man was anything but qualified for command, and he was merely the most frequently seen example of the ineptitude that had come to characterize even the officer cadre of the RSE's military by then. And why is that? Oh, isn't it obvious? That system of backstabbing you have so praised. It takes little competence to sheathe an Honor Blade in a back turned to you; it takes little intelligence. It takes opportunity, will, and daring. Those qualities are not sufficient to make a good leader.
She's not a fantastic leader, then. Tuvok was willing to open that Iconian Gateway with or without the player's authorization (even if you outranked him). Jarok on the other hand is a natural beta personality who simply does what she's told.
I'm convinced you're simply trying to bait Republic players at this point. Tiaru is even more Alpha than Koren. But, in true Romulan fashion, she doesn't need to whip her TRIBBLE out and wave it around openly, when she can simply give the appearance of compliance and then plan her next move in a more clandestine fashion.
Like I said... omelettes and eggs. Sometimes great sacrifices are needed for true progress.
"True" progress? The enslavement of the galaxy, including your own people, as you lick at the boots of the masters? Hakeev was never remotely competent. How he rose to lead the Tal'Shiar is anybody's guess, but my guess is that he stabbed someone in the back and then took the office, in the manner of your preferred method of "earning" a promotion. But this is one of the clearest examples of why that method is flawed. Having the chance, the will, and the daring to stab your commander in the back does not mean that you have the intelligence, the wisdom, the experience, the education, the skills, the talents, or the competence to command. It just means that you're not trustworthy or scrupulous, that treachery is your most defining characteristic, that your opinion of yourself is perhaps a bit too high. Hakeev was clearly far too impressed with himself.
I've always seen Vreenak as knowing more than what he let on. It's been my opinion the RSE was fully prepared to engage the Dominion if they ever turned against them. There are enough superweapons and deus ex machina plot devices in Star Trek that the RSE would theoretically have little effort in playing a trump card against the Dominion.
Of course Vrinak knew (I think it's rather obvious when you watch the show). But he also realized that what was being pushed was in the best interests of the Star Empire and its people.
I have a feeling Garak knew that as well, but was unwilling to inform Sisko about it (since it was not relevant).
If S31 could create the morphogenic virus and use it against the Founders, there's nothing stopping the Tal Shiar from creating and deploying a similar weapon. They just would have done so after the Dominion wiped out the Federation and Klingon Empire, then picked up the pieces.
As Vreenak said, what Sisko described was just "Speculation and theory". Sisko had no way of knowing what, if any aces the RSE had up their sleeves in preparation for the Dominion -- but I think it's naive to believe they had no possible foresight of being 'surrounded' by the Dominion on all sides, and took absolutely no steps in secret to prepare for that.
Something you have not grasped about Romulanity is this thing that has been demonstrated again and again: Romulans ALWAYS have secret plans, even when they proclaim that the era of secrecy is over. Romulans are a proud people and are not going to admit up front that they are willing to go along with the Alliance against the Dominion until/unless they get whatever concessions they can out of the deal, and if they can't get any concessions, they very probably will leave the conference and go back to ch'Rihan knowing that the Alliance needs them and will have to come calling again, and that will make concessions more easily obtained.
Power is not the biggest gun, the longest sword, the strongest warbird, threats and intimidation, the pomp and circumstance of strutting around with the attitude of a miles gloriosus. Power is getting what you want without having to even show off the superficialities of shiny warbirds and steroid-induced musculature. The strong person, in a Romulan worldview, is not the one with the loudest mouth, but the one who gets things done with the least effort and noise.
Well, that took longer than expected to turn a friendly debate over a mutual love of Romulans and their importance to the Iconians into personal attacks.
Since you did put a lot of effort into what you wrote, however. I will say that you raise some interesting points, protogoth. Some of them I agree with. Some of them I don't. I can give you that.
Well, that took longer than expected to turn a friendly debate over a mutual love of Romulans and their importance to the Iconians into personal attacks.
Do distinguish between the IC and OOC bits. I seldom make explicit distinctions on the STO fora (epecially in Romulan Gameplay), although I think most of the IC bits are obviously IC.
Since you did put a lot of effort into what you wrote, however. I will say that you raise some interesting points, protogoth. Some of them I agree with. Some of them I don't. I can give you that.
I'll take that.
But I'll still shoot you(r character) in the face if you get between me and Sila.
(Note: Sila, Hakiv, Vrinak, because that's how they're properly spelled in Rihan if the onscreen pronunciations are correct -- not that they have a history of being correct, as witness "A 'HAY-pax' warbird is escaping!" and "A 'duh-LAHN' warbird is escaping," to give but two examples, which should properly be hah-AH-pahx and DHEH-lahn, with the DH representing the same sound as the Old English letter edh -- and again, to PWE/Cryptic, I'm more than willing to give you the correct pronunciations of Rihan words for your voice actors since I am not a SAG member living in Cali and therefore can't get a gig as a voice actress for the game to do them right myself, and all I ask in return is that you let me kill Sila and grant the rest of my requests for the RRF as sent in a ticket sometime last year).
She does, on occasion. The Solanae standoff, for instance, where she went head-to-head with the other flagship commanders.
She's definitely the more calm and calculating of the three C.O.'s, for sure.
My issue is when its time to mix it up in a combat situation she tends to defer when action is called for heck if i commanded the Lliset and faced with a fight id be more then happy to wade in the middle .
I did read everything, and I may look over it again tomorrow with more focus. Unfortunately, my tinnitus is excruciatingly painful right now (maybe it's karma) and it's impossible for me to concentrate outside of making my doffs fabricate R&D components.
If you do want to shoot my character in the face, I'd recommend taking a number and standing in line. I'll even print it out in rihannsu for you. But there is a pretty long waiting list of people who want to see me harmed in some way, so please be patient.
I did read everything, and I may look over it again tomorrow with more focus. Unfortunately, my tinnitus is excruciatingly painful right now (maybe it's karma) and it's impossible for me to concentrate outside of making my doffs fabricate R&D components.
If you do want to shoot my character in the face, I'd recommend taking a number and standing in line. I'll even print it out in rihannsu for you. But there is a pretty long waiting list of people who want to see me harmed in some way, so please be patient.
Ok? when did someone say they wanted to harm you sir?
If people are taking characters and species in a sci fi universe so seriously that they would want to cause harm to someone else they need to go get help from a psychyatrist.
Ok? when did someone say they wanted to harm you sir?
If people are taking characters and species in a sci fi universe so seriously that they would want to cause harm to someone else they need to go get help from a psychyatrist.
That was mostly meant tongue-in-cheek. I generally don't respond to personal threats I'd be given a reason to take seriously.
That was mostly meant tongue-in-cheek. I generally don't respond to personal threats I'd be given a reason to take seriously.
same here man just when i see someone talking bout threats as an avid user of forums here and abroad ive seen things like that where someone takes something just a little to seriously.
same here man just when i see someone talking bout threats as an avid user of forums here and abroad ive seen things like that where someone takes something just a little to seriously.
Naw. Protogoth is passionate about romulans but she's harmless.
Comments
There is no info or implications that Hakeev would of betrayed the Iconians... he was a loyal servant and saw them as gods almost.
You need to read about what a raid is as it pertains to a military operation.
At the time, yes. But eventually that illusion would disappear. The more the Romulans worked with the Iconians, the more they learn. The more they learn, the more they adapt.
The Romulans would never have settled for being pawns of the Iconians. Even if Hakeev did, someone would replace him who had the gall to overthrow their 'masters' and establish themselves as the superior power in the galaxy.
The Iconians played to win, though. They knew their betrayal was inevitable.
Why continue to work with him if you knew he was going to betray you?
...
You mean you aren't a real Iconian?
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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Well, it killed off the RSE pretty effectively. A system that destroys what it's there to support? Yeah, that's pretty horrible.
Ok, you're missing a lot of stuff here. Read the Path to 2409 - that contradicts what you say entirely, hence the struggles for independence. Also, STO draws heavily from the Rihannsu series by Diane Duane, up to and including the language. There's a lot you're missing in this discussion. A read-through of Memory-Beta would be useful.
The Romulan people have survived for as long as they have because of constant renewal and progress. The RSE was faltering before Sela, for sure - but she did nothing to change that course, and then just consolidated the power that was left. In this case, the RSE was so broken under her leadership that - for the first time in basically a millennium - the entire state was scrapped.
Analogies don't equate to evidence. You're making the same claim over, and over, and over again, without actually saying anything. You need to actually provide some evidence to be at all convincing.
Jarok recognizes her own Republic Fleet, of which she is flagship commander. And she followed the lead of the player character - who outranks her - who ordered her not to shoot.
Yep, and he sacrified his own people to the servants of these gods. If Hakeev had any inclination that Romulans were ever to turn the tables on the Iconians, handing over your own people as lab rats doesn't help.
This is where we shall disagree
Jarok is not under the command of the players character she is the commander of a REPUBLIC warbird during a time if war she had the chance to take the inititive but failed to do so.
She tends to do this over and over when a situation arises where she could take the initive during a fight she defers to whomever is around usually the player.
Sure the script is written that way i do understand but you would expect more from a comander of a flagship to take the initive and show what the pride of the republic stands for.
Look at koren for all the BS that she is when push comes to shove when the momment arises she does take the initive heck even shon does it only jarok defers to others.
As a proud romulan i would think she would want to show the might of the romulan people and not just defer to others.
He flat out said that the only way he sees surviving the coming war is serving the Iconians.
And romulan player characters out rank her, so they are in fact in charge. For Klingons and feds Jarok is part of a the scifi version of an international military task force so that might give the player character some leeway Besides not launching a confrontation with your allies who are going to turn Sela over to her any way is smarter than the sort of Romulan chest thumping that never helps.
This i agree with ^^
But what about those times when its a fed or KDF player?
Thats when initive comes to mind i think there shouldve been times when she is with fed or kdf players where she takes the initive.
But when she defers like if the fed or kdf player were romulans then she comes off looking weak.
Why she gets Sela in the end and avoids a confrontation with her governments allies that they don't really need seeing as it wouldn't get them anything they weren't already going to get by cooperating.
Really it would just be the typical Romulan chest thumping they usually engaged in before picking a fight with the federation and getting their faces stomped on for the trouble*.
*Which is why I laugh when ever someone tries the various "The Star Empire was way better than the Republic" arguments becuase the Romulan Star Empire was a joke for most of its onscreen history and the Federation was constantly handing them their asses.
Personally i like the republic far better then the RSE for the simple reason of were getting to better see and understand romulan culture.
I just wish the devs wouldve made jaroktake more of the initive when paired with the KDF or Feds but then again im not a dev right?
Anyways just wish that one oversight wouldve been addressed when they made jarok and paired her with klingons and feds.
Made me think of the Romulans' entry in the Dominion War. Yes, we all know about Sisko's deception and all. But I thought that the RSE's belief that the Dominion would leave them alone after they shatter the Federation and Klingon Empire was completely naive. If that happened, the Dominion would very well dictate what was going to happen whether the Romulans' liked it or not. Because what other significant power in the quadrant would help them against the Dominion that had shattered the alliance?
More or less, that's it yeah. Because of the alliance, there's an allied rank structure in place. Not set in stone, mind you... but it works in this case.
She does, on occasion. The Solanae standoff, for instance, where she went head-to-head with the other flagship commanders.
She's definitely the more calm and calculating of the three C.O.'s, for sure.
Not sure if the Romulans ever did find out about that... I play as not being aware of that, when in-character or trying to play out the story debates like this one.
Either way, I think all 3 of the major powers probably learned their lesson. They're better united than they are standing apart, whenever there's a clear 'external' threat.
Once the Iconian War is over, I'd be shocked if there isn't a return to the unstable relations between the 3.
The RSE still controls half of romulan space. They aren't down for the count, yet.
So, not the Romulans of the Star Trek TV series and movies.
Renewal and progress is a fancy way of saying social darwinism. Sela made the RSE powerful and staved off the threats of the Federation and KDF from claiming Romulan territory for themselves.
Once Sela was out of power, guess what? KDF and Federation once again get free reign over Romulan territory. It's exactly why Sela was necessary.
Of course. This is mostly speculation and opinion. I've laid out what facts there are and I draw conclusions based on them. If I took things at face value, this would be a pretty boring conversation.
She's not a fantastic leader, then. Tuvok was willing to open that Iconian Gateway with or without the player's authorization (even if you outranked him). Jarok on the other hand is a natural beta personality who simply does what she's told.
Like I said... omelettes and eggs. Sometimes great sacrifices are needed for true progress.
I've always seen Vreenak as knowing more than what he let on. It's been my opinion the RSE was fully prepared to engage the Dominion if they ever turned against them. There are enough superweapons and deus ex machina plot devices in Star Trek that the RSE would theoretically have little effort in playing a trump card against the Dominion.
I have a feeling Garak knew that as well, but was unwilling to inform Sisko about it (since it was not relevant).
If S31 could create the morphogenic virus and use it against the Founders, there's nothing stopping the Tal Shiar from creating and deploying a similar weapon. They just would have done so after the Dominion wiped out the Federation and Klingon Empire, then picked up the pieces.
As Vreenak said, what Sisko described was just "Speculation and theory". Sisko had no way of knowing what, if any aces the RSE had up their sleeves in preparation for the Dominion -- but I think it's naive to believe they had no possible foresight of being 'surrounded' by the Dominion on all sides, and took absolutely no steps in secret to prepare for that.
The flipside to that though is just how much the Dominion knew about the RSE. Changeling infiltration hit the Alpha & Beta Quadrants big time. Before the Dominion War even started, Jem'Hadar were boasting how much they already knew of the sectors and the major players there. We're talking about guys that threw the Federation into a security panic, drove a wedge in the Federation-Klingon Alliance, and suckered the regions' two best Intelligence arms, the Obsidian Order and Tal Shiar into committing large amounts (absolutely unprecedented level of cooperation between rivals) of their forces to be destroyed in a trap in the Gamma Quadrant. The two organizations were at their peak power before that disaster. Yet the Dominion fooled them both.
I get the impression Iconians would rather all Romulans be wearing a death's head and a double Siegrun.
The advocacy of social Darwinism is only one of the clues.
I've heard of worse ideas on the STO forums.
But no. I just prefer Romulans being villainous schemers, not Federation Lapdogs. People have different opinions on how Romulans should be portrayed in STO, and there's nothing wrong with that.
I'm actually pretty okay with the Romulan Republic. I just have differences of opinion.
Less than a century, actually.
No, you are mistaking paranoia for power.
What's the point of dominating?
The RSE was already fractured. And, as I have pointed out elsewhere, the RSE reaction to the Republic was the typical totalitarian kneejerk overkill, which led to more and more defeats for the RSE.
Are you familiar with the term "delusion"?
And yet she continued to TRIBBLE up.
The RSE fractured before she ever sat on the throne. Does the name "Imperial Romulan State" or the name "Empress Donatra" ring any bells? The RSE never recovered from that schism.
No, it's actually not. Romulans left Vulcan for freedom. For almost 2 millennia, they did well enough without the fascist police state that we saw the beginnings of in TNG. Romulan is "Balance of Terror," and "The Enterprise Incident." THAT is Romulan, not Tomalak and that gang of perpetually constipated, jackboot-wearing, inept thugs, who were a symptom of the cancer eating away at the RSE from the inside, because of the STUPID idea that nobility is passed through DNA. It's rather like saying that the child of a Supreme Court Justice should inherit his/her parent's job, without regard for intelligence, education, competence, or anything else necessary to do the job.
She would need people willing to follow her, and unfortunately for you, your persppective was never the majority in Romulan culture. By TNG, the population had become terrorized into submission by the sadism of their leaders. By the end of TNG, the Tal'Shiar was pushing the envelope on how terrorized the population could become. The writing was on the wall almost from the first appearance of the Romulans in TNG. That kind of government will not endure, especially among a people who became who they are because they refused to be forced to bend the knee to a false orthodoxy.
The RSE has not always had an Emperor or an Empress. For a rather extended period, in fact, the RSE was led by a Praetor. At one point, the Senate even abolished the office of Emperor, but retained an imperialistc form of government and style of engaging with others.
On the contrary, the "strong man" (or "strong woman") style of leadership in the RSE has not been around for centuries. The TOS episodes occurred less than 100 years before the dawn of TNG. The RSE was not a totalitarian state at that time, and indeed, the Romulan people are nothing if not independent. They need no half-witted half-breed to lord it over them and dictate to them. They need the freedom for which they left Vulcan in the first place. Love of Freedom is what is most characterisitic of the name "Romulan." Rather than submit to the establishment's distorted "religion" made from perverting Surak's philosophy, they LEFT to retain their own freedom of conscience (and among them were followers of Surak, too). Your view of Romulanity is far too colored by TNG and the later series, without regard for the evidence of TOS and TAS, to say nothing of the deuterocanonical sources like Diane Duane's novels (from which STO took a huge dose of inspiration). There was dictatorship, yes, but not ab origine, and had the movies not stolen the "Honorable Warrior" schtick from the Romulans and given it to the previously-little-more-than-cutthroat-pirate Klingons, we might have gotten to see the Romulans become what they were supposed to become from their first appearance. We even still get hints of it in TNG. The ending of "The Chase" is but one of the more obvious examples, and is a clear homage to the end of "Balance of Terror." That "one day" should have come much sooner than it did, but it has happened now, and all your lamentations are but music to my ears. Sela will die, and I hope I'm the one who ends her.
Except that such a scenario is nearly an intrinsic impossibility. Sela is on Sela's side and nobody else's. That should be obvious to all but the most eager goosesteppers in the RSE.
Yeah, except that in 2410, the Republic IS the Romulan power, and the citizens and military personnel of the Republic don't bend over for anyone. Not Sela, not Hakeev, not the Elachi or the Iconians or the Feds or the Klinks. We will fight for our freedom as long as any of us breathes. Live free or die. That should be the motto of the Republic, because that's what the Republic mentality is. This mentality is not capable of defeat. Death would not be defeat. Slavery would be. Going back to kissing Sela's buttocks would be. When one dies fighting for freedom, that is victory, for that person dies free, unbent, unsubmitting, defiant to the end. THAT IS WHAT IT MEANS TO BE ROMULAN, not your obsessive desire to be collared by an incompetent failure who cannot even speak to another person without tones of condescension. Sela will die. Sela must die. And if the Republic has to go through you to kill her, I'll lead the charge.
As niece of an Emperor and an Empress, I am far more "entitled" to take the throne than Sela, but I don't want it. I won't take it. I refused to even let my true name be known to the public for years before the rediscovery of ch'Mol'Rihan and for over a year after. I saw the writing on -- and the cracks in -- the wall even before Shinzon's rebellion. The Star Empire had its time, and for most of that time, it was glorious, but empires have a shelf life, and the last hundred years or so of the RSE have been obvious decadence and corruption, as the structures and culture which had once been so justly proud crumbled due to the ineptitude of the leadership. They cared not for the Star Empire, in abstract or concrete. They cared for themselves at any price, including selling out the Star Empire and its people to a species which had been gone for some 200,000 years and were unlikely to return any time soon, without the kind of mindless devotion given to them by the sociopath Hakeev.
We TOOK our place at the table, and we continue to lead the Alliance in new ventures. The Alliance turned to OUR intelligence agencies. The Alliance wouldn't even exist without us. The Feds and Klinks would still be having small territorial skirmishes and the Iconians would have rolled over the entire galaxy by now, had it not been for the New Romulan Republic.
The Feds and Klinks had nothing to do with D'Tan becoming leader. We military personnel who formed the Republic in the years prior to the attacks on Virinat elected him. They have nothing to do with him remaining in office. WE maintain him in office. I have yet to see the Feds or Klinks tell D'Tan to do anything. In fact, he has defied them more than once. Your propaganda will not be true by repetition. You and your bunch of mindless goosesteppers have repeated these asinine claims since before we started building the new city on ch'Mol'Rihan, but we're still here, D'Tan is still our leader, we have grown in size and strength, we have a new homeworld in place of the one the totalitarian regime you so idolize destroyed, and our territory has expanded to include many worlds liberated from the tyranny and terror of the travesty that the RSE became.
No, the Republic exists because WE fought for it, and will continue to fight for it, as long as we breathe. The Republic exists because Freedom is a far greater motivator than fear. The Republic exists because people who remembered what it meant to be "Romulan" took that name back from the decadent Star Empire and told them to go "ampersand percentage sign" themselves. The Republic exists because ROMULANS and REMANS cast off the shackles which your beloved idiots were trying to bind us with. And shot them in the face. In the face. Maybe I'll get lucky and manage to take Sela's head to add to the trophies on the wall in the bar of our main starbase. But that face might scare new recruits. It is rather repellant, even without the unRomulan color of the hair framing it.
Alpha wolf? You mean the player character, even when that player character is a Romulan Republic Forces officer? The whole episode was wonky because THIS Alpha Wolf wanted to shoot Sela on sight, too. I would never have agreed to take her prisoner. From the moment I first saw her in the mission, I was trying to target her. If the Devs had not prevented me from doing so, I would have ended her then and there.
The chief governing passion of the collective Romulan and Reman psyche is love of freedom. Love of freedom is incapable of defeat. That is why the Star Empire is gradually being wiped out, and why it will eventually be only history. That is why the Republic is the future of Romulan power. That is why Sela is a failure and will continue to be a failure. And that is why Sela will die, by my hand if I have anything to say about it. The Republic is invincible, not because we can destroy any enemy, but because no enemy will ever rule us. We will die first. You should recognize actual nobility when it presents itself, instead of licking the boots of those who cannot even hold power once they take it. See, stabbing someone in the back only requires opportunity and will. Neither is sufficent qualification to lead.
A worthy leader is one who cares about the well-being of his or her people, and maximizes their opportunities by maximizing their freedom within order. One who cares only for himself or herself is not a leader, but an enemy.
And for someone whose knickers are in such a twist over Romulans being merely allied with the Federation and the Klingons, constantly attempting to portray this as "submission," you certainly are overly eager to submit yourself to someone's dictates. So I guess being allied with others has been translated in your NuSpeak to "Freedom is slavery." I suppose it's little wonder, though, because to you and your type, "Ignorance is strength."
The Star Empire is dead.
Long live the Republic!
And I would have made the decision to go to ch'Mol'Rihan, not Starbase 234. How does it even make sense to try to "head them off at the pass" when they can open gates right inside the Mol'Rihan system without having to come through Starbase 234? As a high-ranking officer of the RRF, my first duty would be to defend my people and their world, not a starbase of another power inside territory which is almost exclusively Romulan and shouldn't even be there in the first place.
Starbase 234 was there for a long time. Only recently the Republic seems to have expanded into former Federation territory, now surrounding Starbase 234 and even claiming the Jouret-System and by extension the Iconian gateway located there.
The Federation seems to have ceded these territories to the Republic, but kept Starbase 234.
You can't wrestle an empire out of someone's hands without actually knowing a thing or two about ruling yourself. The reasons are many, but one stands out: By sucking at ruling you are stepping on the toes of everyone who has interests or an agenda of their own while at the same time making the common people hate you, plus you already set the precedent for killing rulers to take their place being an acceptable form of selection. Cue coup d'etat. And how are you going to stop the pretenders to the throne when you suck at ruling, the people hates your guts, and you stepped on the toes of your capable generals and ministers? Dynastic china called this the mandate of heaven. Long story short, the idea was that if you suck so much at ruling that some random upstart manages to rally enough support to actually challenge your power you deserve to be killed and replaced as you had lost the mandate of heaven, the divine authority to rule the empire.
the power of a ruler comes not from himself but from his ministers, generals, and people. When more ministers, generals, and people are pissed at you than are happy with you - How are you going to rule? You can't manage an empire without ministers, you can't enforce the law or defend your frontiers without generals, and you can't have an economy without laborers. It becomes a slippery slope: Discontent breeds discontent and then you have a coup d'etat.
To think it falls down to 'simply kill their opponent, and sit pretty on the throne' is ridiculous. You don't take an empire without prowess as a leader and the ability to command. You need an army, you need political and financial supporters, you need to convince your enemy's ministers and generals to either switch sides or look the other way so that both your armies won't get decimated in battle just for another pretender who just waited for the right time to sweep both you and your enemy aside and take the throne himself, and you need to have enough popular support for enough people to walk to the fields and factories afterwards to produce the wealth and resources you need both to strengthen your claim and keep your supporters fat and content in your pocket.
You need to look more closely at the map. The shades of green are quite distinct. The RSE controls what amounts to about a sector.
You RSE-lovers have been spouting this lie since LoR came out. It wasn't true then, and it's not true now. "TOS Romulans" ought to be "nuff said," but even in TNG and the later series we see the same ideals among people like Doctor R'Mor and Alidar t'Jarok and several others. Considering that the average Romulan lifespan is 250 Earth-years, a mere 70 Earth-years of inept government and fascist police state isn't going to ingrain itself into the collective Romulan psyche to such an extent that they forget who they were before, and in fact is only doomed from the start, because they DO remember who they were before and have gone back to that now, even futher back than TOS, back to what inspired the Sundering in the first place.
No, your "ideal" of backstabbing in order to become ruler is social Darwinism. That "the strong shall survive and rule" is exactly what social Darwinism means.
Sela made the RSE powerful? Really? When was this? That's not what "Path to 2409" says at all. The RSE was powerful in the 2260s. By the era of Picard and company, the RSE was showing its age. How else could Picard, of all people, outwit and humiliate Romulan commanders at almost every turn? I mean, Tomalak, for Keras' sake. The man was anything but qualified for command, and he was merely the most frequently seen example of the ineptitude that had come to characterize even the officer cadre of the RSE's military by then. And why is that? Oh, isn't it obvious? That system of backstabbing you have so praised. It takes little competence to sheathe an Honor Blade in a back turned to you; it takes little intelligence. It takes opportunity, will, and daring. Those qualities are not sufficient to make a good leader.
What game have you been playing? It's obviously not the same one most of us have been playing.
I'm convinced you're simply trying to bait Republic players at this point. Tiaru is even more Alpha than Koren. But, in true Romulan fashion, she doesn't need to whip her TRIBBLE out and wave it around openly, when she can simply give the appearance of compliance and then plan her next move in a more clandestine fashion.
"True" progress? The enslavement of the galaxy, including your own people, as you lick at the boots of the masters? Hakeev was never remotely competent. How he rose to lead the Tal'Shiar is anybody's guess, but my guess is that he stabbed someone in the back and then took the office, in the manner of your preferred method of "earning" a promotion. But this is one of the clearest examples of why that method is flawed. Having the chance, the will, and the daring to stab your commander in the back does not mean that you have the intelligence, the wisdom, the experience, the education, the skills, the talents, or the competence to command. It just means that you're not trustworthy or scrupulous, that treachery is your most defining characteristic, that your opinion of yourself is perhaps a bit too high. Hakeev was clearly far too impressed with himself.
Of course Vrinak knew (I think it's rather obvious when you watch the show). But he also realized that what was being pushed was in the best interests of the Star Empire and its people.
Something you have not grasped about Romulanity is this thing that has been demonstrated again and again: Romulans ALWAYS have secret plans, even when they proclaim that the era of secrecy is over. Romulans are a proud people and are not going to admit up front that they are willing to go along with the Alliance against the Dominion until/unless they get whatever concessions they can out of the deal, and if they can't get any concessions, they very probably will leave the conference and go back to ch'Rihan knowing that the Alliance needs them and will have to come calling again, and that will make concessions more easily obtained.
Power is not the biggest gun, the longest sword, the strongest warbird, threats and intimidation, the pomp and circumstance of strutting around with the attitude of a miles gloriosus. Power is getting what you want without having to even show off the superficialities of shiny warbirds and steroid-induced musculature. The strong person, in a Romulan worldview, is not the one with the loudest mouth, but the one who gets things done with the least effort and noise.
Since you did put a lot of effort into what you wrote, however. I will say that you raise some interesting points, protogoth. Some of them I agree with. Some of them I don't. I can give you that.
Do distinguish between the IC and OOC bits. I seldom make explicit distinctions on the STO fora (epecially in Romulan Gameplay), although I think most of the IC bits are obviously IC.
I'll take that.
But I'll still shoot you(r character) in the face if you get between me and Sila.
(Note: Sila, Hakiv, Vrinak, because that's how they're properly spelled in Rihan if the onscreen pronunciations are correct -- not that they have a history of being correct, as witness "A 'HAY-pax' warbird is escaping!" and "A 'duh-LAHN' warbird is escaping," to give but two examples, which should properly be hah-AH-pahx and DHEH-lahn, with the DH representing the same sound as the Old English letter edh -- and again, to PWE/Cryptic, I'm more than willing to give you the correct pronunciations of Rihan words for your voice actors since I am not a SAG member living in Cali and therefore can't get a gig as a voice actress for the game to do them right myself, and all I ask in return is that you let me kill Sila and grant the rest of my requests for the RRF as sent in a ticket sometime last year).
My issue is when its time to mix it up in a combat situation she tends to defer when action is called for heck if i commanded the Lliset and faced with a fight id be more then happy to wade in the middle .
If you do want to shoot my character in the face, I'd recommend taking a number and standing in line. I'll even print it out in rihannsu for you. But there is a pretty long waiting list of people who want to see me harmed in some way, so please be patient.
If people are taking characters and species in a sci fi universe so seriously that they would want to cause harm to someone else they need to go get help from a psychyatrist.
That was mostly meant tongue-in-cheek. I generally don't respond to personal threats I'd be given a reason to take seriously.
same here man just when i see someone talking bout threats as an avid user of forums here and abroad ive seen things like that where someone takes something just a little to seriously.
Naw. Protogoth is passionate about romulans but she's harmless.