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Am I the only person who finds helping the Kobali utterly distateful and wrong?
deadtessa
Member Posts: 20 Arc User
Am I the only person who finds helping the Kobali utterly distateful and wrong? They are little more than grave robbing ghouls and helping them seems to be so against the Starfleet way of doing things, to me. ESPECIALLY after you find out they are using the Vaadwuar in the stasis chambers to fill their ranks. It seems downright counter to the prime directive to even be involved in the battlezone whatsoever.
When they find out the Vaadwuar are using a chemical to prevent them from stealing more dead Vaadwuar soldiers, I want the option to refuse to help them. Instead, I am forced to help and find a counter to it. I find that action to be an attrocity.
It is, at that precise moment, it is no longer even a question as to whether or not you are absolutley breaking the prime directive to me.
All in all, it seems very unlike Starfleet to go helping a bunch of grave robbers to snatch up living beings (the V in the stasis chambers) to turn into more grave robbers, to me.
Am I wrong here? I mean, in my own personal opinion, this entire chapter should never be on the table for a Starfleet officer.
When they find out the Vaadwuar are using a chemical to prevent them from stealing more dead Vaadwuar soldiers, I want the option to refuse to help them. Instead, I am forced to help and find a counter to it. I find that action to be an attrocity.
It is, at that precise moment, it is no longer even a question as to whether or not you are absolutley breaking the prime directive to me.
All in all, it seems very unlike Starfleet to go helping a bunch of grave robbers to snatch up living beings (the V in the stasis chambers) to turn into more grave robbers, to me.
Am I wrong here? I mean, in my own personal opinion, this entire chapter should never be on the table for a Starfleet officer.
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That is exactly how I feel about it. The Vaadwuar have a legitimate issue with the Kobali. In my opinion they are *MORE* than justified in wiping the Kobali from the universe. We shouldn't be involved.
I personally want to watch them get slaughtered.
Voyager certainly like to use its victim races forced to do terrible or disgusting actions a lot. There is the Kobali, Borg, and Vidiians and I am probably missing a few.
I think they Kobali were more fearful that the Vaadwuar would spread the information on how to synthesize the chemical which would effectively have prevented the grave robbing scum from procreating any more. Which would have meant genocide eventually.
But again, I see the Kobali as worthy of extermination. A "race" that has no right to exist in the first place. They don't exist as anything but stolen corpses. Corpses that they do not have the right to desecrate.
EDIT: Further into the plotline, it does appear that the chemical will kill the Kobali outright as well. (it has been a while since I played it)
Still, I say let them deal with their own problems of their own creation. They made their mess, they should be responsible for fixing it.
Finish A New Warfare mission. A virus that prevent the Kobali process on anyone infected for a specific race is a perfectly acceptable method of dealing with this. A virus that completely prevents the Kobali process is essentially sterilization and the potential death of the Kobali, but they would have decades to find some other method of preservation. The Kobali and Vaadwaur are at war with each other and such diplomatic methods are not something that the Vaadwaur would pursue. The Kobali are desecrating the Vaadwaur's dead so more extreme methods are necessary.
Let's imagine for a moment that this isn't sci-fi and they do exist. The issue is that we keep emotional attachments to the dead; to the image of the dead. After we die, we are nothing more. The body begins to rott, decay and if you leave it to nature it will be eaten away, decomposed and processed. With the kobali, the dead person gets to live again. A different life, of course, but to me it sounds way better than dust to dust, and all...which will evetually happen again, but at least there was a second round. Also the kobali know full well this is the only way they can exist and still they don't search to actively terminate other beings to further their goals.
The vaadwaur are egotistical, egocentrical, that do what they do not because their survival depends on it, but because they want to and they choose to.
I also really don't like helping the Deferi either.
Plenty of people in my fleet share this same view
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
-Lord Commander Solar Macharius
You have to understand, while you may find it abhorrent, the Kobali view the reuse of a corpse as the greatest gift possible - a literal second chance at life. They don't kill just to fill their ranks, they only use the already dead, so the Vaaduar in stasis had already met their fate, and the Kobali, in their minds anyway, graciously gave them a second chance.
The sheer amount of people on these forums that failed to grasp this is constantly baffling to me. You'd think they'd never seen an episode of Star Trek in their lives if something this fundamental could elude them.
I've literally never seen an anti-Kobali argument that amount to anything more than a bunch of closed-minded fools impressing their views of death and the dead onto others.
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Exactly. This is the point of that arc. Star Trek likes putting you in awkward moral situations and makes you think of an issue as more than a one sided good vs evil equation.
The Kobali have a culture radically different from ours. For what is a discarded shell of a body, our culture venerates it in one way and theirs venerates it in another. For them it is the highest honour to ressurect it. Starfleet is meant to see out new life and civilisations - well some civilisations will have different moral codes to ours but as a Starfleet captain you are meant to learn, respect and coexist with those differences and not try to change them.
Just when we might back out, the Vaadwaur came along with their gas to kill all of them which would wipe out the race. Our duty at that point is clear and shows the difference to new cultures on the two sides.
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I will protect them regardless if someone were trying to exterminate them.
I am also fully aware of how destabilizing it would be if the Vaadwaur got all their stasis living back.
In the ends I just came, did the minimum, none of the planetary missions and left the blasted planet alone. My beefs with the Bugs so I will just Hunt them directly and leave the morally confused zombies and yet-another-copypasta spacenaz to sort out their own issues.
I'll just come back and blast them if they get out of line.
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Their use of the Vaadwaur on the other hand, completely wrong (unless someone wanted to argue that stopping an ancient conquering force from returning justifies it). It was implied before that the Kobali only ever took those who had already passed and did it in a way to not tip off everyone else. In the sto story arc they basically stole the living and held onto them until they died. I think they're contradicting themselves here, unless the Kobali in Voyager wasn't being entirely truthful?
*I wonder if the Mirror Kobali might be used by the Empire, minus the memory erasure?
Of course, if you have some special religious belief that makes you think the corpses are still relevant to you, I think the Kobali should rather ask nicely if they can have them and accept refusal. I suspect they were under so much pressure to keep themselves alive that they never did that, because they feared that people would say No. But now that they are no longer standing alone in the universe and have allies, they can start thinking more about the ethics of the situation, and with our guidance, they can adopt a better approach. (And that's pretty much what is happening after the arc).
I think the Kobali were intentionally set up to be a bit creepy.
But never forget: The Kobali come for your dead. The Vaadwaur come for your living. They murder people. Their leader ran around murdering a harmless displaced people just to make a point, and launched a war campaign that probably killed billions in the Delta Quadrant. And not to keep his species alive - to build an Empire.
We can be lucky the Vaadwaur and the Kobali were at odds... Imagine they would be working together.
Why are you so up in arms over corpses? It's not like they're going to anything but decay. Someone may as well get some use out of the leftover meat.
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