You lost me at trying to argue that 23 years (from 2387, as of 2410) constitutes enough time to forget about the deliberate slaughter of 4,200,000,000+ people.
This conversation is officially too disturbing for me to continue.
I don't think that's what was going on there at all. Nobody is arguing that the folks who were directly responsible for the destruction of the homeworld, or of using civilians as Elachii-fertilizer remain unpunished-but there are surely a lot of folks in the Empire who could reasonably be integrated-or are you suggesting that the likes of Charva and Janek be subjected to summary execution for the crime of merely being Tal Shiar?
Ugh all this splitting hairs over categorization of the 'Romulans' and 'Vulcans' Give it a rest Protogoth. At the end of the day a line was drawn with 'Those who march beneath the Raptor's wings' and Surak's followers, and it was the former that started dropping nukes and killed Surak. 'Those who march beneath the raptor's wings' later became the Romulans. Therefore it's quite accurate for the sake of the point I was actually originally making to say that Romulans killed Surak, (plenty of reason for Vulcans to be resentful) and also shows that there were (even so recently as TNG-era) plenty on the other side who felt strongly enough about separation to use severe violence. It's quite a substantial divide between the two cultures we are talking about here-so it would not be beyond reason to expect D'Tan's reunification policies to be unpopular
You'll have to forgive me if I find your constant plugging of your fleet site to be on par with the shows as far as canon goes. considering you are openly dismissive of the four out of five live-action Star Trek shows that contradict your narrow view on what defines a 'real' Romulan.
The irony I refered to was that you keep on saying that folks who aren't happy with the Republic/prefer the RSE or Tal Shiar are some sort of miniscule minority, depite that being immediately and demonstrably false to anyone who bothers to read these threads. my impression is that it's much closer to an even split, unless you are only counting people who want to play the Tal Shiar as written in game. Which I pointed out, is not even a category I include myself in.
the only revisionism going on here is covering your eyes and ears and pretending that the Romulans that dominated portrayals in four of the five series and pretending that they are in no way indicative of any sort of cultural trend in Romulan Culture, and that only the two appearances in TOS and the Rihannsu novels count.
I bring up the book timeframe that contradicts earlier dates to highlight just how married you are to the idea of a specific depiction of Romulans. In your head, the only valid information on Romulans is the stuff that directly supports the Rihhansu novels. It's pretty obvious that you are cherry picking when anything that doesn't support your idea of a proper Romulan is either 'cherry picking' 'revisionist' or some other kind of outlier despite the overwhelmingly consistent portrayal of Romulans over four series. Considering the Romulans of ENT were much closer to the post-TOS Romulans thant the TOS Romulans, IMO it isn't too hard a stretch for the Tal Shiar to be around back then, considering it would fit in just as well in that era.
Tal Shiar attempts to negotiate, however shallow-show that there is at least the possibility for some sort of reconciliation in the future. Which is IMO, much more preferable to letting half the species burn. Before you call the RSE/Tal Shiar remnants a tiny minority, consider that the Rator is still part of the Empire. Would you consign all of those living there to death so readily?
Obisek has done many bad things within recent memory, ditto for his Reman pirates who are described as hunting Romulan civilians for sport. The brutal sorts of things Klingons do to prisoners of war (or even just civilians caught in the wrong place at the wrong time) is despicable on par with some of the things the Tal Shiar has done-easily. They also tried to invade the Star Empire with the goal of enslaving the Romulan people like they have so many others within recent memory. If the Republic can accept these sorts of people so readily, than RSE remnants (after sorting out the folks involved with the Elachii and Hobus Supernova) being given pardons should not be a problem.
And yes, Republic Intelligence is surely a thing-your ignorance of the inner workings of the Republic aside. Perhaps you just don't have the security clearance to know of such things yet? I can't imagine why, what with all your dealings with Orion slavers, Nausicaan pirates and Klingon murderers...:D
I assure you, the D'Deridex I captain is quite real, and the Khazara is eternally ready to defend the Republic from external threats like the Tal Shiar, Elachii, etc....as well as threats from the inside....such as those who purport to stand for 'freedom' while attempting to stack the highest positions of government with D'Tan's sycophants.
I do not only "try" but I indeed DO argue that in the past 23 years
1) a lot of new members surely had joined the Tal Shiar, which have nothing to do with the supernova and could hardly be blamed for that
2) at least some of the middle and even upper ranks of the 2409-Tal Shiar have made it up in ranks in that 23 years - and by that were not directly involved in the supernova (and are, too, not responsibble and in several cases also did not know the truth about the whole thing)
3) Several of the people who were indeed involved were killed or died or captured or disappeared and are by that no longer in commanding position
4) It seems very likely that several of the Splinter Cells of the Tal Shiar after Hakeevs end are under the controll of men and women who had nothing to do wth the supernova, either because of 1) and 2) or because they were simply not involved in the project because they were other branches of Tal Shiar at that time
5) The Imperial Remnants of course also have in most cases nothing to do with the supernova.
Is there proof that one of this points is wrong, than I will drop it.
catoblepasbeta
Well, let me say so far - if there is need for the warbirds to fly against any enemy, either from outside or another direction, I am sure and promise that your D'Deridex will not be alone...:D
protogoth
I disagree with your opinion about catoblepasbeta's idea. At first - Imperialist might be more willing to accept the Repblic if she is offering them a warm welcome (some vertain individuals excluded) and start up the re-unition propaganda etc. (instead of advocating beeing nice with vulcans, Feds, Klingons - but at war with other Romulans)
"D'Tan is not going anywhere. His leadership is more than adequate. Indeed, his both capable and competent, qualities which have been missing in the leadership of the Star Empire since before the destruction of the Eisn system. The Star Empire began to rot from within long before the Hobus supernova, and that rot was not only allowed to continue, it was encouraged to grow until it ate the Star Empire and is now all that remains of a once mighty polity."
Well, I guess such a point of view is perfect - to alienate A LOT of Romulans, including many inside the Republic. Many of them had members of their families who fight for the Empire, and none of them will like to hear that they fought for a roten cause. That is only something for people who really embraced the mainly Federation-Propaganda, seeing an Empire as something bad. There were mistakes and wrongdoing in the Empire, of course, but also things many Romulans were proud of, and which they remember with pain (pain of loss, I mean).
All
By the way, before we are going on to argue who speaks for the majority was there ever a opinion poll (and which results it shows) with questions if the people?
a) want the Republic as she is (and never including greater parts of the Tal Shiar/ Imperial Remnants)
b) want the Republic to become a more "imperial", for example by including parts of TS / IR etc.
c) want the option of playable TS/ IR
d, e and f - anything what comes to your mind and what I have forgotten...
The Republic has multiple personality disorder: "We're Fighting for justice, liberty, freedom, end of the "Evil" Star Empire, peace 'a new hope' etc."
*Queue personality shift*
"But we can still get down with our bad selves!"
In other words, they're a modern democratic republic.
The Federation is a futuristic democratic utopia. The Romulan Republic is not. Like a modern republic, they have a bloody history, are willing to get their hands dirty, and are ready to defend their freedom with weapons that can scour life from an entire planet. They could (for example) make an expansionist push into the fractured Empire to annex as much of Romulan space as they can control, something that the Federation would consider unconscionable, but which has parallels in events unfolding right now.
Show me someone who says that makes them "Fed clones", and I will show you someone who missed the entire point of Star Trek.
Or Ron D. Moore, I guess.
*Queue personality shift*
"But we're still better then the Tal'shiar."
Unironically, yes.
The Romulan Republic is the worst government the Romulan people have ever had, except for all the others. That's what makes them interesting.
You know what would really help? Defining the term "reunification."
What would that mean in practice? Some Romulans act like Vulcans? All Romulans act like Vulcans? Some Vulcans act like Romulans? Does it simply mean living under a unified government? Would the Republic join the Federation, or would Vulcan leave the Federation to join the Romulans? Would it simply mean that Romulans are free to take part in Vulcan culture, and vice-versa?
The problem is, the game has never really let D'Tan make his case. Without hearing his proposal, we can't really debate the finer points of his plan.
I disagree that all other governments of the Romulans were worse than the Republic, this seem a little bit bias. The word EVER seems much to strong in my eyes. At first we did not know so much of these governments in the past, even not SO much about those of the last centuries (and what we know is in several cases from a look from outside, Federation-bias), we also do not know how much support these goverments had in large parts of the society. That the Republic until now could only speak for a very limited part of the Romulan people make it very hard to judge. And of course nobody know where all it will end - perhaps in an endless blood-bath of inner-Romulan warfare. That would be in my eyes not very "better than the others". Only if the inplay thinking that the ideas of the Republic are the best (and I did not believe that all or even most Romulans do so) than it would made sense. I guess a lot Romulans would still prefer the old Empire before Shinzon, or some "golden past" some centuries ago (immagination is a strong thing) if that would be a thing to choose.
About Reunification you are right, D'Tan never said that in detail, and that is a problem. That he made it not clear does also fuel some distrust (or hopes). But I still think that many Romulans would prefer a ROMULAN Reunification over a Romulan-Vulcan Reunification (or a Reman-Romulan Reunification). A Reunfication with the Vulcans would also made much less sense politicaly, since a inner-Romulan Reunfication would surely strengthen the Republic, as would the Romulan-Reman Reunification. But Vulcan? What has Vulcan to offer? Not much in hard terms (and when it comes to "science", well, some Romulans may still have some distrust towards Vulcan scientists...). You could argue with emotions about reunification with the Vulcans (haha good joke ) but this counts only for the small group of REAL Reunificationists, who were, as far as I know, only a small minority in the Empire.
At first we did not know so much of these governments in the past
Well, we do know a lot about the TNG era. Life pretty much sucks on every level of society. There's a massive slave caste. Dissidents have to hide in the sewer. Civilians are encouraged to rat on each other. The military is largely ineffectual and crushed under the thumb of the Tal Shiar. The Tal Shiar are so corrupt and working at ends with the rest of the Empire that their leader works for the Federation, and that gets him a promotion to the Senate. The Senate sucks, because they are all assassinated in one swoop by the slave caste.
The TNG Empire was always black-and-white at it's worst, and a second-rate Cardassia at it's best. The better parts were given to the Republic in STO. I grant that they need fleshing out more, but we're getting that, slowly but surely.
I'm sure you can imagine there was a better government at one point, or at least one you would think is better, but we've never seen it. Even the Rihannsu novels make a point to show that the corruption and backstabbing (an "endless bloodbath of inter-Romulan warfare", if you will) has always existed, even back when the Empire had a shred of honor.
You could argue with emotions about reunification with the Vulcans (haha good joke ) but this counts only for the small group of REAL Reunificationists, who were, as far as I know, only a small minority in the Empire.
According to Spock, reunification on some level is inevitable, within decades or centuries.
I guess you could argue that he's wrong, but I am not sure that "I know more about Star Trek than Spock!" is really a valid point to debate from.
As to what Vulcan has to offer, it seems the Romulans are a little fixated on it. Even the higher-ups in the Empire wants to be reunified with them: granted, they want that to happen by conquering Vulcan. They're ready to invade the planet and fight the Federation for it, in any case. That'd be a funny thing to do for a planet and culture that offers you nothing.
Ugh all this splitting hairs over categorization of the 'Romulans' and 'Vulcans' Give it a rest Protogoth. At the end of the day a line was drawn with 'Those who march beneath the Raptor's wings' and Surak's followers, and it was the former that started dropping nukes and killed Surak. 'Those who march beneath the raptor's wings' later became the Romulans. Therefore it's quite accurate for the sake of the point I was actually originally making to say that Romulans killed Surak, (plenty of reason for Vulcans to be resentful) and also shows that there were (even so recently as TNG-era) plenty on the other side who felt strongly enough about separation to use severe violence. It's quite a substantial divide between the two cultures we are talking about here-so it would not be beyond reason to expect D'Tan's reunification policies to be unpopular
First, pointing out the very real and very pronounced differences between the various subgroups who left Vulcan (not Romulans by any mean) and the fact of sectarianism even within those who purported to follow the teachings of Surak (not Vulcans by any means) is hardly "splitting hairs."
Second, it was the Vulcan establishment which came up with this official blurring of distinctions and labelled all who left Vulcan as 'those who march beneath the Raptor's wings," so now you are parroting those very people whom you claim to be so opposed to reunification with, and taking their obvious conflation as holy writ while denying the lore passed down for centuries among those people whom you claim to represent.
Third, the groups which left Vulcan did not later become the Romulans. Some became Debrune. Some went their own way and we have no idea what became of them. Some became the Remans.
Fourth, the Te-Vikram Brotherhood, a religious terrorist group predating Surak, is responsible for the attack on ShiKahr.
Fifth, the Te-Vikram Brotherhood never wanted to leave Vulcan, made as much trouble on the journey as possible, even tried their best to return to Vulcan, and are not ever held up by modern Romulans as an example of their forebears.
Sixth, there were no Romulans at the time of Surak's death, and those who left split at least three times before some of them eventually became Romulan. Attempting to muddy the waters and (a) use anachronistic terminology even when it has been pointed out to be anachronistic repeatedly and (b) repeatedly assert that a group which did not yet even exist, and which derives from only a portion of those who left bears the guilt for an act by only one of the groups which left and which was a tiny majority by the time the Sundered reached the Eisn system (if indeed any of them were still with the Exiles when they finally arrived in the Eisn system) serves no purpose other than sewing doubt and discontent among Romulans and promoting the demonstrably false "official history" of a people whom you claim to dislike so much as to wet yourself over the mere mention of Reunification with. It's far more likely that, like T'Nae, you oppose Reunification because you revere Surak and hate the Romulans for something which happened two-thousand years ago (so that even IF any of the legitimate forebears of the modern Romulan people had been involved, their responsibility/guilt would not be shared by any modern Romulans), and which was done by a very small portion of those who left, and which very small portion never wanted to leave and tried to return more than once.
Seventh, D'Tan's personal desire for Reunification is one thing. Any supposed Reunification "policies" have not once been shown to exist. AND D'Tan is more than his belief in Reunification. Even I have pointed out repeatedly that I do not support Reunification, and yet, here I am, still supporting D'Tan and the Republic. In Logic, by which I of course mean the academic discipline without any connection to Cthia, we call this last example "disproof" of what you have attempted to portray, namely that all who oppose Reunification must likewise oppose D'Tan.
You'll have to forgive me if I find your constant plugging of your fleet site to be on par with the shows as far as canon goes. considering you are openly dismissive of the four out of five live-action Star Trek shows that contradict your narrow view on what defines a 'real' Romulan.
Someone asked for historical information. I provided a link to the most concise and consistent collection of historical information of which I know. Again, you attempt to portray this as me plugging my fleet, when it was nothing of the sort. Do you imagine for one second that I am trying to recruit someone to my fleet, a fleet of the Republic, when that someone has repeatedly stated his opposition for the Republic? Are you so blinded by your biases that you cannot see how very obvious is your attempt to divert the discussion from the subject matter to an attack upon my personal character?
The irony I refered to was that you keep on saying that folks who aren't happy with the Republic/prefer the RSE or Tal Shiar are some sort of miniscule minority, depite that being immediately and demonstrably false to anyone who bothers to read these threads. my impression is that it's much closer to an even split, unless you are only counting people who want to play the Tal Shiar as written in game. Which I pointed out, is not even a category I include myself in.
It is absolutely NOT immediately and demonstrably false. What in the name of the Mother? Are you damaged by Tal'Shiar programming or innately this irrational? If anything, that one thread alone demonstrates the truth of it. Where were all your side's advocates in that thread? I challenged you to take a count. I do not see that you have done so. Where are your figures? Where is this supposed "demonstration" of the falsehood of the very real fact that supporters of the RSE and/or Tal'Shiar are a minority? Take the count. Go back through every post in this forum and count those on each side, taking care to note the few who have changed their opinion one way or another. And no, I have clearly made the distinction (several times even in this very thread) "imperialists and/or Tal'Shiar sympathizers."
the only revisionism going on here is covering your eyes and ears and pretending that the Romulans that dominated portrayals in four of the five series and pretending that they are in no way indicative of any sort of cultural trend in Romulan Culture, and that only the two appearances in TOS and the Rihannsu novels count.
If you are really so gullible as to believe that military hawks and secret police personnel are representative of the majority view/character of any nation-state, then you are sadly in need of a dose of reality. ((We can take numerous real-world examples which give the lie to such an uncritical position, although doing so would be getting much too dangerously close to, if not actually engaging in, crossing the lines established by the rules of this forum site, and established for very good reasons.)) When I referred specifically to "military hawks," you tried to hold up Alidar Jarok as an example of those to whom I have appealed, and yet, is there ever any indication that he was a military hawk? Do you intentionally leave these qualifications out of your replies, hoping no-one will catch the omissions, or does the Doublethink programmed into you by your Tal'Shiar puppetmaster simply cause you to Fnord the qualifications out of your mind?
I bring up the book timeframe that contradicts earlier dates to highlight just how married you are to the idea of a specific depiction of Romulans. In your head, the only valid information on Romulans is the stuff that directly supports the Rihhansu novels. It's pretty obvious that you are cherry picking when anything that doesn't support your idea of a proper Romulan is either 'cherry picking' 'revisionist' or some other kind of outlier despite the overwhelmingly consistent portrayal of Romulans over four series. Considering the Romulans of ENT were much closer to the post-TOS Romulans thant the TOS Romulans, IMO it isn't too hard a stretch for the Tal Shiar to be around back then, considering it would fit in just as well in that era.
No, you grasp at straws and fail to pay attention when I state (as I have done over and over and over and over again in this forum) that I had to make decisions about what to include and what to exclude on the basis of consistency, and that anyone else with a concern to produce a work that even makes sense would likewise have to pick and choose, AND that I could easily have made the RSE look even worse if depicting the RSE in a bad light had been my intention. If you were familiar with the "Rihannsu" novels, you would see that I did not include some of the information which comes from them, too, and again, it was precisely due to my concern with producing a consistent product. YOU are the one who seeks to cherry-pick the available evidence. While I have stated that I dislike the predominant depiction of Romulans from TNG and later series, I have not once tried to ignore it as you have done with the depiction of the Romulans in TOS.
Tal Shiar attempts to negotiate, however shallow-show that there is at least the possibility for some sort of reconciliation in the future. Which is IMO, much more preferable to letting half the species burn. Before you call the RSE/Tal Shiar remnants a tiny minority, consider that the Rator is still part of the Empire. Would you consign all of those living there to death so readily?
You know very well that the offer put on the table was yet another attempt on the part of the Tal'Shiar to take control of the Romulan and Reman people, and that any such offer of political "support" by the Tal'Shiar is not to be taken as sincere or trustworthy without a considerable amount of corroborating evidence. Even that very recording leaves little doubt in the mind of any honest viewer that the Tal'Shiar were not interested in sharing power with D'Tan, not interested in working within the framework of a republic, and did not wish to take the offer to the people. Be very certain: the Tal'Shiar are the enemies of the Romulan and Reman people, and there can be no reconciliation with them that does not result in the Romulans, and especially the Remans, resuming their position under the thumb (in the case of the Remans, more likely under the boot heel) of the Tal'Shiar. Civilians living under imperial rule are still civilians. Of course they would not be held responsible for the crimes of those who lord it over them, nor have I ever suggested anything along those lines. The Tal'Shiar, and even the Star Empire itself, have made no such distinctions, yet here you are again, attempting to portray me as the villain when it is crystal clear that the villain in this struggle is the one who opposes freedom of choice for the people and wishes to see the power of the Star Empire over those people restored.
Obisek has done many bad things within recent memory, ditto for his Reman pirates who are described as hunting Romulan civilians for sport. The brutal sorts of things Klingons do to prisoners of war (or even just civilians caught in the wrong place at the wrong time) is despicable on par with some of the things the Tal Shiar has done-easily. They also tried to invade the Star Empire with the goal of enslaving the Romulan people like they have so many others within recent memory. If the Republic can accept these sorts of people so readily, than RSE remnants (after sorting out the folks involved with the Elachii and Hobus Supernova) being given pardons should not be a problem.
No, there is nothing which has been done by the Remans, nor even the Klingons, which compares even remotely to the indiscriminate massacre of BILLIONS OF THEIR OWN PEOPLE on the part of the Tal'Shiar. And how exactly do you propose sorting between those who were involved with the Elachi and/or the Hobus supernova and those who were not? Has there been even the least bit of evidence that the Tal'Shiar is not continuing to collaborate with the Elachi and Iconians? I have not seen it.
And yes, Republic Intelligence is surely a thing-your ignorance of the inner workings of the Republic aside. Perhaps you just don't have the security clearance to know of such things yet? I can't imagine why, what with all your dealings with Orion slavers, Nausicaan pirates and Klingon murderers...:D
Since the Chief of Military Intelligence has a permanent seat on the Continuing Committee and is a member of the Star Command with equal rank to every other member thereof, and answers ONLY to whomever the leader of the Romulan government may be, my clearance is not a matter for doubt. Your racism does not change that. There is no civilian Intelligence service in the Republic. There certainly is no secret police force. Neither of these things are necessary; the former would be a redundant body, all the more so since there are already both Military Intelligence and Militia Intelligence, and the latter would be a mockery of everything the Republic stands for.
I assure you, the D'Deridex I captain is quite real, and the Khazara is eternally ready to defend the Republic from external threats like the Tal Shiar, Elachii, etc....as well as threats from the inside....such as those who purport to stand for 'freedom' while attempting to stack the highest positions of government with D'Tan's sycophants.
Your rhetoric and propaganda show very clearly who opposes freedom.
Well, you could say similar bad things about the Klingons, and I am sure many of them will fight to their last breath to defend the way of life they seen as genuine KLINGON-LIKE. And it is hard to believe that all things were so bad, since such a society could hardly exist over decades (as I said, we have mainly a little biased point of view, much less seen with the eyes of Romulans).
And of course the Empire in NG is only one aspect of Romulans history of thousands of years. And I would say the Romulan military was not SO ineffective, the Star Empire was still strong and feared.
Well Spock was wrong only several points in his life, in several cases when it comes to emotions (you remember, trusting a women who nearly blasted up the whole peace-process between Klingons and Federation, for example). That leads to the conclusion that even after many years of service he was far from being perfect...
You are right some parts of the leadership were obsessed with Vulcan (but perhaps because they thought that the Reunificationists were a real danger for their society from inside, or Vulcan was a easy prey so that they could made progress or...)
Coming back to your question what reunification mean - well, in human history it was often a word for two things become one - by ending on of both (the German reunification means the end of the GDR, the Vietnamese reunification means the end of the South Vietnamese State, and so on). I am not sure how THIS would work. But on the other hand, I am also very sure that the Vulcans had no intention to end being Vulcans. The little I read in the "Path to 2409" sounds that Romulans study Vulcan history - not a growing interest on Vulcan in learning more and more about the culture of the Romulans, adapting parts of them to their own. I do not know that for sure, but I guess many Vulcans still see the Exodus as failure and their way as right, and their imagination of reunification is that the Romulans become more and more Vulcan-like, not the other way (that must not mean that they dream of an united state, but perhaps of a shared ideology, which in their eyes very likely is more Vulcan than Romulan).
protogoth
"Do you imagine for one second that I am trying to recruit someone to my fleet, a fleet of the Republic, when that someone has repeatedly stated his opposition for the Republic?"
Since I guess that with that "someone" you means me (but it would the same if you mean catoblepasbeta), pardon me, but I must say that you seem to be the one who is "blinded by your biases". It shows a very narrow perspective if someone who just want another type of Romulan Republic than the one you would like is in your eyes "opposition for the Republic". This is, pardon me again, a point of view your char might have. You as a player should be beyond that, I think.
Or is that your opinion: "Democracy is great. The only thing that TRIBBLE me off is that there are people with different opinions..."
First, pointing out ... must likewise oppose D'Tan.
We aren't talking about the Debrune Star Empire here. They another offshoot from the species, like the Romulans.
The Te-Vikram went onboard the same ships as the others during the exodus.I think it's completely fair to lump to categorize them among those who 'marched beneath the raptor's wings.
Someone asked for historical information...attack upon my personal character?
In case you haven't noticed, the status of your information is a matter of debate here. You are quite ready to pass it off as the highest tier of canon, despite the fact that very little of it actually draws from the shows, aside from your two TOS episodes. It is a highly selective selection you have there.
Also..attacks on personal character? Is it that time already? Irony O'clock?
It is absolutely NOT immediately...and/or Tal'Shiar sympathizers."[/I][/B]
Last time I checked, you haven't exactly provided any figures yourself...so if you are going to go and make the claim that folks dissatisfied with the generally friendly attitude of the Republic are in some sort of miniscule minority. Go through the various threads and tally that number yourself.
In such a heavily militarized society, I [would say that it's likely they are representative of general attitudes. Your insistence that the 'true' Romulans are the civilians to whom almost no screen time is devoted and who all secretly share Republic-like ideals ,despite not showing them in the actual shows....is awfully convenient.
It shows that they are weakened to the point that they can be talked with...that genocide is unnecessary.
In case you haven't noticed, The Tal Shiar has been the only military branch the Star Empire has had for some time now. If some patriotic Romulan wanted to protect the Empire from the Klingons, Orions, Federation Remans, etc they would have had to join the Tal Shiar. Apparently, some like Janek and Charva genuinely believe they are helping the empire in their service. Killing each and every one of them simply because of their allegiance would be tantamount to genocide, and I can't imagine that a lot of those civilians the Republic supposedly fights for would be thrilled to become orphans, widows, and widowers because their loved ones committed no greater sin than desiring to defend the Empire against its many legitimate enemies.
No, there is nothing which .... I have not seen it.
Those individuals should be properly prosecuted. They betrayed their species where their purpose was to protect them. but unless your plan is to give summary execution to every Charva in the Tal Shiar, an eventual reintegration of Tal Shiar and RSE personnel into the Republic is inevitable and desirable.
Since the Chief of Military .... the Republic stands for..
Perhaps you weren't trusted to know by the other members of the continuing committee and it was created without your knowledge. Your biases are well known and it's quite reasonable that you would be left In the dark. Perhaps it was formed as a secret group within your own intelligence agency concerned with your increasing radicalism. Perhaps it was independently formed organization created by elements within the military. Perhaps you hastily rubber-stamped some documents without bothering to read them. Whatever the case, you certainly seem to be having some issues pinning us down, despite our rather large budget. Perhaps I'll ponder how this came to pass while having some more top-of-the-line Neutronium armor fitted to one of my ships.
What comes to my mind...
If there would be an Tal Shiar infiltrator, send from a real hard-core branch of the Secret Service to harm the Republic - I wonder what method he would use.
Would he argue openly for talking with TS and Imperial Remnants, hoping by that he could weaken the Republic because of a significant number of people with other ideas about the future would be included, beneath them surely some infiltrators? But that would also making himself a target for hard-core Republicans who hate all people who did not share their will to exterminate ALL TS/ Imperialists, and very likely draw attention by the Republican Secret Service to scan him. And of course it could lead to strengthen the Republic by including people from the Navy of the Empire and perhaps the TS.
Or would such a infiltrator playing a 100 percent Republican, with a deep hate towards all what is TS, and towards the Imperial Past and all what was great and source of proud for so many Romulans, in that way showing that he could be trusted by the Republican leadership, minimizing any risk of a reunification, alienating many Romulans both inside and outside of the Republic? And by this way making it clear to the last Uhlan in the TS, that there could be never any reconciliation, that they must fight to their last breath or being executed by the Republicans.
Well, that is a thing we should think about. Perhaps someone should give the Republican Intelligence a tip...someone...well, I had to do some paperwork...bye than...:D
My "Romulan" character is a human ( alien) who needed to get payed, the Republic pays the bills, I fly the ship
These are the Voyages on the STO forum, the final frontier. Our continuing mission: to explore Pretentious Posts, to seek out new Overreactions and Misinformation , to boldly experience Cynicism like no man has before.......
Okay, poking my head back in here again...again, this is just relating to what I've said and the responses to it:
One, I never argued for the extermination of anyone in the Empire/Tal Shiar. I said that anyone who served the Tal Shiar knowing what they had done, of their own free will, was untrustworthy, and proceeded to highlight that defectors had already been taken in. Those who see the writing on the wall have been welcomed. However, as for the claims of splinter groups and such, I really can't answer much about that, as we simply have not seen much of the Tal Shiar after Commander Ruul's capture, or even Cutting the Cord. There are some references to them after Cutting the Cord, but not too much: the Borg front mission Where Angels Fear to Tread, where Republic vessels are willing to answer the I.R.W. Areinnye's (wow, I actually spelled that right from memory!) distress call...though we can also blow it up after we find out what they've been doing there with Republic prisoners. Interestingly, the Iconian Dreadnought that was in the pre-revamp version of that mission has been removed, so there isn't as much pointing straight to continued direct involvement with the Iconians, but definitely towards continued hostility elsewhere. There's also a reference to them in the Republic version of Surface Tension, where a Republic security officer will reference checking for Tal Shiar infiltration on one of the frequencies you dig through for monitoring.
Of these, Where Angels Fear to Tread can be safely assumed to take place after Hakeev's death, I think, but I can't speak for where it falls in compared to the earlier events of the New Romulus reputation track. Surface Tension is unambiguously post-New Romulus Rep, though, as it follows Dyson rep, which follows NR rep. Gates and all that.
This seems to point to definite continued hostilities, but not necessarily continued Iconian manipulation, as the appearance of the Obex no longer occurs, and we have never seen them working with the Elachi again despite confirmation of significant Elachi remnant forces that were not destroyed in Devil's Choice. ...oh, there's something else I remember, now. There's also a reference to the Tal Shiar in Sphere of Influence, where the Iconian data seems to indicate that they consider their alliance with the Tal Shiar 'problematic.' However, they don't go into any more detail than that on them.
As for the remnants of the Star Empire, we see even less there, and I certainly never spoke of trying to exterminate every Imperial citizen, so don't put words in my mouth. They're victims of those feuding for power, and I would like to see something relating to that. The Empire's been abandoned even more than the Tal Shiar has post-Cutting the Cord, and I wouldn't be surprised if some in the Republic were interested in trying to 'stabilize' things. I do not necessarily condone an invasion, but I believe there are many in the Republic who probably still have family and perhaps old friends in Imperial space, caught between those feuding for power. Many of them most certainly would want to intervene. I don't know if military intervention would be the best idea, myself, with other threats about and the fact that these kinds of things go poorly enough in real life, where the feuding parties don't have cloaking devices or thalaron weapons.
This is purely hypothetical but at this point I'm thinking the Tal'Shiar are no longer subject to Iconian manipulation, but only because it's no longer worth the Iconians' efforts. They've just taken too much damage from the actions of the various player characters to recover from.
Likewise the RSE is now basically a non-entity, the space equivalent of North Korea at best. Sela packed the government with her sycophants and then went and got herself kidnapped so it's highly likely that what's left is rather ineffectual.
So basically your choices are, you either support the Republic because they're the good guys, or you support the Republic because they're the only horse left in the race, if you will. Or you strike out on your own and hope the Elachi don't eat you.
I like catoblepasbeta's (I think it was) idea to have a mission to shut the door on that plot thread once and for all: Whatever's left of the RSE opens talks with the RR, last remnants of the Tal'Shiar try to break it up, RSE and RR fight side by side against the TS and end up fire-forged friends.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
This is purely hypothetical but at this point I'm thinking the Tal'Shiar are no longer subject to Iconian manipulation, but only because it's no longer worth the Iconians' efforts. They've just taken too much damage from the actions of the various player characters to recover from.
Likewise the RSE is now basically a non-entity, the space equivalent of North Korea at best. Sela packed the government with her sycophants and then went and got herself kidnapped so it's highly likely that what's left is rather ineffectual.
So basically your choices are, you either support the Republic because they're the good guys, or you support the Republic because they're the only horse left in the race, if you will. Or you strike out on your own and hope the Elachi don't eat you.
I like catoblepasbeta's (I think it was) idea to have a mission to shut the door on that plot thread once and for all: Whatever's left of the RSE opens talks with the RR, last remnants of the Tal'Shiar try to break it up, RSE and RR fight side by side against the TS and end up fire-forged friends.
Or there's a third option. You go in, kick out the headshead of the "empire" take over, bring the rest of the Tal Shiar to heel. Then go meet with D'Tan and figure out a better way.
What I would do.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
adverbero
Well, that is a point of view I could understand very well. No emotions, just doing your job...
starswordc
I am not so sure. What are the ships you could fight still in several locations in significant numbers, for the Klingons and surely for the Fed-related Romulans? They are, as far as I remembersometimes called Romulan, but as far as I know not in any case Tal Shiar (also the assignments speak sometimes about Romulan targets, in other cases about Tal Shiar). So that looks for me as if there is indeed some elements of Imperial Navy/ State.
admiraldc
I think after your definition than there are very few Tal Shiar who should be banned from reunification/ reconciliation - because I guess the number of people who knows about the whole thing is very, very limited (surely those who taken part have not spread the knowledge). It is difficult to "time" the edvents, since the Assignments did not change, and, as said above, there are some against Tal Shiar, others speak of Romulan.
talonxv
Well, murdering the other side during negotiations would be perhaps not the best idea to include more Romulans from outside into the Republic. And even your allies might be concerned what tells that about how the Romulan Republic is honouring their promisses. If the Tal Shiar would do such a thing I just could hear the crying "how could they? killthem, killthem, killthem!"
I will have to agree with some missions relating to the mainline Imperial Navy-while they do use the Romulan Tal Shiar label if you mouse over their faction icon or something, so do some Republic-aligned ships in certain cases. Besides that, Swarmers in the Sphere also have the Elachi label, so those aren't necessarily representative.
Though that doesn't change the Tal Shiar's dramatic increase in raw military power. It's not entirely unprecedented, as they had a fleet on one occasion in DS9 as well (even if it got blown up).
As for the diplomatic bit, even if they're not aware of their leadership's role in the Hobus Supernova and support of the Iconians, many are likely still involved in atrocious Borg tech experiments where they will deliberately experiment on Republic prisoners with Borg tech. I don't even know what they have to gain from this anymore, surely Hakeev's eye implant is an indication that they've already been able to make them safe? I mean, in Mind Game I thought it was part of Hakeev's sick revenge complex so that would explain it there, but the Areinnye's?
Iconians or not, Hobus or not, the Tal Shiar has continued with many of its worst actions.
I will have to agree with some missions relating to the mainline Imperial Navy-while they do use the Romulan Tal Shiar label if you mouse over their faction icon or something, so do some Republic-aligned ships in certain cases. Besides that, Swarmers in the Sphere also have the Elachi label, so those aren't necessarily representative.
Though that doesn't change the Tal Shiar's dramatic increase in raw military power. It's not entirely unprecedented, as they had a fleet on one occasion in DS9 as well (even if it got blown up).
As for the diplomatic bit, even if they're not aware of their leadership's role in the Hobus Supernova and support of the Iconians, many are likely still involved in atrocious Borg tech experiments where they will deliberately experiment on Republic prisoners with Borg tech. I don't even know what they have to gain from this anymore, surely Hakeev's eye implant is an indication that they've already been able to make them safe? I mean, in Mind Game I thought it was part of Hakeev's sick revenge complex so that would explain it there, but the Areinnye's?
Iconians or not, Hobus or not, the Tal Shiar has continued with many of its worst actions.
The changes from the old episode 'the return' were some of the most irritating and unnecessary to date IMO. Apparently it wasn't enough to just have the Romulans experimenting with borg tech, they had to go a step further. The 'choice' to let them go or not makes absolutely no sense now, where before it was at least justifiable without being insane.
Still, between Charva and Janek there is definitely a precedent for 'good' Tal Shair even in the higher command positions.
You're not going to find disagreement from me on The Return/Where Angels Fear To Tread, as surprising as that might be. Like I said, I have absolutely no idea what they hope to get out of that considering they can clearly already make Borg implants safe for use. Again, Hakeev's eye implant shows that well enough, doesn't it?
It's rather bizarre.
As for Charva and Janek, I thought the former was supposed to be brainwashed, myself. Janek...Janek most likely falls under the 'ignorant' portion, I would say, though she is not entirely innocent as has been gone over earlier in this thread. If she had objections to killing civilians at Hfihar it would make no sense for her to be anywhere near the Tal Shiar if she knew about Hakeev's role in Hobus.
About the question TS fleet/ Imperial fleet - I think it may so that great parts of the fleet are either TS or at least under the controll of the TS (it may be that many of them were only called so - the men and women get new uniforms, a TS-rank and identification-number and some leading officers were exchanged). But there may be also parts of the Imperial fleet which are still also called Imperial (what mean not that they did not take orders from TS, although that might change after Sela is gone and Hakeev is dead).
If I may bring a example from history - the German Waffen-SS expanded very much in the last year of the war, including more and more formations, which were no longer build out of volunteers (both German and Foreign). While not only few of the new members were as fanatical and criminal as the long-serving Waffen-SS members, others simply wear the uniforms but were not much keen to the ideology (for example some of the foreign troops), some of them "volunteered" from POW-camps, camps of military internees or civilian deportees. Of course I did NOT want to suggest the TS is eaqual to Waffen-SS, the Imperial Navy to the Wehrmacht or the Star Empire to the Third Reich - this would be silly - but it shows how such things could work, how organizations could spread in crisis in a short time.
About the Borg-experiments: It may be that not all branches of the TS have the same knowledge - perhaps Hakeev and his close allies did not gave all away to the rest of the TS?
Or the experiments have another secret goal, perhaps to hope that the borg-assimilation could be controlled so that a controlled borg attack made the target controlled by the TS too?
Thats the only possible options that comes to my mind.
But while I agree that using borg tech to prisoners is bad, it is not much worse than that what KDF-Romulans could do and surely do - they work on bio-weapons several times (assignment chains), torture prisoners both physical and via telepathy, sell them to the Orions, crush rebellions and could (and in several cases surely do) raid Vulcan Stations and ships as those of neutral powers. Of course it is a different thing if crimes are down against your people compared to the crimes you do by yourself (doing crimes by yourself is a thing many people could rationalize), I would say from a logic point ov view the gap between many TS-actions and those things Rep. Roms could do and do is not SO huge.
About the question TS fleet/ Imperial fleet - I think it may so that great parts of the fleet are either TS or at least under the controll of the TS (it may be that many of them were only called so - the men and women get new uniforms, a TS-rank and identification-number and some leading officers were exchanged). But there may be also parts of the Imperial fleet which are still also called Imperial (what mean not that they did not take orders from TS, although that might change after Sela is gone and Hakeev is dead).
From Face of the Enemy, we can assume that this is simply a matter of labels. Any Imperial ship is only serving the interests of the Empire for as long as there isn't a Tal Shiar agent aboard.
That's kind of my major problem with the idea of a playable Imperial faction. There's just very little room for player agency in a xenophobic fascist culture where even the command of your ship can be usurped at any time.
I would say from a logic point ov view the gap between many TS-actions and those things Rep. Roms could do and do is not SO huge.
I've tried to avoid the question of allied DOFF missions, because we don't have many missions of our own to compare them to. A KDF Rom is just copying what the KDF does on behalf of the Klingon Empire, just like a FED Rom is just copying what the Federation does at the behest of the Federation. While there's certainly questionable stuff there, it's stuff copied from another faction, and therefore wasn't made with the Republic in mind. While I'm not dismissing any of it (after all, you're still DOING it), it's not really helpful in determining the flavor of the Republic itself, anymore than the allied episodes you play are.
Having our own DOFF missions would really help add to what we know about the Republic and how it's supposed to be conducting it's operations, but that's probably way down a long list of things that need to be added.
Yeaaaah, the DOFF stuff gets kind of silly, on that note. I keep turning up Romulan Ale on contraband missions, on a Romulan ship! :P That's a big part of why I haven't really been looking at it very much, they're, uh, a little off like that.
Should that even be contraband on Fed or KDF ships anymore? I mean, it was legal during the Dominion War, one would think the arrangement with the Republic would do something there...
From Face of the Enemy, we can assume that this is simply a matter of labels. Any Imperial ship is only serving the interests of the Empire for as long as there isn't a Tal Shiar agent aboard.
That's kind of my major problem with the idea of a playable Imperial faction. There's just very little room for player agency in a xenophobic fascist culture where even the command of your ship can be usurped at any time.
Well, chain of command and all that. A federation captain can have their command 'usurped' by a higher ranking officer at any time as well...it's happened in the shows before. So IMO it's not really that much of a 'problem'.
I'm not sure how being xenophobic or fascist could reasonably result in taking away player agency. Klingons and the Federation have their own rules and policies they have to follow, but there really isn't a problem as far as player agency in regards to them.
I'm not sure how being xenophobic or fascist could reasonably result in taking away player agency.
Well for starters, you'd have one race. Remans, Borg, and aliens are genetic trash.
Starfleet captains get orders, but have latitude in carrying them out. Klingon society is all about individual heroism, and their command structure reflects that. Romulan officers are tools of the state, with no say in their own affairs or the affairs of their ship. There's a Tal Shiar officer on the bridge with you, and when he says "jump", you cringe and pray he's not about to have you tortured to death with the rest of your senior officers on a whim.
There is only one conceivable option for a Romulan story, and that is mutiny against the Tal Shiar . . . which is, in a sense, what we got. Anything else turns the player into Janek.
Well for starters, you'd have one race. Remans, Borg, and aliens are genetic trash.
Starfleet captains get orders, but have latitude in carrying them out. Klingon society is all about individual heroism, and their command structure reflects that. Romulan officers are tools of the state, with no say in their own affairs or the affairs of their ship. There's a Tal Shiar officer on the bridge with you, and when he says "jump", you cringe and pray he's not about to have you tortured to death with the rest of your senior officers on a whim.
There is only one conceivable option for a Romulan story, and that is mutiny against the Tal Shiar . . . which is, in a sense, what we got. Anything else turns the player into Janek.
Toreth didn't cringe. She even threatened to Kill 'Rakel' on at least one occasion. And Tomalak, Sela and others certainly had a bit of latitude in carrying out their duties.
Sela was half human. And we saw another human serving in the armed forces of the star Empire in another episode. They might be distrustful of other cutlures, but it's clear that for those who are willing to adopt Romulan customs and are obedient to the desires of the Empire, there is a place. There were even Klingons allied with the Romulans in some episodes. I seriously doubt that borg implants would be enough to preclude an individual from serving in the RSE. Heck even in-game, there's the example of Hakeev.
Klingon captains can be challenged by their subordinates and even killed if they think they are cowardly, weak or otherwise unfit for duty. How is that less constraining? I'd like to see how long a nonconformist Klingon captain would last in command.
We aren't talking about the Debrune Star Empire here. They another offshoot from the species, like the Romulans.
They were among those who left Vulcan with the other Exiles, and they split off from the Exiles while the journey was underway. They did not leave on their own, but went with the ancestors of the Romulans, and then split of from them.
The Te-Vikram went onboard the same ships as the others during the exodus.I think it's completely fair to lump to categorize them among those who 'marched beneath the raptor's wings.
They did not "go" onboard. They found themselves onboard following the attack on ShiKahr. They didn't want to leave and they tried to return more than once. It is completely wrong to include them as forerunners of or ancestors of the Romulans. They were not. They didn't want to be. They didn't want to leave Vulcan. They weren't exiled. They wanted to go back to Vulcan and tried on more than one occasion. I don't think it needs to be clearer than this for even you to see that they should not be included among the proto-Romulans.
In case you haven't noticed, the status of your information is a matter of debate here. You are quite ready to pass it off as the highest tier of canon, despite the fact that very little of it actually draws from the shows, aside from your two TOS episodes. It is a highly selective selection you have there.
You are the only one who disputes the information in that work, and it is painfully obvious that you have never taken the time to read it. It includes material from ALL of the TV series and movies. You have continually insisted that the only canonical information in that work is from two TOS episodes, but if you had taken the time to read it yourself, you would know that is not the case. You, however, have intentionally ignored the TOS episodes except to mischaracterize them in line with your own preferred TNG take on the Romulans.
Also..attacks on personal character? Is it that time already? Irony O'clock?
You started these in an effort to turn the discussion from the subject matter which you were unable to refute and to focus it instead on me. The Republic exists with or without me. I am not the source of loyalty to the Republic; on the contrary, the majority of Romulans who have taken the time to express their opinion regarding Empire vs Republic have soundly favored the Republic. Your attacks are also intended to be somewhat subtle, and are used to engage in one of the many fallacies aimed at diverting attention from the subject at hand to any other thing you can come up with and think you can more easily tear down than opposing positions. I have given reasons (premises) which strongly support the idea that you are an agent provocateur for either the Tal'Shiar or the hardline T'nae-style Vulcans (hence my "attacks" on your personal character" have been, rather than examples of Argumentum ad Hominem, tentative conclusions based on evidence which I did not invent, and have come in the course of actually addressing what you have actually said; Argumentum ad Hominem is fallacious because it is an attempt to change the subject, and since the statements I have made about you were in the course of actually addressing the subject and what you've said about it, my "attacks" on you are not ad Hominem. They may well be insults, but I've also reached the end of my patience with your continuing attempts to warp and twist what I say into these various straw men which you then pillory and proclaim victory as if you have absolutely no connection to reality.
Last time I checked, you haven't exactly provided any figures yourself...so if you are going to go and make the claim that folks dissatisfied with the generally friendly attitude of the Republic are in some sort of miniscule minority. Go through the various threads and tally that number yourself.
I wasn't the one who first claimed to represent a majority, and in response to your eternal claim to be representing a majority, I did point, several times over the course of several threads, to the thread in which supporters of the Republic far outnumbered supporters of either the RSE or the Tal'Shiar or both. Also worthy of note is the fact that I never appealed to that thread to refute your claims of being representative of a majority until months later, over the course of which you continually asserted that there were more of your position than there were of mine. No, since you're the one who started all this "I represent a majority position" stuff, and since I've pointed to that thread now several times to refute your claim, the burden of proof is on you.
In such a heavily militarized society, I [would say that it's likely they are representative of general attitudes. Your insistence that the 'true' Romulans are the civilians to whom almost no screen time is devoted and who all secretly share Republic-like ideals ,despite not showing them in the actual shows....is awfully convenient.
No society can survive if the majority of the population are military. Every society needs three classes in order to survive and prosper: an intelligentsia, a guardian class, and a producer class (this is more Dumezilian than Platonic). I also never said that the majority of the population of the RSE shared "Republic-like ideals" apart from reference to the love of freedom and self-determination which actuated the exodus from Vulcan and my pointing out that that quality, that ideal, is the soul of the Romulan people.
Right, your way of maintaining 'consistency' conveniently ignores the vast majority of Romulan portrayals spread across four series.
No, it does most certainly not. If you had read it you would know that. So either you haven't bothered to read it, or you are intentionally lying here in an effort to discourage others from reading it and to try to convey this false impression of what I have said. But now you're saying that your objection to my linking that is because you dispute the information, whereas before your very obviously stated objection was that it is something on my fleet's website and that I was somehow promoting my fleet. This is something else you've done repeatedly through these discussions: moving the goalposts. I refute your BS claims and you then change your tune to something similar but different because you have not been willing to admit that you have been shown to be spouting BS.
It shows that they are weakened to the point that they can be talked with...that genocide is unnecessary.
That's your take on the situation. And let me be perfectly clear here:
I HAVE NEVER ADVOCATED THE ABSOLUTE AND TOTAL EXECUTION OF ALL TAL'SHIAR PERSONNEL.
This is part of your latest batch of propaganda against me, based, pathetically enough, on the outrageous and baseless claims made by caedicius that I and other supporters of the Republic wish to kill all Tal'Shiar personnel. On the contrary, I have repeatedly pointed out that those who have been subjected to brainwashing and Borg assimilation techniques adapted for the purpose of programming need to be deprogrammed if possible, and that some of them may be too far gone to hope for their restoration to themselves, remarking in that case that the best option for them would be to be institutionalized. I have also, over the course of many threads in this forum (and other fora in the STO forum site), remarked on how Janek shows promise, that she demonstrates a capacity for individual critical reasoning, that she has given evidence of some measure of compassion, and that I would like to turn her so that she will defect to the Republic.
In case you haven't noticed, The Tal Shiar has been the only military branch the Star Empire has had for some time now. If some patriotic Romulan wanted to protect the Empire from the Klingons, Orions, Federation Remans, etc they would have had to join the Tal Shiar. Apparently, some like Janek and Charva genuinely believe they are helping the empire in their service. Killing each and every one of them simply because of their allegiance would be tantamount to genocide, and I can't imagine that a lot of those civilians the Republic supposedly fights for would be thrilled to become orphans, widows, and widowers because their loved ones committed no greater sin than desiring to defend the Empire against its many legitimate enemies.
The Tal'Shiar is not a military organization; it is a civilian organization with some paramilitary aspects. This has been stated over and over and over again in this forum, by more people than myself alone. And again, I have never advocated killing each and everyone of them. Stop this buffoonery; to anyone who is paying attention, you're only displaying the weakness of your own position by these sorts of ludicrous and obviously false assertions.
Those individuals should be properly prosecuted. They betrayed their species where their purpose was to protect them. but unless your plan is to give summary execution to every Charva in the Tal Shiar, an eventual reintegration of Tal Shiar and RSE personnel into the Republic is inevitable and desirable.
You know that I have no such plan to execute every member of the Tal'Shiar. Nor did you ever claim that I had until along came caedicius with his "the Republic needs to reunify with the Tal'Shiar and the Empire" nonsense and victim playing. It's really rich, seeing these efforts to portray the abuser as the abused, but not atypical of symptoms of someone with DPD (which is undoubtedly a valid diagnosis in many cases of the personnel of the Tal'Shiar).
Perhaps you weren't trusted to know by the other members of the continuing committee and it was created without your knowledge. Your biases are well known and it's quite reasonable that you would be left In the dark. Perhaps it was formed as a secret group within your own intelligence agency concerned with your increasing radicalism. Perhaps it was independently formed organization created by elements within the military. Perhaps you hastily rubber-stamped some documents without bothering to read them. Whatever the case, you certainly seem to be having some issues pinning us down, despite our rather large budget. Perhaps I'll ponder how this came to pass while having some more top-of-the-line Neutronium armor fitted to one of my ships.
I never "rubber-stamp" anything. I have no biases toward the Tal'Shiar or the Empire. I have stated repeatedly that I would have preferred a TOS-style Romulan Star Empire to the Republic, my work which you have repeatedly attempted to portray as propaganda against the Star Empire discusses Emperors, Empresses, Praetors, First Consuls, Proconsuls, military personnel, and other personalities within the historical RSE fairly and evenly, noting the good as well as the bad. I have also noted that the Republic was formed by RSE military personnel. I have further stated that civilians subject to the RSE are civilians and should be treated as such, apart from the members of the Tal'Shiar. Civilians who are not and never were part of the Tal'Shiar are obviously highly unlikely to have had any part in the Hobus supernova or the attacks on Virinat, Crateris, and other loyal colony worlds which things were done by the Tal'Shiar. Obviously, not every member of the Tal'Shiar was party to or even aware of these things. The Tal'Shiar as an organization is thoroughly corrupt and unsalvageable; the Tal"Shiar as individuals is another matter, and each individual of the Tal'Shiar is to be judged individually, only taking collective guilt into consideration when it specifically relates to those individuals, and even then taking into account the brainwashing and Borg assimilation techniques used to program the rank and file. I am not radical, but I am also not going to advocate foolhardiness in dealing with the Tal'Shiar. The fact that some of them have consciences and capacity for individual rational thought, and that others are brainwashed and programmed does not excuse us from being vigilant and on our guard in any dealings with any Tal'Shiar personnel. But there are two and only two intel services within the New Republic, and both of them are military in nature and organization; they are Militia Intelligence (which is primarily concerned with intel connected to ch'Mol'Rihan and the Mol'Rihan system, and the other planets within the territory of the Republic and their systems, although they also work with the New Romulan Star Navy to some extent, but they are themselves ground forces), and the Tal'Diann (which is military, and has its own fleet, but which is also independent of the Star Navy, however having a mandate to deal with the Star Navy primarily, being concerned with Military Internal Affairs -- including as part of the Tal'Diann the Military Police Corps, the Military JAG Corps, and the Military Criminal Investigative Service --, Military Intelligence, and Scientific and Medical Research & Development). Militia Intelligence covers domestic (planet-side) intelligence activities, and the Tal'Diann covers intelligence activities which include space, both within and beyond Republic territory; however, the two organizations also overlap to some extent in several intel-related activities and concerns, and work quite well together (all the more so since one of the most well-known operatives of Militia Intelligence was an agent of the Tal'Diann under the Star Empire and helped to re-form the Tal'Diann under the Republic). The Tal'Diann has eyes and ears throughout Republic territory and beyond. And you should be apprised that impersonating an officer of the government is an actionable offense (although I doubt you're much concerned, having already made blatantly obvious your treasonous perspectives and actions).
What comes to my mind...
If there would be an Tal Shiar infiltrator, send from a real hard-core branch of the Secret Service to harm the Republic - I wonder what method he would use.
Would he argue openly for talking with TS and Imperial Remnants, hoping by that he could weaken the Republic because of a significant number of people with other ideas about the future would be included, beneath them surely some infiltrators? But that would also making himself a target for hard-core Republicans who hate all people who did not share their will to exterminate ALL TS/ Imperialists, and very likely draw attention by the Republican Secret Service to scan him. And of course it could lead to strengthen the Republic by including people from the Navy of the Empire and perhaps the TS.
Or would such a infiltrator playing a 100 percent Republican, with a deep hate towards all what is TS, and towards the Imperial Past and all what was great and source of proud for so many Romulans, in that way showing that he could be trusted by the Republican leadership, minimizing any risk of a reunification, alienating many Romulans both inside and outside of the Republic? And by this way making it clear to the last Uhlan in the TS, that there could be never any reconciliation, that they must fight to their last breath or being executed by the Republicans.
Well, that is a thing we should think about. Perhaps someone should give the Republican Intelligence a tip...someone...well, I had to do some paperwork...bye than...:D
I would advise you to not try too hard at this, lest you hurt yourself. Your report was forwarded to my office, and I had a good laugh over it. But the evidence which would support your conspiracy theorist allegations just doesn't exist; indeed, the evidence which does exist demonstrates clearly that I've never advocated the nonsense you've accused me of advocating. On the contrary, I have even gone so far as to present an intelligence briefing to D'Tan arguing against pushing the ideal of Reunification, counselling him to accept that it is unlikely to happen for at least another generation, if even then, and advising him of what should be done if he wishes to improve the chances while accepting that even if he takes that advice the effort is unlikely to bear any fruit for at least another generation -- AND I've made this intelligence briefing very public, having provided the link to it in this very forum. You have no idea what pride I have in our past. And not once have I ever even hinted that all members of the Tal'Shiar are to be executed. This is your Straw Man of my position, but I challenge you to produce any evidence in support of your ludicrous accusations. Finally, you should also be aware that slander and libel are also illegal in the Republic.
Okay, poking my head back in here again...again, this is just relating to what I've said and the responses to it:
One, I never argued for the extermination of anyone in the Empire/Tal Shiar.
afaik, nobody ever did in this forum. But if you haven't spent much time in these threads, I'll give you a heads up: catoblepas will build any Straw Man he thinks he can get away with building, claim that it's what has been said by any opponent he cannot refute, mock it, and then hurl irrelevant and unrelated ad Hominem characterizations at any opponent who is making a better showing than he is. It is his SOP.
The depths you will go to to argue semantics is truly mind-boggling. "They did not "go" onboard. They found themselves onboard"....seriously?
Aside from that...you really are convinced that the Romulans (proto-romulans/those who march beneath the raptor's wings/whatever) were all just innocent bystanders and it was the mean Vulcans oppressing them that forced them to leave. I stand by that this is a complete contradiction of everything we are told about the conflict from the shows-including a firsthand account by the Katra of Surak himself.
Also, the fact that they didn't end up as part of the Star Empire is the point. They aren't relevant
to the subject of Romulan-Vulcan reunification at all and if Romulans and Vulcans are ready to live together in harmony.
The entirety of the portrayals from the shows that you view as valid amount to two episodes from TOS. Aside from that It's pretty much just the Rihannsu books. By your own words you consider everything else to be 'revisionist' and I think that explains your position adequately.
FYI. none of the books are considered 'canon' if you want to keep splitting hairs. Good thing too, or we wouldn't even have the Borg in this game.
You started these in an .... no connection to reality.
Come off your high horse. This was about you trotting out your fan site again as if it was the holy canon. I don't your believe biased collection of sub canon references or your own fill-in-the-blanks writing to be representative of what we see of Romulans on the show and that's all there is to it. There isn't some sort of underhanded conspiracy here to shift the topic of discussion here to your personal character. If you were using that as a resource for your campaign of the Star Trek role-playing game, I wouldn't have a problem. But using what's basically a fanfic as an authoritative source-that's not something I particularly like.
There are a lot of things in secondary Trek material that I like, but I wouldn't go as far as to insist that General Chang's description of the 'Heart of Virtue' in Klingon Academy is canon until it's described that way on the shows.
Nice to see that you are still incapable of getting a number. And you are mischaracterizing position if you think I have an 'eternal claim' that RSE supporters are a majority. Now if you were to ask me if most of the people playing the Republic now would be put off if we had gotten an RSE faction instead of the Republic when LoR launched, I'd say no. There are a lot of people who don't care as long as they get their D'Deridex, or are willing to 'settle' for Republic if they can't have the Empire. I don't think playing the RSE would have been controversial at all, and it's certainly what people were voting for way back when in that poll.
1) Tell that to the Klingons. Or the Swiss.
2) 'Militarize' does not necessarily mean most of the population is military. But the military is definitely an important part of Romulan society. They don't have to be the majority to have a big impact on society.
3) Star Trek is a generally post-scarcity science fiction setting. Having a large segment of the population be involved in the military would not be as difficult as it is today.
No, it does most certainly not. ...but different because you have not been willing to admit that you have been shown to be spouting BS.
You have name dropped your fleet into more than a few topics looking for more recruits. I have no reason to think it's a different case here.
Although it bears mentioning that I didn't actually accuse you of trying to recruit people in this thread. You put those words in my mouth. The thing that bugged me was you constant promoting of this material as if it was the the last word on Romulan canon. It isn't.
At any rate, I don't feel terribly obligated to stick to some sort of quota of aspects of your usage of your fleet site to object to.
You are pretty inconsistent here, honestly. Sometimes folks like Janek and Charva get the green light but then again you also seem to be of the opinion that sorting those sorts out from the Elachii/Iconian collaborators would be infeasible, and I don't think it takes much imagination to think what you'd like to do to that bunch. So if you aren't willing to 'sort' the two groups out, but at the same time express desire at killing all Tal Shiar collaborating with the Elachii and Iconians....well...you kinda are saying you want to kill them all. And of course only those who are brainwashed or Borg'd need apply. Apparently all those who joined up in patriotic fervor to defend the Empire from the Klingons, Federation, or the 'terrorist' Romulan Republic need not apply.
The Tal'Shiar is not a military ...obviously false assertions.
They are the military of the Romulan Star Empire since the other branches were disbanded. This may debatably have been the case back in TNG times (although considering they were able to field fleets of D'deridex warbirds, their status as outside the military is debatable even then)
You are against reconciliation or reintegration between the Tal Shiar and Republic, aren't interested in separating the Elachii/Iconian collaborators from the rest (except those few your captain personally knows). That's not exactly the most...even handed way of dealing with the situation.
Saying that you have no biases against the Tal Shiar and Empire....and then saying that you would have preferred a TOS-style RSE, that just about says it, doesn't it? We don't need anymore Rihannsu/TOS characterization IMO-the Republic is already chock full of it. It's the TNG-forward RSE style Romulans that re sorely under-represented in the Republic, so when you vehemently fight against the inclusion of more of such types and consistently try to underplay their prominence-it does seem to indicate that you do have biases against them.
As for the existence of my organization....your inability to find any trace of our (rather substantial) funding in the annual budget is rather amusing. Of course we aren't called that name officially, but our mandate and powers are quite clear to those who matter...not that you'd have authorization to meddle in our affairs officially even if you did find us out
afaik, nobody ever did in this forum. But if you haven't spent much time in these threads, I'll give you a heads up: catoblepas will build any Straw Man he thinks he can get away with building, claim that it's what has been said by any opponent he cannot refute, mock it, and then hurl irrelevant and unrelated ad Hominem characterizations at any opponent who is making a better showing than he is. It is his SOP.
Look who's projecting. So soon after your rant about accusing me of shifting the debate to personal attacks we get this?
shaanithegreen
Here I disagree, first with your description of the Star Empire than with the claim that it is impossible to play a captain of such a ship (as I said in another thread, there is the possibility in Star Wars Online to play for the Empire - which seem not a very "nice" state, too). With only a little work you could have a second in command on board which is for example indeed part of the TS and "immunize" you from a takeover
protogoth
Want you to frighten me? You are not in the position to do so. Of course, if you wanting to "warn" admirals and think that will work...;)
Well, this is a simple and well-known game, to cry "catch the thief" when the first criticism occurs. Yes, that would be a brilliant new Republic if people like you will have too much to decide...
That you laugh about my memo show us only one thing - how inadequate your are for any intelligence work. Even the head of my ships security seems more able to handle this tasks. At first a officer of Intelligence should take anything serious, anyway if he personally believe it or not. Second it is obvious that you seem a little bit centred towards your self. Did I mentioned your name? No, I was speaking about certain behaviour, not only about a single person. If you think that means you, well there is a old word of the humans, I have heard from some of the Star Fleet defectors onboard "if the shoes fit, than wear it". Seems as IF the shoes fit...
And a high member of intelligence should be able and ready to cooperate with everyone - what is not a strength of YOU I guess - and should be immune against wishful thinking (dito).
And yeas I have no idea how proud you are of the Romulan past. Obviously not at all. Yelling more than once "EMPIRES ARE BAD!" and "THE STAR EMPIRE WAS ROTTEN" shows no pride at all, no respect for generations of Romulans who call the great Star Empire there home and who sacrificed a lot for that - including members of nearly all families in the Republic. It only shows a political thinking which could maybe come from the Feds or Vulcans, but very few Romulans share this radical point of view. The Star Empire was the past of the Romulans, and a proud past for many. It is the present for many of then, those who life under the rule of the Imperial Remnants. And it might be the future of the Romulan people, too. There is no reason to rule that out.
And to claim that nobody ever did argue for the extermination of all TS members is simply not true (although I guess this claims were later reversed) kodachikuno for example wrote: "I gotta say to the ones advocating being 'nice' to the Tal Shiar remnants... Yeah... I'll 'be nice' and give them a swift and painless death. "
It may not be meant in that way, but it sound so, or am I wrong? How could that work out and what picture it suggest if it comes to the ears of the TS-members? Clearly not in favor of the Republic, I would say. As do your aggressive behaviour against anyone who argue for a greater inclusion of Imperial Elements in the Republic, which would come with some changes of course. This would be the cost if the Republic should become a representation for more and more Romulans, including those who still honour the imperial past.
"However, as for the scattered cells of the Tal'Shiar, no. There is no place in the New Republic for a gang of fascist thugs terrorizing the honest and law-abiding citizens of the Republic. For any intelligence needs, the Tal'Diann's Military Intelligence branch, and Militia Intelligence, are more than capable to meet those. A free people has no need for a Secret Police force.
Donatra could be liberated from the Borg and given a chance to choose; I suspect she would not side with the Tal'Shiar, but she might well decide to attempt to resurrect the Imperial Romulan State, and syphon off disaffected elements of both the New Republic and the rotting corpse of the Star Empire. By no means am I under any illusions as to Donatra's character; she was, like many in the Imperial Star Navy and the government of the RSE itself for the past several decades, out for herself first and foremost, but she went about it in a much saner manner than Taris, Sela, or Hakeev. The forces of the Empire have had ample opportunity to change sides, and the door is still open to any who be sincere. But honestly, those who still remain in service to what is left of the Star Empire (which isn't much apart from forces under control of the Tal'Shiar) have made their choice, and they must now live (or die) with it."
And your own words did not seem to suggest a real reconciliation, open talks in which both side give something towards each other. But any treaty between warring factions need such concessions, unconditional surrender works only after total defeat (which often mean war to the last breath). And words like "have made their choice, and they must now live (or die) with it." suggest only two things - either you accept that the Romulan people will be split into hostile factions forever (which is nothing anyone could wish) or we come to the "die" part of your words, what is exactly what you now deny...:D
The depths you will go to to argue semantics is truly mind-boggling. "They did not "go" onboard. They found themselves onboard"....seriously?
I know how the masses love to parrot the dismissal of concerns of meaning by uttering an ad Hominem reference to "semantics," a term which has emotive value but which is seldom understood. In fact, morphology and semantics are of considerable concern. Any Philosopher knows that the definition of terms upfront is a good practice, and that sorting through terms with multiple meanings in order to make plain what is intended by their use of those said terms and deflect any equivocation by those engaged in study of that philosophy or by those who would take an opposing view.
HOWEVER, such a happy fact this is: this is not a question of semantics, but of ethics -- more precisely, of intent.
The Te-Vikram Brotherhood had no intention to leave Vulcan, but some of them found themselves on board the ships in the confusion following their attack on ShiKahr, and were unable to "go ashore" prior to the departure. Following the departure, they made plain repeatedly that their intention was to return to Vulcan, and they resorted to their usual practice of terroristic violence in an effort to secure the realization of that intention; having failed, they went so far as to lead a successful mutiny on one of the Great Ships with the ultimate intention of taking it and themselves back to Vulcan (although they would first go to another planet closer to their then-current location), but the crew of that vessel managed to destroy it. Still yet, the Te-Vikram Brotherhood were not deterred from their intention, instead demanding a shuttle, which they received, and those of them who boarded the shuttle left the fleet with the ultimate intention again of returning to Vulcan. Whether they ever made it back or not is not included in the lore passed down by Romulan tradition bearers -- since they had no way of knowing the fate of those who left
Aside from that...you really are convinced that the Romulans (proto-romulans/those who march beneath the raptor's wings/whatever) were all just innocent bystanders and it was the mean Vulcans oppressing them that forced them to leave. I stand by that this is a complete contradiction of everything we are told about the conflict from the shows-including a firsthand account by the Katra of Surak himself.
I wouldn't say they were all innocent bystanders by any means. The Children of Ket-Cheleb were former followers of the deceased warlord Sudoc, whose methods in his attempt to establish his own sole rulership of the entire planet of Vulcan I have already detailed. That some of his former followers had been subjected to mind-melding and psionic mind-changing may excuse some of these people from full culpability in Sudoc's injustice, but others were not followers through psionic force. Some of the Children of Ket-Cheleb, then, were hardly innocent. But as far as the attack on ShiKahr was concerned, they were not involved in, nor party to, the terrorist attacks of the Te-Vikram Brotherhood. Nor did I say that it was the Vulcans who sought to convert everyone to their perspective by force, but rather, some of the proto-Vulcans. Conflating all those proto-Vulcans is no more just or correct than conflating all those who left in two groups of ships and were made up of no less (and probably more) than five distinct groups; either act is an example of hasty generalization, and sows the seeds of bigotry and bias. As for what Surak's katra revealed, I believe you have again glossed over details in a bid to continue to promote your simplistic bifurcation fallacy that conflates all the separate groups into but two.
Also, the fact that they didn't end up as part of the Star Empire is the point. They aren't relevant
to the subject of Romulan-Vulcan reunification at all and if Romulans and Vulcans are ready to live together in harmony.
They are relevant insofar as they were responsible for the attack on ShiKahr which was blamed on the lot of those who left Vulcan, whether that departure were intentional or accidental.
The entirety of the portrayals from the shows that you view as valid amount to two episodes from TOS. Aside from that It's pretty much just the Rihannsu books. By your own words you consider everything else to be 'revisionist' and I think that explains your position adequately.
On the contrary, I have on multiple occasions in this forum referred to several examples of Romulans from TNG and later who were not the norm in the depictions of Romulans from TNG onwards, including Alidar Jarok, Doctor R'Mor, and others. My use of "revisionist" was in regards to the bizarre desire of the writers of TNG and later series to turn the Romulans into a culture wholly alien to the original picture we were given in TOS, although they fortunately did provide examples such as those I just mentioned. To misconstrue that as damning the information which comes from TNG and the later series is a totally different thing. The information we have from those later series is historical fact, but the policy behind it amounts to revisionism. Again, discernment is a virtue here, just as it is in considering the various groups who were on Vulcan prior to the departure of the last of the Exiles. To refer to the policy for the writers as "revisionist" is not to dismiss the material which they produced as "revisionist." Hard canon was always the primary concern in my work, and informs the majority of my work, with the only things discarded being those which were so wildly inconsistent with hard canon itself as to constitute self-contradiction without any additional information to explain the inconsistencies. An example which I have mentioned several times is the formation of the Tal'Shiar by Praetor Devoras Narviat, and their assassination of him, in the years between the end of TOS/TAS and the beginning of TNG, this development sufficing to explain the change in the predominant behavior of Romulans toward others (and even toward their own kind) in the years between the end of TOS/TAS and the beginning of TNG.
FYI. none of the books are considered 'canon' if you want to keep splitting hairs. Good thing too, or we wouldn't even have the Borg in this game.
Oh, really? My goodness, let's revisit that term "equivocation" which I have used above, shall we? On the one hand, you are not informing me of anything as regards what is and what is not considered "canon," as I'm fully aware of what the term encompasses in its several meanings. On the other hand, you are equivocating by conflating one meaning of "canon" with another. The sad fact is that there is more than one "canon" in relation to Star Trek; there is the "Hard Canon" which consists of the television series and movies ONLY, and which is what is usually intended when "canon" is used alone without qualification (but because of its inexactitude, it's better and less likely to result in any confusion when the qualification is spelled out: "Hard Canon"), and there is the "Soft Canon" which includes Hard Canon and various examples of literature and interviews with writers, producers, etc (although Soft Canon is largely a subjective matter, whereas Hard Canon is not) -- AND there is "STO Canon," which of course includes Hard Canon but also some examples of Soft Canon. The impression which you convey that you dislike Ms Duane's "Rihannsu" novels doesn't amount to much in terms of STO Canon, which includes information from those novels, and your liking or disliking of that reality is irrelevant, because it is the reality in STO, as has been pointed out many times in the course of these forum wars by more people than myself alone.
Come off your high horse. This was about you trotting out your fan site again as if it was the holy canon. I don't your believe biased collection of sub canon references or your own fill-in-the-blanks writing to be representative of what we see of Romulans on the show and that's all there is to it. There isn't some sort of underhanded conspiracy here to shift the topic of discussion here to your personal character. If you were using that as a resource for your campaign of the Star Trek role-playing game, I wouldn't have a problem. But using what's basically a fanfic as an authoritative source-that's not something I particularly like.
And again, until you actually take the time to read it, your attempts at criticism are baseless and need not be considered by anyone. That material is the most complete, concise, and consistent presentation of information pertaining to Romulans of which I am aware, and is wholly relevant to STO, the lore of which is based on not only Hard Canon, but also on various elements from Soft Canon. Nothing in my work contradicts your own sacred cowpile of "TNG r t3h greatestxx0r evar and Romlinz from TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT is t3h only 'true' Romlinz because I liek thm!" except that it dares to include and value the original depictions of Romulans from TOS and the background lore of STO while affirming that Romulans in TNG and later series were also actually Romulans, if led astray through ambition or terrorized into external manifestations of conformity in an effort to lessen their chances of being persecuted by the fascist bullyboys created in Star Trek: New Kids on the Block
There are a lot of things in secondary Trek material that I like, but I wouldn't go as far as to insist that General Chang's description of the 'Heart of Virtue' in Klingon Academy is canon until it's described that way on the shows.
Nice to see that you are still incapable of getting a number. And you are mischaracterizing position if you think I have an 'eternal claim' that RSE supporters are a majority. Now if you were to ask me if most of the people playing the Republic now would be put off if we had gotten an RSE faction instead of the Republic when LoR launched, I'd say no. There are a lot of people who don't care as long as they get their D'Deridex, or are willing to 'settle' for Republic if they can't have the Empire. I don't think playing the RSE would have been controversial at all, and it's certainly what people were voting for way back when in that poll.
You're the one who first made claims to superior numbers. I've given evidence to the contrary. You have yet to provide any counter-evidence. The burden of proof was on you from the very first claim of superior numbers, but I finally got tired of this propaganda and provided the link to the evidence against your claim several threads ago, so the burden of proof is even more on you now than it was initially.
1) Tell that to the Klingons. Or the Swiss.
2) 'Militarize' does not necessarily mean most of the population is military. But the military is definitely an important part of Romulan society. They don't have to be the majority to have a big impact on society.
3) Star Trek is a generally post-scarcity science fiction setting. Having a large segment of the population be involved in the military would not be as difficult as it is today.
1) Even Klingons are not all warriors. And a citizens' militia such as the Swiss have, an army consisting entirely of reserve personnel, or a nation in which the majority of the population are some other type of "part time warriors" is hardly a refutation of the Dumezilian tripartite society.
2) "Militarize" as you are now using it means "focus resources on the military, promote the military, push excuses to use the military against other peoples, glorify war, appeal to patriotism, promote nationalism, ..." but also we are again in that realm of equivocation, because even you admit that it "does not necessarily mean ..." when you know that to be one of the meanings. If you want to be understood, don't use ambiguous language. But in fact you don't care to be understood, as your only goal in these discussions is "victory" by any means possible.
3) The first challenge to this is the fact that people have different talents, different skills, and even different predispositions. A large portion of the population might easily adapt to participation in the Federation's Starfleet, which is not (or at least not only) a military organization, but the Imperial Romulan Star Navy was another matter entirely.
You have name dropped your fleet into more than a few topics looking for more recruits. I have no reason to think it's a different case here.
The Tal'Diann is not hurting for recruits; we're doing very well, thanks. I don't have to resort to "name-dropping" of our fleet in the fora in order to recruit; I have a forum signature which includes the name of the fleet and a link to the homepage of the fleet site, and it is my position and views in these forum topics wherein you and I strive which most of the new recruits have given as the primary reason for their desire to join the Tal'Diann, but others are interested in joining a fleet where RP is welcome and encouraged, others are interested in being part of the OSB Project (you'll note that this is the first time I have mentioned our participation in the OSB Project in the Romulan Gameplay forum, and afaik, we are the only fleet on the KDF side which does take part), others like the idea of a fleet which welcomes and encourages the use of the Rihan language, and still others are aware of our numbers, our fleet level, and the fast growth of our fleet holdings to higher tiers. We are, in short, a very successful and prestigious fleet, and I don't need to have ulterior motives in mentioning our fleet nor in linking someone in search of information to a page on our fleet website. I have removed troublemakers from the roster and rejected a few applicants as either unsuitable or not yet prepared. The Tal'Diann seeks quality members, not quantity of members.
However, I thank you for the opening to enumerate some of the selling points of our fleet, praise the work of our fleet members, and broadcast our worthiness -- and to those slogging through all of these posts who have an interest, the link is TalDiann.Rihannsu.org, and you'll want to start with the "Aefvadh" link in the "Pathal" box on the right side of the homepage and work your way through the other links in the "Pathal" box before diving into the blog portion of the site.
That last paragraph there is what recruiting in a forum post actually looks like, catoblepas. If you're jealous of our success, stop baiting me to defend the use of our fleet website for hosting information that is useful to members of any other Romulan fleet, including a page of Romulan Language Resources and a page of "frequently used" Romulan Language phrases, as well as a thorough discussion of what it means to be Romulan based on and including the history of the Romulan people, because your attacks only offer such an opening for me to do what I just did -- and which is, frankly, one of perhaps five (at most) times I have ever engaged in anything even like recruiting for the Tal'Diann in the Romulan Gameplay forum. We do have a thread in the New Romulus forum which is a recruiting thread, and which I seldom visit because our fleet is not in any need of constant use of the fora for recruits.
Although it bears mentioning that I didn't actually accuse you of trying to recruit people in this thread. You put those words in my mouth. The thing that bugged me was you constant promoting of this material as if it was the the last word on Romulan canon. It isn't.
You didn't actually accuse me of trying to recruit people in this thread in so many words, but the implication of your reaction was rather obvious. Had your concern been the validity of the information, your first and only complaint about the link until after I called you on it would not have been what it was: "Nice to see another plug for your fleet. sometimes it seems like we can't go two pages without getting another one." (Source, emphasis added)
You are pretty inconsistent here, honestly. Sometimes folks like Janek and Charva get the green light but then again you also seem to be of the opinion that sorting those sorts out from the Elachii/Iconian collaborators would be infeasible, and I don't think it takes much imagination to think what you'd like to do to that bunch. So if you aren't willing to 'sort' the two groups out, but at the same time express desire at killing all Tal Shiar collaborating with the Elachii and Iconians....well...you kinda are saying you want to kill them all. And of course only those who are brainwashed or Borg'd need apply. Apparently all those who joined up in patriotic fervor to defend the Empire from the Klingons, Federation, or the 'terrorist' Romulan Republic need not apply.
And what I said (yes, another of your tricks, taking things out of context) was first a questoin as to how you would propose to sort them, and then a statement that I've seen no evidence that the Tal'Shiar are not continuing to work for/with the Elachi and Iconians. Pretty simple, really, rather than all this convolution you have spewed in your efforts to make me look bad. Now, if there's evidence, of course the courts (whether the cases be tried before civilian courts of the Republic or courts-martial of the Tal'Diann, or some combination), should entertain and consider it (and I cannot guarantee this of civilian courts of the Republic, but the JAG Corps of the Tal'Diann will do so by my order even if I am not on a given Tribunal).
They are the military of the Romulan Star Empire since the other branches were disbanded. This may debatably have been the case back in TNG times (although considering they were able to field fleets of D'deridex warbirds, their status as outside the military is debatable even then)
Senators had fleets as well. Does this make the Senate part of the military?
You are against reconciliation or reintegration between the Tal Shiar and Republic, aren't interested in separating the Elachii/Iconian collaborators from the rest (except those few your captain personally knows). That's not exactly the most...even handed way of dealing with the situation.
I'm opposed to reintegration of the Tal'Shiar as an organization into the Republic and reconciliation between the Tal'Shiar as an organization and the Republic; the Tal'Shiar as an organization is not the Tal'Shiar as individual persons who are part of that organization. Again, you are equivocating. I never said that I have no interest in discerning between the guilty and the innocent, but rather that I have seen no evidence that the organization is not continuing to work with/for the Elachi/Iconians. If you can't get my position right, why do you try to criticize it? An honest critic, without any commission as an agent-provocateur, would be at pains to criticize the actual position, rather than a straw man caricature thereof, things taken out of context, equivocations, and the person herself who has expressed the position.
I will revisit this momentarily with the words "And going back to what I said above, ..."
Saying that you have no biases against the Tal Shiar and Empire....and then saying that you would have preferred a TOS-style RSE, that just about says it, doesn't it? We don't need anymore Rihannsu/TOS characterization IMO-the Republic is already chock full of it. It's the TNG-forward RSE style Romulans that re sorely under-represented in the Republic, so when you vehemently fight against the inclusion of more of such types and consistently try to underplay their prominence-it does seem to indicate that you do have biases against them.
In fact, it does say it all. It says that there was a time when the Romulan Star Empire espoused a Noble Morality if not an Heroic Ethic. It says that the Romulan Star Empire had many good years before it began to rot and fester from the inside. It says that the Romulan Star Empire was once worthy of loyalty. It says that things changed, and that the change was due to a well-meaning and good Praetor's attempt to reform the corrupt civilian intelligence service by replacing it with a new order which he named the Tal'Shiar in honor of the Emperor Sharkiek. It says that this good and well-meaning Praetor made the mistake of giving the benefit of the doubt to former members of the previous civilian intelligence service and allowing them to become not only part of, but high ranking officers in, his new Tal'Shiar, and they assassinated him for it and took over the new order and made it even more corrupt than its predecessor. It says that we would be foolish to be too eager to forgive or give the benefit of the doubt to those who have been part of the Tal'Shiar, that we must be very cautious and have solid evidence of innocence. It says that while respect should be given and disrespect should be earned, trust is also something which must be earned. It says that most, but by no means all, efforts of the abusers to portray themselves as victims are transparent and need to be seen for what they are. The histories of species from all reaches of the galaxy are filled with examples of groups which protested that they merely wished to be included, to have their voices heard, to have a seat at the table, and then used the largesse and idealism of those who held power legitimately as a means of usurping that power and launching pogroms and purges far worse than any simple disenfranchisement which they had earned through their own base instincts and psycho-sociopathy.
As for the existence of my organization....your inability to find any trace of our (rather substantial) funding in the annual budget is rather amusing. Of course we aren't called that name officially, but our mandate and powers are quite clear to those who matter...not that you'd have authorization to meddle in our affairs officially even if you did find us out
I have been aware for quite some time of a fleet which presumed to name itself "Romulan Intelligence," and which advertized itself by saying "We are the Tal'Shiar," a fleet which allied itself with the United Federation of Planets, and which has no sanction or authority from the New Republic, although its members certainly delighted in taking what resources they could get their hands on from the New Republic. If I had to guess, I would guess that the organization to which you refer is that fleet. And I have more than sufficient authorization to have the lot of you arrested and thrown in Tal'Diann holding cells
Look who's projecting. So soon after your rant about accusing me of shifting the debate to personal attacks we get this?
And going back to what I said above, ...
You have seen me go down the line, refuting your posts point by point, quoting them in their entirety, and complained that I was producing posts too lengthy for anyone to try to follow, but when I have only addressed some of your points, you have accused me of being unable to address everything you said, and any mischaracterization of my position on your part which I don't address fairly soon after your first use of it gets repeated over and over again until I finally do address it. You engage in ad Hominem attacks upon my person and character in an effort to change the subject from the matter being discussed to a discussion about me (perhaps you are obsessed with me?) or ad Hominem attacks upon the position without any attempt to refute the position logically (yeah, there's more than one kind of Argumentum ad Hominem, although most people are only familiar with "Abusive ad Hominem" directed at a person and/or his/her character, appearance, lifestyle, choice of attire, etc, and have never learned that there is more that falls under the "ad Hominem" umbrella that this sort of thing). You take sentences and even phrases out of context. You misquote. You make outrageous accusations without a shred of evidence supporting them. You set up a goalpost and when I kick the ball into the end zone, you move the goalpost further away and insist that I didn't actually score any point because you have decided to change the location of the end-zone ex post facto.
On the other hand, you've supplied ample evidence to support what I said there, and the evidence can be easily found by a simple random survey of, say, 50 of your posts in this forum.
Comments
I don't think that's what was going on there at all. Nobody is arguing that the folks who were directly responsible for the destruction of the homeworld, or of using civilians as Elachii-fertilizer remain unpunished-but there are surely a lot of folks in the Empire who could reasonably be integrated-or are you suggesting that the likes of Charva and Janek be subjected to summary execution for the crime of merely being Tal Shiar?
Ugh all this splitting hairs over categorization of the 'Romulans' and 'Vulcans' Give it a rest Protogoth. At the end of the day a line was drawn with 'Those who march beneath the Raptor's wings' and Surak's followers, and it was the former that started dropping nukes and killed Surak. 'Those who march beneath the raptor's wings' later became the Romulans. Therefore it's quite accurate for the sake of the point I was actually originally making to say that Romulans killed Surak, (plenty of reason for Vulcans to be resentful) and also shows that there were (even so recently as TNG-era) plenty on the other side who felt strongly enough about separation to use severe violence. It's quite a substantial divide between the two cultures we are talking about here-so it would not be beyond reason to expect D'Tan's reunification policies to be unpopular
You'll have to forgive me if I find your constant plugging of your fleet site to be on par with the shows as far as canon goes. considering you are openly dismissive of the four out of five live-action Star Trek shows that contradict your narrow view on what defines a 'real' Romulan.
The irony I refered to was that you keep on saying that folks who aren't happy with the Republic/prefer the RSE or Tal Shiar are some sort of miniscule minority, depite that being immediately and demonstrably false to anyone who bothers to read these threads. my impression is that it's much closer to an even split, unless you are only counting people who want to play the Tal Shiar as written in game. Which I pointed out, is not even a category I include myself in.
the only revisionism going on here is covering your eyes and ears and pretending that the Romulans that dominated portrayals in four of the five series and pretending that they are in no way indicative of any sort of cultural trend in Romulan Culture, and that only the two appearances in TOS and the Rihannsu novels count.
I bring up the book timeframe that contradicts earlier dates to highlight just how married you are to the idea of a specific depiction of Romulans. In your head, the only valid information on Romulans is the stuff that directly supports the Rihhansu novels. It's pretty obvious that you are cherry picking when anything that doesn't support your idea of a proper Romulan is either 'cherry picking' 'revisionist' or some other kind of outlier despite the overwhelmingly consistent portrayal of Romulans over four series. Considering the Romulans of ENT were much closer to the post-TOS Romulans thant the TOS Romulans, IMO it isn't too hard a stretch for the Tal Shiar to be around back then, considering it would fit in just as well in that era.
Tal Shiar attempts to negotiate, however shallow-show that there is at least the possibility for some sort of reconciliation in the future. Which is IMO, much more preferable to letting half the species burn. Before you call the RSE/Tal Shiar remnants a tiny minority, consider that the Rator is still part of the Empire. Would you consign all of those living there to death so readily?
Obisek has done many bad things within recent memory, ditto for his Reman pirates who are described as hunting Romulan civilians for sport. The brutal sorts of things Klingons do to prisoners of war (or even just civilians caught in the wrong place at the wrong time) is despicable on par with some of the things the Tal Shiar has done-easily. They also tried to invade the Star Empire with the goal of enslaving the Romulan people like they have so many others within recent memory. If the Republic can accept these sorts of people so readily, than RSE remnants (after sorting out the folks involved with the Elachii and Hobus Supernova) being given pardons should not be a problem.
And yes, Republic Intelligence is surely a thing-your ignorance of the inner workings of the Republic aside. Perhaps you just don't have the security clearance to know of such things yet? I can't imagine why, what with all your dealings with Orion slavers, Nausicaan pirates and Klingon murderers...:D
I assure you, the D'Deridex I captain is quite real, and the Khazara is eternally ready to defend the Republic from external threats like the Tal Shiar, Elachii, etc....as well as threats from the inside....such as those who purport to stand for 'freedom' while attempting to stack the highest positions of government with D'Tan's sycophants.
I do not only "try" but I indeed DO argue that in the past 23 years
1) a lot of new members surely had joined the Tal Shiar, which have nothing to do with the supernova and could hardly be blamed for that
2) at least some of the middle and even upper ranks of the 2409-Tal Shiar have made it up in ranks in that 23 years - and by that were not directly involved in the supernova (and are, too, not responsibble and in several cases also did not know the truth about the whole thing)
3) Several of the people who were indeed involved were killed or died or captured or disappeared and are by that no longer in commanding position
4) It seems very likely that several of the Splinter Cells of the Tal Shiar after Hakeevs end are under the controll of men and women who had nothing to do wth the supernova, either because of 1) and 2) or because they were simply not involved in the project because they were other branches of Tal Shiar at that time
5) The Imperial Remnants of course also have in most cases nothing to do with the supernova.
Is there proof that one of this points is wrong, than I will drop it.
catoblepasbeta
Well, let me say so far - if there is need for the warbirds to fly against any enemy, either from outside or another direction, I am sure and promise that your D'Deridex will not be alone...:D
protogoth
I disagree with your opinion about catoblepasbeta's idea. At first - Imperialist might be more willing to accept the Repblic if she is offering them a warm welcome (some vertain individuals excluded) and start up the re-unition propaganda etc. (instead of advocating beeing nice with vulcans, Feds, Klingons - but at war with other Romulans)
"D'Tan is not going anywhere. His leadership is more than adequate. Indeed, his both capable and competent, qualities which have been missing in the leadership of the Star Empire since before the destruction of the Eisn system. The Star Empire began to rot from within long before the Hobus supernova, and that rot was not only allowed to continue, it was encouraged to grow until it ate the Star Empire and is now all that remains of a once mighty polity."
Well, I guess such a point of view is perfect - to alienate A LOT of Romulans, including many inside the Republic. Many of them had members of their families who fight for the Empire, and none of them will like to hear that they fought for a roten cause. That is only something for people who really embraced the mainly Federation-Propaganda, seeing an Empire as something bad. There were mistakes and wrongdoing in the Empire, of course, but also things many Romulans were proud of, and which they remember with pain (pain of loss, I mean).
All
By the way, before we are going on to argue who speaks for the majority was there ever a opinion poll (and which results it shows) with questions if the people?
a) want the Republic as she is (and never including greater parts of the Tal Shiar/ Imperial Remnants)
b) want the Republic to become a more "imperial", for example by including parts of TS / IR etc.
c) want the option of playable TS/ IR
d, e and f - anything what comes to your mind and what I have forgotten...
In other words, they're a modern democratic republic.
The Federation is a futuristic democratic utopia. The Romulan Republic is not. Like a modern republic, they have a bloody history, are willing to get their hands dirty, and are ready to defend their freedom with weapons that can scour life from an entire planet. They could (for example) make an expansionist push into the fractured Empire to annex as much of Romulan space as they can control, something that the Federation would consider unconscionable, but which has parallels in events unfolding right now.
Show me someone who says that makes them "Fed clones", and I will show you someone who missed the entire point of Star Trek.
Or Ron D. Moore, I guess.
Unironically, yes.
The Romulan Republic is the worst government the Romulan people have ever had, except for all the others. That's what makes them interesting.
You know what would really help? Defining the term "reunification."
What would that mean in practice? Some Romulans act like Vulcans? All Romulans act like Vulcans? Some Vulcans act like Romulans? Does it simply mean living under a unified government? Would the Republic join the Federation, or would Vulcan leave the Federation to join the Romulans? Would it simply mean that Romulans are free to take part in Vulcan culture, and vice-versa?
The problem is, the game has never really let D'Tan make his case. Without hearing his proposal, we can't really debate the finer points of his plan.
About Reunification you are right, D'Tan never said that in detail, and that is a problem. That he made it not clear does also fuel some distrust (or hopes). But I still think that many Romulans would prefer a ROMULAN Reunification over a Romulan-Vulcan Reunification (or a Reman-Romulan Reunification). A Reunfication with the Vulcans would also made much less sense politicaly, since a inner-Romulan Reunfication would surely strengthen the Republic, as would the Romulan-Reman Reunification. But Vulcan? What has Vulcan to offer? Not much in hard terms (and when it comes to "science", well, some Romulans may still have some distrust towards Vulcan scientists...). You could argue with emotions about reunification with the Vulcans (haha good joke
Well, we do know a lot about the TNG era. Life pretty much sucks on every level of society. There's a massive slave caste. Dissidents have to hide in the sewer. Civilians are encouraged to rat on each other. The military is largely ineffectual and crushed under the thumb of the Tal Shiar. The Tal Shiar are so corrupt and working at ends with the rest of the Empire that their leader works for the Federation, and that gets him a promotion to the Senate. The Senate sucks, because they are all assassinated in one swoop by the slave caste.
The TNG Empire was always black-and-white at it's worst, and a second-rate Cardassia at it's best. The better parts were given to the Republic in STO. I grant that they need fleshing out more, but we're getting that, slowly but surely.
I'm sure you can imagine there was a better government at one point, or at least one you would think is better, but we've never seen it. Even the Rihannsu novels make a point to show that the corruption and backstabbing (an "endless bloodbath of inter-Romulan warfare", if you will) has always existed, even back when the Empire had a shred of honor.
According to Spock, reunification on some level is inevitable, within decades or centuries.
I guess you could argue that he's wrong, but I am not sure that "I know more about Star Trek than Spock!" is really a valid point to debate from.
As to what Vulcan has to offer, it seems the Romulans are a little fixated on it. Even the higher-ups in the Empire wants to be reunified with them: granted, they want that to happen by conquering Vulcan. They're ready to invade the planet and fight the Federation for it, in any case. That'd be a funny thing to do for a planet and culture that offers you nothing.
Even in STO, they're obsessed with blowing it up.
First, pointing out the very real and very pronounced differences between the various subgroups who left Vulcan (not Romulans by any mean) and the fact of sectarianism even within those who purported to follow the teachings of Surak (not Vulcans by any means) is hardly "splitting hairs."
Second, it was the Vulcan establishment which came up with this official blurring of distinctions and labelled all who left Vulcan as 'those who march beneath the Raptor's wings," so now you are parroting those very people whom you claim to be so opposed to reunification with, and taking their obvious conflation as holy writ while denying the lore passed down for centuries among those people whom you claim to represent.
Third, the groups which left Vulcan did not later become the Romulans. Some became Debrune. Some went their own way and we have no idea what became of them. Some became the Remans.
Fourth, the Te-Vikram Brotherhood, a religious terrorist group predating Surak, is responsible for the attack on ShiKahr.
Fifth, the Te-Vikram Brotherhood never wanted to leave Vulcan, made as much trouble on the journey as possible, even tried their best to return to Vulcan, and are not ever held up by modern Romulans as an example of their forebears.
Sixth, there were no Romulans at the time of Surak's death, and those who left split at least three times before some of them eventually became Romulan. Attempting to muddy the waters and (a) use anachronistic terminology even when it has been pointed out to be anachronistic repeatedly and (b) repeatedly assert that a group which did not yet even exist, and which derives from only a portion of those who left bears the guilt for an act by only one of the groups which left and which was a tiny majority by the time the Sundered reached the Eisn system (if indeed any of them were still with the Exiles when they finally arrived in the Eisn system) serves no purpose other than sewing doubt and discontent among Romulans and promoting the demonstrably false "official history" of a people whom you claim to dislike so much as to wet yourself over the mere mention of Reunification with. It's far more likely that, like T'Nae, you oppose Reunification because you revere Surak and hate the Romulans for something which happened two-thousand years ago (so that even IF any of the legitimate forebears of the modern Romulan people had been involved, their responsibility/guilt would not be shared by any modern Romulans), and which was done by a very small portion of those who left, and which very small portion never wanted to leave and tried to return more than once.
Seventh, D'Tan's personal desire for Reunification is one thing. Any supposed Reunification "policies" have not once been shown to exist. AND D'Tan is more than his belief in Reunification. Even I have pointed out repeatedly that I do not support Reunification, and yet, here I am, still supporting D'Tan and the Republic. In Logic, by which I of course mean the academic discipline without any connection to Cthia, we call this last example "disproof" of what you have attempted to portray, namely that all who oppose Reunification must likewise oppose D'Tan.
Someone asked for historical information. I provided a link to the most concise and consistent collection of historical information of which I know. Again, you attempt to portray this as me plugging my fleet, when it was nothing of the sort. Do you imagine for one second that I am trying to recruit someone to my fleet, a fleet of the Republic, when that someone has repeatedly stated his opposition for the Republic? Are you so blinded by your biases that you cannot see how very obvious is your attempt to divert the discussion from the subject matter to an attack upon my personal character?
It is absolutely NOT immediately and demonstrably false. What in the name of the Mother? Are you damaged by Tal'Shiar programming or innately this irrational? If anything, that one thread alone demonstrates the truth of it. Where were all your side's advocates in that thread? I challenged you to take a count. I do not see that you have done so. Where are your figures? Where is this supposed "demonstration" of the falsehood of the very real fact that supporters of the RSE and/or Tal'Shiar are a minority? Take the count. Go back through every post in this forum and count those on each side, taking care to note the few who have changed their opinion one way or another. And no, I have clearly made the distinction (several times even in this very thread) "imperialists and/or Tal'Shiar sympathizers."
If you are really so gullible as to believe that military hawks and secret police personnel are representative of the majority view/character of any nation-state, then you are sadly in need of a dose of reality. ((We can take numerous real-world examples which give the lie to such an uncritical position, although doing so would be getting much too dangerously close to, if not actually engaging in, crossing the lines established by the rules of this forum site, and established for very good reasons.)) When I referred specifically to "military hawks," you tried to hold up Alidar Jarok as an example of those to whom I have appealed, and yet, is there ever any indication that he was a military hawk? Do you intentionally leave these qualifications out of your replies, hoping no-one will catch the omissions, or does the Doublethink programmed into you by your Tal'Shiar puppetmaster simply cause you to Fnord the qualifications out of your mind?
No, you grasp at straws and fail to pay attention when I state (as I have done over and over and over and over again in this forum) that I had to make decisions about what to include and what to exclude on the basis of consistency, and that anyone else with a concern to produce a work that even makes sense would likewise have to pick and choose, AND that I could easily have made the RSE look even worse if depicting the RSE in a bad light had been my intention. If you were familiar with the "Rihannsu" novels, you would see that I did not include some of the information which comes from them, too, and again, it was precisely due to my concern with producing a consistent product. YOU are the one who seeks to cherry-pick the available evidence. While I have stated that I dislike the predominant depiction of Romulans from TNG and later series, I have not once tried to ignore it as you have done with the depiction of the Romulans in TOS.
You know very well that the offer put on the table was yet another attempt on the part of the Tal'Shiar to take control of the Romulan and Reman people, and that any such offer of political "support" by the Tal'Shiar is not to be taken as sincere or trustworthy without a considerable amount of corroborating evidence. Even that very recording leaves little doubt in the mind of any honest viewer that the Tal'Shiar were not interested in sharing power with D'Tan, not interested in working within the framework of a republic, and did not wish to take the offer to the people. Be very certain: the Tal'Shiar are the enemies of the Romulan and Reman people, and there can be no reconciliation with them that does not result in the Romulans, and especially the Remans, resuming their position under the thumb (in the case of the Remans, more likely under the boot heel) of the Tal'Shiar. Civilians living under imperial rule are still civilians. Of course they would not be held responsible for the crimes of those who lord it over them, nor have I ever suggested anything along those lines. The Tal'Shiar, and even the Star Empire itself, have made no such distinctions, yet here you are again, attempting to portray me as the villain when it is crystal clear that the villain in this struggle is the one who opposes freedom of choice for the people and wishes to see the power of the Star Empire over those people restored.
No, there is nothing which has been done by the Remans, nor even the Klingons, which compares even remotely to the indiscriminate massacre of BILLIONS OF THEIR OWN PEOPLE on the part of the Tal'Shiar. And how exactly do you propose sorting between those who were involved with the Elachi and/or the Hobus supernova and those who were not? Has there been even the least bit of evidence that the Tal'Shiar is not continuing to collaborate with the Elachi and Iconians? I have not seen it.
Since the Chief of Military Intelligence has a permanent seat on the Continuing Committee and is a member of the Star Command with equal rank to every other member thereof, and answers ONLY to whomever the leader of the Romulan government may be, my clearance is not a matter for doubt. Your racism does not change that. There is no civilian Intelligence service in the Republic. There certainly is no secret police force. Neither of these things are necessary; the former would be a redundant body, all the more so since there are already both Military Intelligence and Militia Intelligence, and the latter would be a mockery of everything the Republic stands for.
Your rhetoric and propaganda show very clearly who opposes freedom.
Well, you could say similar bad things about the Klingons, and I am sure many of them will fight to their last breath to defend the way of life they seen as genuine KLINGON-LIKE. And it is hard to believe that all things were so bad, since such a society could hardly exist over decades (as I said, we have mainly a little biased point of view, much less seen with the eyes of Romulans).
And of course the Empire in NG is only one aspect of Romulans history of thousands of years. And I would say the Romulan military was not SO ineffective, the Star Empire was still strong and feared.
Well Spock was wrong only several points in his life, in several cases when it comes to emotions (you remember, trusting a women who nearly blasted up the whole peace-process between Klingons and Federation, for example). That leads to the conclusion that even after many years of service he was far from being perfect...
You are right some parts of the leadership were obsessed with Vulcan (but perhaps because they thought that the Reunificationists were a real danger for their society from inside, or Vulcan was a easy prey so that they could made progress or...)
Coming back to your question what reunification mean - well, in human history it was often a word for two things become one - by ending on of both (the German reunification means the end of the GDR, the Vietnamese reunification means the end of the South Vietnamese State, and so on). I am not sure how THIS would work. But on the other hand, I am also very sure that the Vulcans had no intention to end being Vulcans. The little I read in the "Path to 2409" sounds that Romulans study Vulcan history - not a growing interest on Vulcan in learning more and more about the culture of the Romulans, adapting parts of them to their own. I do not know that for sure, but I guess many Vulcans still see the Exodus as failure and their way as right, and their imagination of reunification is that the Romulans become more and more Vulcan-like, not the other way (that must not mean that they dream of an united state, but perhaps of a shared ideology, which in their eyes very likely is more Vulcan than Romulan).
protogoth
"Do you imagine for one second that I am trying to recruit someone to my fleet, a fleet of the Republic, when that someone has repeatedly stated his opposition for the Republic?"
Since I guess that with that "someone" you means me (but it would the same if you mean catoblepasbeta), pardon me, but I must say that you seem to be the one who is "blinded by your biases". It shows a very narrow perspective if someone who just want another type of Romulan Republic than the one you would like is in your eyes "opposition for the Republic". This is, pardon me again, a point of view your char might have. You as a player should be beyond that, I think.
Or is that your opinion: "Democracy is great. The only thing that TRIBBLE me off is that there are people with different opinions..."
We aren't talking about the Debrune Star Empire here. They another offshoot from the species, like the Romulans.
The Te-Vikram went onboard the same ships as the others during the exodus.I think it's completely fair to lump to categorize them among those who 'marched beneath the raptor's wings.
In case you haven't noticed, the status of your information is a matter of debate here. You are quite ready to pass it off as the highest tier of canon, despite the fact that very little of it actually draws from the shows, aside from your two TOS episodes. It is a highly selective selection you have there.
Also..attacks on personal character? Is it that time already? Irony O'clock?
Last time I checked, you haven't exactly provided any figures yourself...so if you are going to go and make the claim that folks dissatisfied with the generally friendly attitude of the Republic are in some sort of miniscule minority. Go through the various threads and tally that number yourself.
In such a heavily militarized society, I [would say that it's likely they are representative of general attitudes. Your insistence that the 'true' Romulans are the civilians to whom almost no screen time is devoted and who all secretly share Republic-like ideals ,despite not showing them in the actual shows....is awfully convenient.
Right, your way of maintaining 'consistency' conveniently ignores the vast majority of Romulan portrayals spread across four series.
It shows that they are weakened to the point that they can be talked with...that genocide is unnecessary.
In case you haven't noticed, The Tal Shiar has been the only military branch the Star Empire has had for some time now. If some patriotic Romulan wanted to protect the Empire from the Klingons, Orions, Federation Remans, etc they would have had to join the Tal Shiar. Apparently, some like Janek and Charva genuinely believe they are helping the empire in their service. Killing each and every one of them simply because of their allegiance would be tantamount to genocide, and I can't imagine that a lot of those civilians the Republic supposedly fights for would be thrilled to become orphans, widows, and widowers because their loved ones committed no greater sin than desiring to defend the Empire against its many legitimate enemies.
Those individuals should be properly prosecuted. They betrayed their species where their purpose was to protect them. but unless your plan is to give summary execution to every Charva in the Tal Shiar, an eventual reintegration of Tal Shiar and RSE personnel into the Republic is inevitable and desirable.
Perhaps you weren't trusted to know by the other members of the continuing committee and it was created without your knowledge. Your biases are well known and it's quite reasonable that you would be left In the dark. Perhaps it was formed as a secret group within your own intelligence agency concerned with your increasing radicalism. Perhaps it was independently formed organization created by elements within the military. Perhaps you hastily rubber-stamped some documents without bothering to read them. Whatever the case, you certainly seem to be having some issues pinning us down, despite our rather large budget. Perhaps I'll ponder how this came to pass while having some more top-of-the-line Neutronium armor fitted to one of my ships.
If there would be an Tal Shiar infiltrator, send from a real hard-core branch of the Secret Service to harm the Republic - I wonder what method he would use.
Would he argue openly for talking with TS and Imperial Remnants, hoping by that he could weaken the Republic because of a significant number of people with other ideas about the future would be included, beneath them surely some infiltrators? But that would also making himself a target for hard-core Republicans who hate all people who did not share their will to exterminate ALL TS/ Imperialists, and very likely draw attention by the Republican Secret Service to scan him. And of course it could lead to strengthen the Republic by including people from the Navy of the Empire and perhaps the TS.
Or would such a infiltrator playing a 100 percent Republican, with a deep hate towards all what is TS, and towards the Imperial Past and all what was great and source of proud for so many Romulans, in that way showing that he could be trusted by the Republican leadership, minimizing any risk of a reunification, alienating many Romulans both inside and outside of the Republic? And by this way making it clear to the last Uhlan in the TS, that there could be never any reconciliation, that they must fight to their last breath or being executed by the Republicans.
Well, that is a thing we should think about. Perhaps someone should give the Republican Intelligence a tip...someone...well, I had to do some paperwork...bye than...:D
One, I never argued for the extermination of anyone in the Empire/Tal Shiar. I said that anyone who served the Tal Shiar knowing what they had done, of their own free will, was untrustworthy, and proceeded to highlight that defectors had already been taken in. Those who see the writing on the wall have been welcomed. However, as for the claims of splinter groups and such, I really can't answer much about that, as we simply have not seen much of the Tal Shiar after Commander Ruul's capture, or even Cutting the Cord. There are some references to them after Cutting the Cord, but not too much: the Borg front mission Where Angels Fear to Tread, where Republic vessels are willing to answer the I.R.W. Areinnye's (wow, I actually spelled that right from memory!) distress call...though we can also blow it up after we find out what they've been doing there with Republic prisoners. Interestingly, the Iconian Dreadnought that was in the pre-revamp version of that mission has been removed, so there isn't as much pointing straight to continued direct involvement with the Iconians, but definitely towards continued hostility elsewhere. There's also a reference to them in the Republic version of Surface Tension, where a Republic security officer will reference checking for Tal Shiar infiltration on one of the frequencies you dig through for monitoring.
Of these, Where Angels Fear to Tread can be safely assumed to take place after Hakeev's death, I think, but I can't speak for where it falls in compared to the earlier events of the New Romulus reputation track. Surface Tension is unambiguously post-New Romulus Rep, though, as it follows Dyson rep, which follows NR rep. Gates and all that.
This seems to point to definite continued hostilities, but not necessarily continued Iconian manipulation, as the appearance of the Obex no longer occurs, and we have never seen them working with the Elachi again despite confirmation of significant Elachi remnant forces that were not destroyed in Devil's Choice. ...oh, there's something else I remember, now. There's also a reference to the Tal Shiar in Sphere of Influence, where the Iconian data seems to indicate that they consider their alliance with the Tal Shiar 'problematic.' However, they don't go into any more detail than that on them.
As for the remnants of the Star Empire, we see even less there, and I certainly never spoke of trying to exterminate every Imperial citizen, so don't put words in my mouth. They're victims of those feuding for power, and I would like to see something relating to that. The Empire's been abandoned even more than the Tal Shiar has post-Cutting the Cord, and I wouldn't be surprised if some in the Republic were interested in trying to 'stabilize' things. I do not necessarily condone an invasion, but I believe there are many in the Republic who probably still have family and perhaps old friends in Imperial space, caught between those feuding for power. Many of them most certainly would want to intervene. I don't know if military intervention would be the best idea, myself, with other threats about and the fact that these kinds of things go poorly enough in real life, where the feuding parties don't have cloaking devices or thalaron weapons.
Likewise the RSE is now basically a non-entity, the space equivalent of North Korea at best. Sela packed the government with her sycophants and then went and got herself kidnapped so it's highly likely that what's left is rather ineffectual.
So basically your choices are, you either support the Republic because they're the good guys, or you support the Republic because they're the only horse left in the race, if you will. Or you strike out on your own and hope the Elachi don't eat you.
I like catoblepasbeta's (I think it was) idea to have a mission to shut the door on that plot thread once and for all: Whatever's left of the RSE opens talks with the RR, last remnants of the Tal'Shiar try to break it up, RSE and RR fight side by side against the TS and end up fire-forged friends.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Or there's a third option. You go in, kick out the headshead of the "empire" take over, bring the rest of the Tal Shiar to heel. Then go meet with D'Tan and figure out a better way.
What I would do.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
Well, that is a point of view I could understand very well. No emotions, just doing your job...
starswordc
I am not so sure. What are the ships you could fight still in several locations in significant numbers, for the Klingons and surely for the Fed-related Romulans? They are, as far as I remembersometimes called Romulan, but as far as I know not in any case Tal Shiar (also the assignments speak sometimes about Romulan targets, in other cases about Tal Shiar). So that looks for me as if there is indeed some elements of Imperial Navy/ State.
admiraldc
I think after your definition than there are very few Tal Shiar who should be banned from reunification/ reconciliation - because I guess the number of people who knows about the whole thing is very, very limited (surely those who taken part have not spread the knowledge). It is difficult to "time" the edvents, since the Assignments did not change, and, as said above, there are some against Tal Shiar, others speak of Romulan.
talonxv
Well, murdering the other side during negotiations would be perhaps not the best idea to include more Romulans from outside into the Republic. And even your allies might be concerned what tells that about how the Romulan Republic is honouring their promisses. If the Tal Shiar would do such a thing I just could hear the crying "how could they? killthem, killthem, killthem!"
Though that doesn't change the Tal Shiar's dramatic increase in raw military power. It's not entirely unprecedented, as they had a fleet on one occasion in DS9 as well (even if it got blown up).
As for the diplomatic bit, even if they're not aware of their leadership's role in the Hobus Supernova and support of the Iconians, many are likely still involved in atrocious Borg tech experiments where they will deliberately experiment on Republic prisoners with Borg tech. I don't even know what they have to gain from this anymore, surely Hakeev's eye implant is an indication that they've already been able to make them safe? I mean, in Mind Game I thought it was part of Hakeev's sick revenge complex so that would explain it there, but the Areinnye's?
Iconians or not, Hobus or not, the Tal Shiar has continued with many of its worst actions.
Still, between Charva and Janek there is definitely a precedent for 'good' Tal Shair even in the higher command positions.
It's rather bizarre.
As for Charva and Janek, I thought the former was supposed to be brainwashed, myself. Janek...Janek most likely falls under the 'ignorant' portion, I would say, though she is not entirely innocent as has been gone over earlier in this thread. If she had objections to killing civilians at Hfihar it would make no sense for her to be anywhere near the Tal Shiar if she knew about Hakeev's role in Hobus.
If I may bring a example from history - the German Waffen-SS expanded very much in the last year of the war, including more and more formations, which were no longer build out of volunteers (both German and Foreign). While not only few of the new members were as fanatical and criminal as the long-serving Waffen-SS members, others simply wear the uniforms but were not much keen to the ideology (for example some of the foreign troops), some of them "volunteered" from POW-camps, camps of military internees or civilian deportees. Of course I did NOT want to suggest the TS is eaqual to Waffen-SS, the Imperial Navy to the Wehrmacht or the Star Empire to the Third Reich - this would be silly - but it shows how such things could work, how organizations could spread in crisis in a short time.
About the Borg-experiments: It may be that not all branches of the TS have the same knowledge - perhaps Hakeev and his close allies did not gave all away to the rest of the TS?
Or the experiments have another secret goal, perhaps to hope that the borg-assimilation could be controlled so that a controlled borg attack made the target controlled by the TS too?
Thats the only possible options that comes to my mind.
But while I agree that using borg tech to prisoners is bad, it is not much worse than that what KDF-Romulans could do and surely do - they work on bio-weapons several times (assignment chains), torture prisoners both physical and via telepathy, sell them to the Orions, crush rebellions and could (and in several cases surely do) raid Vulcan Stations and ships as those of neutral powers. Of course it is a different thing if crimes are down against your people compared to the crimes you do by yourself (doing crimes by yourself is a thing many people could rationalize), I would say from a logic point ov view the gap between many TS-actions and those things Rep. Roms could do and do is not SO huge.
From Face of the Enemy, we can assume that this is simply a matter of labels. Any Imperial ship is only serving the interests of the Empire for as long as there isn't a Tal Shiar agent aboard.
That's kind of my major problem with the idea of a playable Imperial faction. There's just very little room for player agency in a xenophobic fascist culture where even the command of your ship can be usurped at any time.
I've tried to avoid the question of allied DOFF missions, because we don't have many missions of our own to compare them to. A KDF Rom is just copying what the KDF does on behalf of the Klingon Empire, just like a FED Rom is just copying what the Federation does at the behest of the Federation. While there's certainly questionable stuff there, it's stuff copied from another faction, and therefore wasn't made with the Republic in mind. While I'm not dismissing any of it (after all, you're still DOING it), it's not really helpful in determining the flavor of the Republic itself, anymore than the allied episodes you play are.
Having our own DOFF missions would really help add to what we know about the Republic and how it's supposed to be conducting it's operations, but that's probably way down a long list of things that need to be added.
Should that even be contraband on Fed or KDF ships anymore? I mean, it was legal during the Dominion War, one would think the arrangement with the Republic would do something there...
Well, chain of command and all that. A federation captain can have their command 'usurped' by a higher ranking officer at any time as well...it's happened in the shows before. So IMO it's not really that much of a 'problem'.
I'm not sure how being xenophobic or fascist could reasonably result in taking away player agency. Klingons and the Federation have their own rules and policies they have to follow, but there really isn't a problem as far as player agency in regards to them.
Well for starters, you'd have one race. Remans, Borg, and aliens are genetic trash.
Starfleet captains get orders, but have latitude in carrying them out. Klingon society is all about individual heroism, and their command structure reflects that. Romulan officers are tools of the state, with no say in their own affairs or the affairs of their ship. There's a Tal Shiar officer on the bridge with you, and when he says "jump", you cringe and pray he's not about to have you tortured to death with the rest of your senior officers on a whim.
There is only one conceivable option for a Romulan story, and that is mutiny against the Tal Shiar . . . which is, in a sense, what we got. Anything else turns the player into Janek.
Sela was half human. And we saw another human serving in the armed forces of the star Empire in another episode. They might be distrustful of other cutlures, but it's clear that for those who are willing to adopt Romulan customs and are obedient to the desires of the Empire, there is a place. There were even Klingons allied with the Romulans in some episodes. I seriously doubt that borg implants would be enough to preclude an individual from serving in the RSE. Heck even in-game, there's the example of Hakeev.
Klingon captains can be challenged by their subordinates and even killed if they think they are cowardly, weak or otherwise unfit for duty. How is that less constraining? I'd like to see how long a nonconformist Klingon captain would last in command.
They were among those who left Vulcan with the other Exiles, and they split off from the Exiles while the journey was underway. They did not leave on their own, but went with the ancestors of the Romulans, and then split of from them.
They did not "go" onboard. They found themselves onboard following the attack on ShiKahr. They didn't want to leave and they tried to return more than once. It is completely wrong to include them as forerunners of or ancestors of the Romulans. They were not. They didn't want to be. They didn't want to leave Vulcan. They weren't exiled. They wanted to go back to Vulcan and tried on more than one occasion. I don't think it needs to be clearer than this for even you to see that they should not be included among the proto-Romulans.
You are the only one who disputes the information in that work, and it is painfully obvious that you have never taken the time to read it. It includes material from ALL of the TV series and movies. You have continually insisted that the only canonical information in that work is from two TOS episodes, but if you had taken the time to read it yourself, you would know that is not the case. You, however, have intentionally ignored the TOS episodes except to mischaracterize them in line with your own preferred TNG take on the Romulans.
You started these in an effort to turn the discussion from the subject matter which you were unable to refute and to focus it instead on me. The Republic exists with or without me. I am not the source of loyalty to the Republic; on the contrary, the majority of Romulans who have taken the time to express their opinion regarding Empire vs Republic have soundly favored the Republic. Your attacks are also intended to be somewhat subtle, and are used to engage in one of the many fallacies aimed at diverting attention from the subject at hand to any other thing you can come up with and think you can more easily tear down than opposing positions. I have given reasons (premises) which strongly support the idea that you are an agent provocateur for either the Tal'Shiar or the hardline T'nae-style Vulcans (hence my "attacks" on your personal character" have been, rather than examples of Argumentum ad Hominem, tentative conclusions based on evidence which I did not invent, and have come in the course of actually addressing what you have actually said; Argumentum ad Hominem is fallacious because it is an attempt to change the subject, and since the statements I have made about you were in the course of actually addressing the subject and what you've said about it, my "attacks" on you are not ad Hominem. They may well be insults, but I've also reached the end of my patience with your continuing attempts to warp and twist what I say into these various straw men which you then pillory and proclaim victory as if you have absolutely no connection to reality.
I wasn't the one who first claimed to represent a majority, and in response to your eternal claim to be representing a majority, I did point, several times over the course of several threads, to the thread in which supporters of the Republic far outnumbered supporters of either the RSE or the Tal'Shiar or both. Also worthy of note is the fact that I never appealed to that thread to refute your claims of being representative of a majority until months later, over the course of which you continually asserted that there were more of your position than there were of mine. No, since you're the one who started all this "I represent a majority position" stuff, and since I've pointed to that thread now several times to refute your claim, the burden of proof is on you.
No society can survive if the majority of the population are military. Every society needs three classes in order to survive and prosper: an intelligentsia, a guardian class, and a producer class (this is more Dumezilian than Platonic). I also never said that the majority of the population of the RSE shared "Republic-like ideals" apart from reference to the love of freedom and self-determination which actuated the exodus from Vulcan and my pointing out that that quality, that ideal, is the soul of the Romulan people.
No, it does most certainly not. If you had read it you would know that. So either you haven't bothered to read it, or you are intentionally lying here in an effort to discourage others from reading it and to try to convey this false impression of what I have said. But now you're saying that your objection to my linking that is because you dispute the information, whereas before your very obviously stated objection was that it is something on my fleet's website and that I was somehow promoting my fleet. This is something else you've done repeatedly through these discussions: moving the goalposts. I refute your BS claims and you then change your tune to something similar but different because you have not been willing to admit that you have been shown to be spouting BS.
That's your take on the situation. And let me be perfectly clear here:
I HAVE NEVER ADVOCATED THE ABSOLUTE AND TOTAL EXECUTION OF ALL TAL'SHIAR PERSONNEL.
This is part of your latest batch of propaganda against me, based, pathetically enough, on the outrageous and baseless claims made by caedicius that I and other supporters of the Republic wish to kill all Tal'Shiar personnel. On the contrary, I have repeatedly pointed out that those who have been subjected to brainwashing and Borg assimilation techniques adapted for the purpose of programming need to be deprogrammed if possible, and that some of them may be too far gone to hope for their restoration to themselves, remarking in that case that the best option for them would be to be institutionalized. I have also, over the course of many threads in this forum (and other fora in the STO forum site), remarked on how Janek shows promise, that she demonstrates a capacity for individual critical reasoning, that she has given evidence of some measure of compassion, and that I would like to turn her so that she will defect to the Republic.
The Tal'Shiar is not a military organization; it is a civilian organization with some paramilitary aspects. This has been stated over and over and over again in this forum, by more people than myself alone. And again, I have never advocated killing each and everyone of them. Stop this buffoonery; to anyone who is paying attention, you're only displaying the weakness of your own position by these sorts of ludicrous and obviously false assertions.
You know that I have no such plan to execute every member of the Tal'Shiar. Nor did you ever claim that I had until along came caedicius with his "the Republic needs to reunify with the Tal'Shiar and the Empire" nonsense and victim playing. It's really rich, seeing these efforts to portray the abuser as the abused, but not atypical of symptoms of someone with DPD (which is undoubtedly a valid diagnosis in many cases of the personnel of the Tal'Shiar).
I never "rubber-stamp" anything. I have no biases toward the Tal'Shiar or the Empire. I have stated repeatedly that I would have preferred a TOS-style Romulan Star Empire to the Republic, my work which you have repeatedly attempted to portray as propaganda against the Star Empire discusses Emperors, Empresses, Praetors, First Consuls, Proconsuls, military personnel, and other personalities within the historical RSE fairly and evenly, noting the good as well as the bad. I have also noted that the Republic was formed by RSE military personnel. I have further stated that civilians subject to the RSE are civilians and should be treated as such, apart from the members of the Tal'Shiar. Civilians who are not and never were part of the Tal'Shiar are obviously highly unlikely to have had any part in the Hobus supernova or the attacks on Virinat, Crateris, and other loyal colony worlds which things were done by the Tal'Shiar. Obviously, not every member of the Tal'Shiar was party to or even aware of these things. The Tal'Shiar as an organization is thoroughly corrupt and unsalvageable; the Tal"Shiar as individuals is another matter, and each individual of the Tal'Shiar is to be judged individually, only taking collective guilt into consideration when it specifically relates to those individuals, and even then taking into account the brainwashing and Borg assimilation techniques used to program the rank and file. I am not radical, but I am also not going to advocate foolhardiness in dealing with the Tal'Shiar. The fact that some of them have consciences and capacity for individual rational thought, and that others are brainwashed and programmed does not excuse us from being vigilant and on our guard in any dealings with any Tal'Shiar personnel. But there are two and only two intel services within the New Republic, and both of them are military in nature and organization; they are Militia Intelligence (which is primarily concerned with intel connected to ch'Mol'Rihan and the Mol'Rihan system, and the other planets within the territory of the Republic and their systems, although they also work with the New Romulan Star Navy to some extent, but they are themselves ground forces), and the Tal'Diann (which is military, and has its own fleet, but which is also independent of the Star Navy, however having a mandate to deal with the Star Navy primarily, being concerned with Military Internal Affairs -- including as part of the Tal'Diann the Military Police Corps, the Military JAG Corps, and the Military Criminal Investigative Service --, Military Intelligence, and Scientific and Medical Research & Development). Militia Intelligence covers domestic (planet-side) intelligence activities, and the Tal'Diann covers intelligence activities which include space, both within and beyond Republic territory; however, the two organizations also overlap to some extent in several intel-related activities and concerns, and work quite well together (all the more so since one of the most well-known operatives of Militia Intelligence was an agent of the Tal'Diann under the Star Empire and helped to re-form the Tal'Diann under the Republic). The Tal'Diann has eyes and ears throughout Republic territory and beyond. And you should be apprised that impersonating an officer of the government is an actionable offense (although I doubt you're much concerned, having already made blatantly obvious your treasonous perspectives and actions).
I would advise you to not try too hard at this, lest you hurt yourself. Your report was forwarded to my office, and I had a good laugh over it. But the evidence which would support your conspiracy theorist allegations just doesn't exist; indeed, the evidence which does exist demonstrates clearly that I've never advocated the nonsense you've accused me of advocating. On the contrary, I have even gone so far as to present an intelligence briefing to D'Tan arguing against pushing the ideal of Reunification, counselling him to accept that it is unlikely to happen for at least another generation, if even then, and advising him of what should be done if he wishes to improve the chances while accepting that even if he takes that advice the effort is unlikely to bear any fruit for at least another generation -- AND I've made this intelligence briefing very public, having provided the link to it in this very forum. You have no idea what pride I have in our past. And not once have I ever even hinted that all members of the Tal'Shiar are to be executed. This is your Straw Man of my position, but I challenge you to produce any evidence in support of your ludicrous accusations. Finally, you should also be aware that slander and libel are also illegal in the Republic.
afaik, nobody ever did in this forum. But if you haven't spent much time in these threads, I'll give you a heads up: catoblepas will build any Straw Man he thinks he can get away with building, claim that it's what has been said by any opponent he cannot refute, mock it, and then hurl irrelevant and unrelated ad Hominem characterizations at any opponent who is making a better showing than he is. It is his SOP.
The depths you will go to to argue semantics is truly mind-boggling. "They did not "go" onboard. They found themselves onboard"....seriously?
Aside from that...you really are convinced that the Romulans (proto-romulans/those who march beneath the raptor's wings/whatever) were all just innocent bystanders and it was the mean Vulcans oppressing them that forced them to leave. I stand by that this is a complete contradiction of everything we are told about the conflict from the shows-including a firsthand account by the Katra of Surak himself.
Also, the fact that they didn't end up as part of the Star Empire is the point. They aren't relevant
to the subject of Romulan-Vulcan reunification at all and if Romulans and Vulcans are ready to live together in harmony.
The entirety of the portrayals from the shows that you view as valid amount to two episodes from TOS. Aside from that It's pretty much just the Rihannsu books. By your own words you consider everything else to be 'revisionist' and I think that explains your position adequately.
FYI. none of the books are considered 'canon' if you want to keep splitting hairs. Good thing too, or we wouldn't even have the Borg in this game.
Come off your high horse. This was about you trotting out your fan site again as if it was the holy canon. I don't your believe biased collection of sub canon references or your own fill-in-the-blanks writing to be representative of what we see of Romulans on the show and that's all there is to it. There isn't some sort of underhanded conspiracy here to shift the topic of discussion here to your personal character. If you were using that as a resource for your campaign of the Star Trek role-playing game, I wouldn't have a problem. But using what's basically a fanfic as an authoritative source-that's not something I particularly like.
There are a lot of things in secondary Trek material that I like, but I wouldn't go as far as to insist that General Chang's description of the 'Heart of Virtue' in Klingon Academy is canon until it's described that way on the shows.
Nice to see that you are still incapable of getting a number. And you are mischaracterizing position if you think I have an 'eternal claim' that RSE supporters are a majority. Now if you were to ask me if most of the people playing the Republic now would be put off if we had gotten an RSE faction instead of the Republic when LoR launched, I'd say no. There are a lot of people who don't care as long as they get their D'Deridex, or are willing to 'settle' for Republic if they can't have the Empire. I don't think playing the RSE would have been controversial at all, and it's certainly what people were voting for way back when in that poll.
1) Tell that to the Klingons. Or the Swiss.
2) 'Militarize' does not necessarily mean most of the population is military. But the military is definitely an important part of Romulan society. They don't have to be the majority to have a big impact on society.
3) Star Trek is a generally post-scarcity science fiction setting. Having a large segment of the population be involved in the military would not be as difficult as it is today.
You have name dropped your fleet into more than a few topics looking for more recruits. I have no reason to think it's a different case here.
Although it bears mentioning that I didn't actually accuse you of trying to recruit people in this thread. You put those words in my mouth. The thing that bugged me was you constant promoting of this material as if it was the the last word on Romulan canon. It isn't.
At any rate, I don't feel terribly obligated to stick to some sort of quota of aspects of your usage of your fleet site to object to.
You are pretty inconsistent here, honestly. Sometimes folks like Janek and Charva get the green light but then again you also seem to be of the opinion that sorting those sorts out from the Elachii/Iconian collaborators would be infeasible, and I don't think it takes much imagination to think what you'd like to do to that bunch. So if you aren't willing to 'sort' the two groups out, but at the same time express desire at killing all Tal Shiar collaborating with the Elachii and Iconians....well...you kinda are saying you want to kill them all. And of course only those who are brainwashed or Borg'd need apply. Apparently all those who joined up in patriotic fervor to defend the Empire from the Klingons, Federation, or the 'terrorist' Romulan Republic need not apply.
They are the military of the Romulan Star Empire since the other branches were disbanded. This may debatably have been the case back in TNG times (although considering they were able to field fleets of D'deridex warbirds, their status as outside the military is debatable even then)
You are against reconciliation or reintegration between the Tal Shiar and Republic, aren't interested in separating the Elachii/Iconian collaborators from the rest (except those few your captain personally knows). That's not exactly the most...even handed way of dealing with the situation.
Saying that you have no biases against the Tal Shiar and Empire....and then saying that you would have preferred a TOS-style RSE, that just about says it, doesn't it? We don't need anymore Rihannsu/TOS characterization IMO-the Republic is already chock full of it. It's the TNG-forward RSE style Romulans that re sorely under-represented in the Republic, so when you vehemently fight against the inclusion of more of such types and consistently try to underplay their prominence-it does seem to indicate that you do have biases against them.
As for the existence of my organization....your inability to find any trace of our (rather substantial) funding in the annual budget is rather amusing. Of course we aren't called that name officially, but our mandate and powers are quite clear to those who matter...not that you'd have authorization to meddle in our affairs officially even if you did find us out
Look who's projecting. So soon after your rant about accusing me of shifting the debate to personal attacks we get this?
Here I disagree, first with your description of the Star Empire than with the claim that it is impossible to play a captain of such a ship (as I said in another thread, there is the possibility in Star Wars Online to play for the Empire - which seem not a very "nice" state, too). With only a little work you could have a second in command on board which is for example indeed part of the TS and "immunize" you from a takeover
protogoth
Want you to frighten me? You are not in the position to do so. Of course, if you wanting to "warn" admirals and think that will work...;)
Well, this is a simple and well-known game, to cry "catch the thief" when the first criticism occurs. Yes, that would be a brilliant new Republic if people like you will have too much to decide...
That you laugh about my memo show us only one thing - how inadequate your are for any intelligence work. Even the head of my ships security seems more able to handle this tasks. At first a officer of Intelligence should take anything serious, anyway if he personally believe it or not. Second it is obvious that you seem a little bit centred towards your self. Did I mentioned your name? No, I was speaking about certain behaviour, not only about a single person. If you think that means you, well there is a old word of the humans, I have heard from some of the Star Fleet defectors onboard "if the shoes fit, than wear it". Seems as IF the shoes fit...
And a high member of intelligence should be able and ready to cooperate with everyone - what is not a strength of YOU I guess - and should be immune against wishful thinking (dito).
And yeas I have no idea how proud you are of the Romulan past. Obviously not at all. Yelling more than once "EMPIRES ARE BAD!" and "THE STAR EMPIRE WAS ROTTEN" shows no pride at all, no respect for generations of Romulans who call the great Star Empire there home and who sacrificed a lot for that - including members of nearly all families in the Republic. It only shows a political thinking which could maybe come from the Feds or Vulcans, but very few Romulans share this radical point of view. The Star Empire was the past of the Romulans, and a proud past for many. It is the present for many of then, those who life under the rule of the Imperial Remnants. And it might be the future of the Romulan people, too. There is no reason to rule that out.
And to claim that nobody ever did argue for the extermination of all TS members is simply not true (although I guess this claims were later reversed) kodachikuno for example wrote: "I gotta say to the ones advocating being 'nice' to the Tal Shiar remnants... Yeah... I'll 'be nice' and give them a swift and painless death. "
It may not be meant in that way, but it sound so, or am I wrong? How could that work out and what picture it suggest if it comes to the ears of the TS-members? Clearly not in favor of the Republic, I would say. As do your aggressive behaviour against anyone who argue for a greater inclusion of Imperial Elements in the Republic, which would come with some changes of course. This would be the cost if the Republic should become a representation for more and more Romulans, including those who still honour the imperial past.
"However, as for the scattered cells of the Tal'Shiar, no. There is no place in the New Republic for a gang of fascist thugs terrorizing the honest and law-abiding citizens of the Republic. For any intelligence needs, the Tal'Diann's Military Intelligence branch, and Militia Intelligence, are more than capable to meet those. A free people has no need for a Secret Police force.
Donatra could be liberated from the Borg and given a chance to choose; I suspect she would not side with the Tal'Shiar, but she might well decide to attempt to resurrect the Imperial Romulan State, and syphon off disaffected elements of both the New Republic and the rotting corpse of the Star Empire. By no means am I under any illusions as to Donatra's character; she was, like many in the Imperial Star Navy and the government of the RSE itself for the past several decades, out for herself first and foremost, but she went about it in a much saner manner than Taris, Sela, or Hakeev. The forces of the Empire have had ample opportunity to change sides, and the door is still open to any who be sincere. But honestly, those who still remain in service to what is left of the Star Empire (which isn't much apart from forces under control of the Tal'Shiar) have made their choice, and they must now live (or die) with it."
And your own words did not seem to suggest a real reconciliation, open talks in which both side give something towards each other. But any treaty between warring factions need such concessions, unconditional surrender works only after total defeat (which often mean war to the last breath). And words like "have made their choice, and they must now live (or die) with it." suggest only two things - either you accept that the Romulan people will be split into hostile factions forever (which is nothing anyone could wish) or we come to the "die" part of your words, what is exactly what you now deny...:D
I know how the masses love to parrot the dismissal of concerns of meaning by uttering an ad Hominem reference to "semantics," a term which has emotive value but which is seldom understood. In fact, morphology and semantics are of considerable concern. Any Philosopher knows that the definition of terms upfront is a good practice, and that sorting through terms with multiple meanings in order to make plain what is intended by their use of those said terms and deflect any equivocation by those engaged in study of that philosophy or by those who would take an opposing view.
HOWEVER, such a happy fact this is: this is not a question of semantics, but of ethics -- more precisely, of intent.
The Te-Vikram Brotherhood had no intention to leave Vulcan, but some of them found themselves on board the ships in the confusion following their attack on ShiKahr, and were unable to "go ashore" prior to the departure. Following the departure, they made plain repeatedly that their intention was to return to Vulcan, and they resorted to their usual practice of terroristic violence in an effort to secure the realization of that intention; having failed, they went so far as to lead a successful mutiny on one of the Great Ships with the ultimate intention of taking it and themselves back to Vulcan (although they would first go to another planet closer to their then-current location), but the crew of that vessel managed to destroy it. Still yet, the Te-Vikram Brotherhood were not deterred from their intention, instead demanding a shuttle, which they received, and those of them who boarded the shuttle left the fleet with the ultimate intention again of returning to Vulcan. Whether they ever made it back or not is not included in the lore passed down by Romulan tradition bearers -- since they had no way of knowing the fate of those who left
I wouldn't say they were all innocent bystanders by any means. The Children of Ket-Cheleb were former followers of the deceased warlord Sudoc, whose methods in his attempt to establish his own sole rulership of the entire planet of Vulcan I have already detailed. That some of his former followers had been subjected to mind-melding and psionic mind-changing may excuse some of these people from full culpability in Sudoc's injustice, but others were not followers through psionic force. Some of the Children of Ket-Cheleb, then, were hardly innocent. But as far as the attack on ShiKahr was concerned, they were not involved in, nor party to, the terrorist attacks of the Te-Vikram Brotherhood. Nor did I say that it was the Vulcans who sought to convert everyone to their perspective by force, but rather, some of the proto-Vulcans. Conflating all those proto-Vulcans is no more just or correct than conflating all those who left in two groups of ships and were made up of no less (and probably more) than five distinct groups; either act is an example of hasty generalization, and sows the seeds of bigotry and bias. As for what Surak's katra revealed, I believe you have again glossed over details in a bid to continue to promote your simplistic bifurcation fallacy that conflates all the separate groups into but two.
They are relevant insofar as they were responsible for the attack on ShiKahr which was blamed on the lot of those who left Vulcan, whether that departure were intentional or accidental.
On the contrary, I have on multiple occasions in this forum referred to several examples of Romulans from TNG and later who were not the norm in the depictions of Romulans from TNG onwards, including Alidar Jarok, Doctor R'Mor, and others. My use of "revisionist" was in regards to the bizarre desire of the writers of TNG and later series to turn the Romulans into a culture wholly alien to the original picture we were given in TOS, although they fortunately did provide examples such as those I just mentioned. To misconstrue that as damning the information which comes from TNG and the later series is a totally different thing. The information we have from those later series is historical fact, but the policy behind it amounts to revisionism. Again, discernment is a virtue here, just as it is in considering the various groups who were on Vulcan prior to the departure of the last of the Exiles. To refer to the policy for the writers as "revisionist" is not to dismiss the material which they produced as "revisionist." Hard canon was always the primary concern in my work, and informs the majority of my work, with the only things discarded being those which were so wildly inconsistent with hard canon itself as to constitute self-contradiction without any additional information to explain the inconsistencies. An example which I have mentioned several times is the formation of the Tal'Shiar by Praetor Devoras Narviat, and their assassination of him, in the years between the end of TOS/TAS and the beginning of TNG, this development sufficing to explain the change in the predominant behavior of Romulans toward others (and even toward their own kind) in the years between the end of TOS/TAS and the beginning of TNG.
Oh, really? My goodness, let's revisit that term "equivocation" which I have used above, shall we? On the one hand, you are not informing me of anything as regards what is and what is not considered "canon," as I'm fully aware of what the term encompasses in its several meanings. On the other hand, you are equivocating by conflating one meaning of "canon" with another. The sad fact is that there is more than one "canon" in relation to Star Trek; there is the "Hard Canon" which consists of the television series and movies ONLY, and which is what is usually intended when "canon" is used alone without qualification (but because of its inexactitude, it's better and less likely to result in any confusion when the qualification is spelled out: "Hard Canon"), and there is the "Soft Canon" which includes Hard Canon and various examples of literature and interviews with writers, producers, etc (although Soft Canon is largely a subjective matter, whereas Hard Canon is not) -- AND there is "STO Canon," which of course includes Hard Canon but also some examples of Soft Canon. The impression which you convey that you dislike Ms Duane's "Rihannsu" novels doesn't amount to much in terms of STO Canon, which includes information from those novels, and your liking or disliking of that reality is irrelevant, because it is the reality in STO, as has been pointed out many times in the course of these forum wars by more people than myself alone.
And again, until you actually take the time to read it, your attempts at criticism are baseless and need not be considered by anyone. That material is the most complete, concise, and consistent presentation of information pertaining to Romulans of which I am aware, and is wholly relevant to STO, the lore of which is based on not only Hard Canon, but also on various elements from Soft Canon. Nothing in my work contradicts your own sacred cowpile of "TNG r t3h greatestxx0r evar and Romlinz from TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT is t3h only 'true' Romlinz because I liek thm!" except that it dares to include and value the original depictions of Romulans from TOS and the background lore of STO while affirming that Romulans in TNG and later series were also actually Romulans, if led astray through ambition or terrorized into external manifestations of conformity in an effort to lessen their chances of being persecuted by the fascist bullyboys created in Star Trek: New Kids on the Block
How nice for you.
You're the one who first made claims to superior numbers. I've given evidence to the contrary. You have yet to provide any counter-evidence. The burden of proof was on you from the very first claim of superior numbers, but I finally got tired of this propaganda and provided the link to the evidence against your claim several threads ago, so the burden of proof is even more on you now than it was initially.
1) Even Klingons are not all warriors. And a citizens' militia such as the Swiss have, an army consisting entirely of reserve personnel, or a nation in which the majority of the population are some other type of "part time warriors" is hardly a refutation of the Dumezilian tripartite society.
2) "Militarize" as you are now using it means "focus resources on the military, promote the military, push excuses to use the military against other peoples, glorify war, appeal to patriotism, promote nationalism, ..." but also we are again in that realm of equivocation, because even you admit that it "does not necessarily mean ..." when you know that to be one of the meanings. If you want to be understood, don't use ambiguous language. But in fact you don't care to be understood, as your only goal in these discussions is "victory" by any means possible.
3) The first challenge to this is the fact that people have different talents, different skills, and even different predispositions. A large portion of the population might easily adapt to participation in the Federation's Starfleet, which is not (or at least not only) a military organization, but the Imperial Romulan Star Navy was another matter entirely.
The Tal'Diann is not hurting for recruits; we're doing very well, thanks. I don't have to resort to "name-dropping" of our fleet in the fora in order to recruit; I have a forum signature which includes the name of the fleet and a link to the homepage of the fleet site, and it is my position and views in these forum topics wherein you and I strive which most of the new recruits have given as the primary reason for their desire to join the Tal'Diann, but others are interested in joining a fleet where RP is welcome and encouraged, others are interested in being part of the OSB Project (you'll note that this is the first time I have mentioned our participation in the OSB Project in the Romulan Gameplay forum, and afaik, we are the only fleet on the KDF side which does take part), others like the idea of a fleet which welcomes and encourages the use of the Rihan language, and still others are aware of our numbers, our fleet level, and the fast growth of our fleet holdings to higher tiers. We are, in short, a very successful and prestigious fleet, and I don't need to have ulterior motives in mentioning our fleet nor in linking someone in search of information to a page on our fleet website. I have removed troublemakers from the roster and rejected a few applicants as either unsuitable or not yet prepared. The Tal'Diann seeks quality members, not quantity of members.
However, I thank you for the opening to enumerate some of the selling points of our fleet, praise the work of our fleet members, and broadcast our worthiness -- and to those slogging through all of these posts who have an interest, the link is TalDiann.Rihannsu.org, and you'll want to start with the "Aefvadh" link in the "Pathal" box on the right side of the homepage and work your way through the other links in the "Pathal" box before diving into the blog portion of the site.
That last paragraph there is what recruiting in a forum post actually looks like, catoblepas. If you're jealous of our success, stop baiting me to defend the use of our fleet website for hosting information that is useful to members of any other Romulan fleet, including a page of Romulan Language Resources and a page of "frequently used" Romulan Language phrases, as well as a thorough discussion of what it means to be Romulan based on and including the history of the Romulan people, because your attacks only offer such an opening for me to do what I just did -- and which is, frankly, one of perhaps five (at most) times I have ever engaged in anything even like recruiting for the Tal'Diann in the Romulan Gameplay forum. We do have a thread in the New Romulus forum which is a recruiting thread, and which I seldom visit because our fleet is not in any need of constant use of the fora for recruits.
You didn't actually accuse me of trying to recruit people in this thread in so many words, but the implication of your reaction was rather obvious. Had your concern been the validity of the information, your first and only complaint about the link until after I called you on it would not have been what it was: "Nice to see another plug for your fleet. sometimes it seems like we can't go two pages without getting another one." (Source, emphasis added)
Of course not; you simply wish to use every trick in the rhetoric book in your propaganda efforts.
And what I said (yes, another of your tricks, taking things out of context) was first a questoin as to how you would propose to sort them, and then a statement that I've seen no evidence that the Tal'Shiar are not continuing to work for/with the Elachi and Iconians. Pretty simple, really, rather than all this convolution you have spewed in your efforts to make me look bad. Now, if there's evidence, of course the courts (whether the cases be tried before civilian courts of the Republic or courts-martial of the Tal'Diann, or some combination), should entertain and consider it (and I cannot guarantee this of civilian courts of the Republic, but the JAG Corps of the Tal'Diann will do so by my order even if I am not on a given Tribunal).
Senators had fleets as well. Does this make the Senate part of the military?
I'm opposed to reintegration of the Tal'Shiar as an organization into the Republic and reconciliation between the Tal'Shiar as an organization and the Republic; the Tal'Shiar as an organization is not the Tal'Shiar as individual persons who are part of that organization. Again, you are equivocating. I never said that I have no interest in discerning between the guilty and the innocent, but rather that I have seen no evidence that the organization is not continuing to work with/for the Elachi/Iconians. If you can't get my position right, why do you try to criticize it? An honest critic, without any commission as an agent-provocateur, would be at pains to criticize the actual position, rather than a straw man caricature thereof, things taken out of context, equivocations, and the person herself who has expressed the position.
I will revisit this momentarily with the words "And going back to what I said above, ..."
In fact, it does say it all. It says that there was a time when the Romulan Star Empire espoused a Noble Morality if not an Heroic Ethic. It says that the Romulan Star Empire had many good years before it began to rot and fester from the inside. It says that the Romulan Star Empire was once worthy of loyalty. It says that things changed, and that the change was due to a well-meaning and good Praetor's attempt to reform the corrupt civilian intelligence service by replacing it with a new order which he named the Tal'Shiar in honor of the Emperor Sharkiek. It says that this good and well-meaning Praetor made the mistake of giving the benefit of the doubt to former members of the previous civilian intelligence service and allowing them to become not only part of, but high ranking officers in, his new Tal'Shiar, and they assassinated him for it and took over the new order and made it even more corrupt than its predecessor. It says that we would be foolish to be too eager to forgive or give the benefit of the doubt to those who have been part of the Tal'Shiar, that we must be very cautious and have solid evidence of innocence. It says that while respect should be given and disrespect should be earned, trust is also something which must be earned. It says that most, but by no means all, efforts of the abusers to portray themselves as victims are transparent and need to be seen for what they are. The histories of species from all reaches of the galaxy are filled with examples of groups which protested that they merely wished to be included, to have their voices heard, to have a seat at the table, and then used the largesse and idealism of those who held power legitimately as a means of usurping that power and launching pogroms and purges far worse than any simple disenfranchisement which they had earned through their own base instincts and psycho-sociopathy.
I have been aware for quite some time of a fleet which presumed to name itself "Romulan Intelligence," and which advertized itself by saying "We are the Tal'Shiar," a fleet which allied itself with the United Federation of Planets, and which has no sanction or authority from the New Republic, although its members certainly delighted in taking what resources they could get their hands on from the New Republic. If I had to guess, I would guess that the organization to which you refer is that fleet. And I have more than sufficient authorization to have the lot of you arrested and thrown in Tal'Diann holding cells
And going back to what I said above, ...
You have seen me go down the line, refuting your posts point by point, quoting them in their entirety, and complained that I was producing posts too lengthy for anyone to try to follow, but when I have only addressed some of your points, you have accused me of being unable to address everything you said, and any mischaracterization of my position on your part which I don't address fairly soon after your first use of it gets repeated over and over again until I finally do address it. You engage in ad Hominem attacks upon my person and character in an effort to change the subject from the matter being discussed to a discussion about me (perhaps you are obsessed with me?) or ad Hominem attacks upon the position without any attempt to refute the position logically (yeah, there's more than one kind of Argumentum ad Hominem, although most people are only familiar with "Abusive ad Hominem" directed at a person and/or his/her character, appearance, lifestyle, choice of attire, etc, and have never learned that there is more that falls under the "ad Hominem" umbrella that this sort of thing). You take sentences and even phrases out of context. You misquote. You make outrageous accusations without a shred of evidence supporting them. You set up a goalpost and when I kick the ball into the end zone, you move the goalpost further away and insist that I didn't actually score any point because you have decided to change the location of the end-zone ex post facto.
On the other hand, you've supplied ample evidence to support what I said there, and the evidence can be easily found by a simple random survey of, say, 50 of your posts in this forum.