Alison and I had a debate, once, about rel-skimming tactics. She wanted PA leaders (Vrenn in particular) to be able to neutralize, or at least seriously mitigate, the highborn advantage in reality skimming warfare by developing tactical strategies that could be used by nobleborns or even commoner pilots. I was cranky about that because it negates a lot of hard work establishing the military/economic underpinnings of the order of things in the Sevolite empire. That concern aside, something I read today in Barbara Ehrenreich's book Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War , reminded me of the issue. While making a point about the importance of mankind's formative epochs, as prey, Ehrenreich describes mobbing behavior used by modern primates against predators. In essense, the weaker mob gangs up on the lone hunter to achieve what no individual in the group could have managed solo. So there's some Earthly, behavioral precident for the idea that organized groups of inferior pilots could trump the highborn advantage. That probably isn't a bad thing, on the whole, for the viability of a culture that relies on transportation that can double as a much too lethal weapon. If it was easy, however, our Neolithic ancestors would not have been as impressed as they were by lions, and the Okal Rel Universe would never have developed as it has, with such a high premium placed on being highborn. For all the reasons I arranged the Okal Rel Universe the way I did, therefore, I tend to veto tactics that sidestep the tough questions by trumping highborns in the field of their one, greatest strength. Why the Okal Rel Universe is arranged to give highborns that advantage and make them the headache they are for those who have to live with them, is a topic unto itself, but I concede mobbing tactics or their reality skimming equivalents could play a role that was interesting, so long as there are limits to their effectiveness and they require conditions (such as nerve, training, etc.) that can't be come by easily and are prone to their own weaknesses. After all, if you want to write interesting stories about living with lions, you can't hand your protogonist a fool-proof elephant gun that reduces the conflict to a question of how to dispose of the corpses.

Thematically, I believe we will always have lions to live with, whether they are aristocrats, millionaires, generals or Sevolites; and that people deal, every day, with unequal playing fields in whatever sphere of influence their culture deems most important. I make no apology about asking those who work in the Okal Rel Universe, creatively, to accept the dominance of highborns where it comes to reality skimming, because it underpins a lot of what is fun to explore, fictionally. Doesn't mean characters can't or shouldn't resent it (like Gadar, in the web story "Going Back Out"), or even concoct creative tactics to reduce the impact. Just so long as we stick to Okal Rel of the "shared universe" variety, and abstain from wrecking the environment for future "generations" ... and origin authors. Alison and I negotiated the question of anti-Sevolite tactics, in the end, as I expect we'll have to negotiate the innovations of others, over time, in many quarters.

If worst comes to worst, with multiple cultures and 1,000 years of history to play with, there's likely to be a place or time that's suitable for nearly any story situation. For example, people who wanted to write stories featuring no-holds barred, utterly destructive, no-survivors, down and dirty space warefare based on reality skimming and everything the Old Regime Reetions could throw back at Sevildom, could set the story during the Killing War. But we couldn't have stories like that set in "peace" time, within the empire, because it would be as inappropriate as someone who lost a legal battle, or a small squirmish over a colony, dropping nuclear weapons on a trading partner's capital. My point, in some sense or another, is nearly always that there is more to any conflict than winning at any cost. Of course, that begs the question "what cost is too much". Which is the question I am most interested in, on the whole. To play devil's advocate to my own position on that, though, it must be admitted that new tactics or technologies have always perturbed the history of conflict in alarming ways, and that is a fair question to explore, too. In fact, an intimately related one. But I've already wandering over too much territory, here, for one post. :-(

posted by Lynda at 16:35   comment? e-mail lynda@okalrel.org 0 comments