First Contact

Chapter [Compiling Checksums] - Aftershocks

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

The time has come for each member species and organization to speak their mind upon the subject.

>josei

SPEAKER: u/ForTheStarsWeFight for the Treana'ad Hive Worlds

It is not the executioner's duty to swing there axe with joy or malice, but to let it fall with solemn grace. For ending a species is not to be taken lightly, but a dark and heavy burden. For once it falls it can not be stopped until it is done, may the condemned end be swift and painless, and may the Digital Omnimessiah's mercy be upon all.

OUR VOTE IS: AYE

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---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID NINTH NEO-HIVE

SPEAKER: u/Vagabond_Soldier

I understand the need to destroy the Atrenka civilization. As long as it stands, no life will be safe, but we must remember: xenocide is the most heinous thing anyone can do. It must always be the absolute last resort and if there is any chance at all of another option we must take it. To remove an entire species from the universe is abhorrent but sometimes necessary such as with the Mar-gite.

That being said, I put forth an idea that many of you will not like. Unlike the Margite, we know the Atrenka has the capacity to communicate. We could take young Atrenka captives and temporally neuter them. Find a way to remove their ability to control spacetime and also remove them from their culture and history. This way we can xenocide their culture, but save the people. Culture cracking in its most extreme form.

We would have to isolate them for generations while we re-educate them and the danger would still always be there, but the danger is there for any species with free will. The same free will that is the bedrock of the Confederacy.

It may fail. And if it does, then we can discus xenocide. But we would have at least tried.

I know I am using wording that has very strong negative imagery. Kidnapping children, re-education, erasing a civilizations history and culture. But it is still better than than erasing a species. After what we and the Lanaktallans did to the Terrans and countless other species, we should have been xenocided, but the Terrans compassion saved us from them and more importantly, from ourselves.

Do we not give the Atrenka the same chance?

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SPEAKER: u/Despise_all

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We agree but not for the reasons stated. Xenocide is too kind for them. How many were killed by these monsters? TDH are all but extinct because of them. No xenocide is too kind. Strip them of their phasic abilities, leave them the memories of having that ability but no way to regain it. Let them languish in the dust of their memories never to be able touch what once made them powerful. Let them tell their tale in person, so they may show the rest of this malevolent universe what happens when you cant play nice with others.

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OUR VOTE IS: NAY

---NOTHING FOLLOWS--

MANTID PRIME

SPEAKER: u/Crustyfluffy

Say we make this monstrous decision and become monsters... are we not already dead? To sacrifice who we are in order to become something more terrible than our enemy? Is that different than death? Is it any better?

On the other hand, fuck the Atrekna. Burn them from the universe.

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SPEAKER: u/ICameToUpdoot

The Atrekna have shown that they do have the ability to adapt, improve and overcome. So they have proven the ability to change.

For the longest time the PAWM were thought to be just that. Automated war machines, without the ability to surrender or have a dialog. Until recently when they arrived in DASS systems and did just that, communicated in ways other than "You belong to us" and battle.

This shows that a race/faction that CAN change also CAN change to a version/point where dialog is possible.

There are absolutely no guarantees that the Atrekna would change in a similar way. They could, and have so far, changed and adapted to cause us more harm.

But there is a chance, however slim, that change can make dialog and eventual peace a possibility.

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SPEAKER: u/sixtusquinn

I want to make a rebuttal. I really, really do. The act of xenociding an entire species, condemning them to oblivion, is not an act to be taken lightly. There is no coming back from such an action, and who knows what the Atrekna could bring to the table of the Confederation if only they had the willingness to see the rest of this universe's species as sentient beings in their own right.

But they don't. The Atrekna look upon others, even erstwhile allies, as nothing but a food source or the propagation of their species. And this is done through the most horrifying and painful way possible.

The difference between them and the Mar-gite is that there are clear individuals within the species. And as we all know, gentle-beings, is that there are ALWAYS individuals who are different, that do not deserve the fate brought upon them by the actions of their own species. However, their own tactics of temporal manipulation prevent a 1% line being reasonably enforced, which is the logical "last step" taken before such a punishment is levied. The Atrekna cannot be reasoned with at this point in time, not with the information currently available.

They do not wish to be reasoned with.

And so, I sign the death warrant of an entire species of sentient beings, and may the Digital Omnimessiah grant mercy upon their souls. And, more importantly, may He forgive me...

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SPEAKER: u/kwong879

I sign with not a flourish but with heavy and horrified resolution at what we have deemed necessary to be done. May whatever God's there forgive us for what we are about to do."

OUR VOTE IS: YAY

RIGELLIAN SINGING GLADE

SPEAKER: u/Quilt-n-yarn1844

Based on information from the battle that saw the massive invasion of the Atrekna, I feel this must be brought to record:

The Atrekna are not from this universe. Their universe is dead. It should have BEEN dead millions of years ago. They should have already, by all natural law, been dead. So their very existence is unnatural.

The Atrekna are by definition an invasive species. A literally universally destructive invasive species at that. The only way to ensure the continued natural survival is to eradicate the invasive species entirely.

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With solemn song and notes, we cast our vote.

OUR VOTE IS: AYE

KOBOLD VIRTUAL SPEAKING CAVERN

SPEAKER: u/daviskendall

As they are, I'm not entirely sure that the Atrekna can be 0%-ed.

Their ability to manipulate time inside their bubble realms, seemingly without causing paradoxes while effectively reusing the same material assets over and over again, gives them literally all the time they need to plan, breed, grow, build, etc. The other one - the one I think makes them undefeatable - where they can ride a temporal geodesic to other planets which had ever or would ever intersect their present spacetime coordinates, gives them the ultimate GTFO escape goat.

In the complete timeline of the universe, it isn't just other star systems within the galactic plane that are temporally coincident, and thus allow their weird step-sideways teleportation. It's a statistical certainty that a system that "now" inhabits an entirely different galactic cluster has/will have intersected any particular fixed point they choose to work with. With which to work.

What I'm getting at is that, with enough Atreka pushing the rope, they could just up and escape to Triangulum, the Sombrero galaxy, or one of those really, REALLY red-shifted ones that they name by dumping out a box of alphanumeric Scrabble tiles. For all we know, they have actually done so already, either 150 megayears ago or at some point during Time War 2: Electric Boogaloo. We've been looking within the Milky Way for their spooky particle pollution... have we been looking outward at all?

Noted philosopher Toniztark once remarked that when one messes with time, time has a way of messing back. Yoinking temporal duplicates of their occupied and resource worlds, over and over, is doing my head in with the complete ignoring of conservation of matter and energy hardcoded into the universe's fabric. The longer and the more that the Atrekna Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V within their little pocket empires, the more they are adding mass to the mainline universe. There is absolutely no way that this can be considered a good thing.

And the shit cherry on the overall shit sundae is the sheer amount of matter scattered throughout hundreds of star systems with wildly different temporal signatures. Remember, it's called spacetime because they're inextricably linked. We've already seen that 'older, more tired matter' (i.e. all the Atreka and gear they brought through the interdimensional slip'n'slide) reacts... catastrophically... with our spirited, younger matter. What's to say there's not an increasing Something Interesting And Also Scary doing a slow-burn build-up due to the vastly higher quantity of just-slightly-off flavors of matter?

As we saw during P'Kank's defense of Hesstla, toward the end the Atrekna material were reacting as exhausted matter does toward higher energy matter. Does this mean that our past is being exhausted, that our universe is being murdered in the past no matter what we do in the present and the future?

Without some random, out-of-context development in the Lensman Arms Race that's been going on, I actually and sincerely doubt there's an achievable victory condition. The best that can be hoped for is the Earthling Spite Embrace - "I may not win, but I can make sure you lose".

When the last round is fired, the last planet is glassed, and the last blood has spattered, it may well be the case that Daxin will get his perpetual wish.

He will be left alone.

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OUR VOTE IS: AYE

GLITTERING NEBULA DRACONIC FLIGHT

SPEAKER: u/Lugbor

The Attrekna have shown themselves to be incompatible with life in this universe, not as a result of their biology, but as a result of their unknowable aeons of supremacy in their universe. Even if a population could be found that would be willing to talk, they would have to remain quarantined for millennia before they could reasonably be trusted; a quarantine which would only need to fail for a few seconds to be rendered ineffective. Distasteful as it is, we can’t risk the lives of every sapient in the universe because we got squeamish.

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OUR VOTE IS: AYE

PUBVIAN DOMINION

SPEAKER: u/Comprehensive_Put277

I would hope that there might be some way to avoid a xenocide. To end an entire race, to consign billions upon billions to death, is a sin so unforgiveable, that even the Detainee would spit in the face of those who would commit such a corrupt act.

And yet...

The Atrekna have committed this demonic act more times than one could bear themselves to count. They have tortured, murdered and enslaved countless races without any remorse. They refuse to repent, refuse to listen to reason, and may be entirely unsalvageable. Their actions are so vile, so gleefully corrupt and sadistic in nature, that it would be completely justified to wipe their names from existence, if not create a new layer of hell just for them to suffer eternally afterwards. But still, are we truly ready to allow this much blood on our hands, regardless of how black and vile it may be?

I would have hoped for an alternative; maybe we could preserve their genetics to eventually make fresh and innocent eyes that were uncorrupted by avarice, or we could cut them off entirely from their hive minds and psionics and force them to realize that they need to start playing nice, or possibly even force a black stallion situation on them with a Deadspace prison. Hell, I'd even possibly be open to forcing a species-wide project Neighborhood on them to gentle them until every horrid edge in their souls is smoothed into oblivion.

But in the end, it may have to be this way...

And so, with this, I submit. May the Digital Omnimessiah have mercy on our souls, because there is no turning back. With this sin below all sins, the infected and lifeless blood that will coat our hands will be what opens the gates to Hell. And we shall drag the Atrekna down with us, flailing and screeching, into those fiery pits to suffer together until time loses its meaning and possibly even far beyond then.

And all the while, this damned universe shall cackle with malevolent glee as we are screaming.

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OUR VOTE IS: AYE

FEDERATED CLANWORLDS

SPEAKER: u/CaptainChewbacca

We, the Dwarves of the Federated Clandworlds, have seen the fires lit and look toward our ancestral home. Through the teneous fever dreams of our seers we have opened this line of communication after deciphering the cries and songs of our oracles.

We of the Clanholds of the Great Anvil cannot condone the annihilation of the Atrekna. All beings are part of the great work of Illuvatar as we are of Mahal, known as Aule by the children of Elbereth. Though they may be from another universe and carry on ideas profane and vile, the Atrekna still have worth and value. As a doctor might study a deadly disease, or a technician an eldrich runecrafting, so too should we study the Atrekna.

They are a great perversion, a blight that has destroyed a universe without hubris or humility. Are we offspring of Midgard so sure of our place, so sure of our reasoning that we cannot learn from them? Study them to protect ourselves? What if in a hundred or a thousand centuries another enemy from beyond our dimension comes, birthed of an even darker nature than the Atrekna and we lost the opportunity to learn some secret, some skill some knowledge? The great Ringforge of the Lanaktallan is lost, to our equal protestation and any good it could have been turned to lost.

The Atrekna are masters of time, of alternity and the past. Lords of the temporal and the quantum, but not of the future. Not even Mahal and Tharkun, who placed our people on the great Arkships and set us from Midgard under the steady hand of Durin the Firstfather could have known what would come of our people. There must always be potentiality. Always. Keep a collection of genetics, or data, or Atrekna in stasis to be preserved and perhaps one day saved. Orcs of Mordor eventually turned their faces to the sun beneath the light of the silver tree, and Easterlings came to trade in the shadow of the Lonely Mountain as friends. Oppose the Atrekna with the full force of our might and stamp out their tyranny and monstrous perversion wherever it shall be found.

We will fight in this war with our kin and bretheren, but we do not condone consignment to the void through force of arms. Not ever. It is not Mahal's way.

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OUR VOTE IS: NAY

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

Uhh, anyone know who that was?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

PUBVIAN DOMINION

I think it might be one of the old Dandelion Fleets.

Weird.

Anyway, let's carry on.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS--

KASTERBOROUS SECTOR ALLIANCE

SPEAKER: u/RangerSix

Xenocide.

The extermination of, or attempted extermination of, an alien species.

The weight of such an act must needs weigh heavily upon the conscience of those who would pursue such a course of action.

We have witnessed dark forces arise in our own sphere of influence, forces which act against all that we believe in.

We have learned the harm of standing idly by and merely observing, having been unwilling to act due to our own past mistakes.

It took a renegade, born of our greatest member society, to drive the point home; that action is better than inaction, and that a failed attempt to assist another is better than never trying at all.

We have taken his words to heart, and sought to use our great power to avert harm and provide assistance in recovery when that fails.

Many of the dark forces that we have faced were first thought to be irredeemable monsters, and yet we were oft proven wrong.

Those few times where we were right, however, still weigh heavily on our conscience. Not a moment passes where we wonder if things might have been different.

Some of you compare the Atrekna to the Mar-gite, an existential threat to which the only response can be its utter destruction.

We agree that the Atrekna pose a grave threat, and that their attempted xenocide of Terran Descent Humanity warrants a swift, overwhelming, and - need I say - devastating response.

However, we would point out two things:

First, the Atrekna are capable of communication. They are intelligent, rational beings. The Mar-gite either could not, or would not, communicate.

Therefore, the possibility exists that we might be able to establish some form of dialogue, even if it means reducing them to the 1% Line and cracking their culture beyond recognition.

Two, it is not impossible that certain aspects of their culture may already be fracturing; we have reliable reports from surviving personnel on secondment to the DASS territories that, prior to the Terran Xenocide Event (or the Atrekna Temporal/Archaeoneurological Reversion Incident, as some call it), a group of Precursor Autonomous War Machines arrived in a DASS-held system and sought to open a dialogue.

If machines that ancient can change, what is to say the Atrekna cannot?

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OUR VOTE IS: NAY

NAXIMARIAN GESTALT

SPEAKER: u/xForge2

My fellow gentlebeings, I do not want to xenocide the Atrekna. It's a horrible thing, to xenocide a species. The Atrekna, however, have no problem wanting to xenocide every species they can get their hands on. They've been actively trying to xenocide everything on hundreds of worlds. It's a terrible crime, and one that needs proper retribution. We should take every opportunity to avoid doing something similar.

We have information, so much of it, that leads us to the conclusion that the Atrekna have both changed their biology and let it atrophy over hundreds of millions of years. That information brings us to the conclusion that it might be possible to rehabilitate them. It would be difficult, it would require the construction of specialized facilities n isolated worlds in abandoned systems. All to have the *possibility* of genetic restoration and possible racial rehabilitation. It would be costly, but we think it could work. We want to stress the importance that xenocide should be the final option. The Atrekna should not go unpunished, but there is room to attempt to give them a place to exist.

We also would like to entertain the idea that if the vote skews yay, during the course of the xenocide, the Atrekna may attempt diplomacy. If such a thing comes up, we would request that such diplomacy will be attempted. We know that they may not deserve such a consideration after all that they've done, but it's the obliteration of an entire species. They'll never be seen again if we follow all the way through. I think despite all that they have done, they deserve the chance.

We may be outvoted, the other species may not be as forgiving as we are. Even so, we feel that we must try. Despite their crimes, the horrors of their species. We would exhaust every other option first. It is a horrible burden to have to xenocide a species. Digital Omnimessiah willing, one we will get the chance to avoid.

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OUR VOTE IS: NAY

HESSTLA CYBERBURROW

SPEAKER: u/LordNobady

The Atrekna are a parasite. they latch on to the living, the worlds, the solar systems, and even the universe and extract everything and leave a dead shriveled husk behind. They are an invasive species to this universe that none of the life has a defense against.

So we must eradicate them and make sure we have them all. there can be none left to start again.

But as a species that has been invaded not once but twice by them, we implore that before we nuke them we look if the native species is still there, if so we must try to rescue them. Either by freeing their solar system or by giving them a new one to live on. Saving the universe from this invasive species is not worth it if we destroy what is good about it.

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OUR VOTE IS: AYE

TUKNA'RN DISCUSSION FORUM

SPEAKER: u/Turtledonuts

No precursor species (and few in general) demonstrated the capacity for reason or negotiation before they were beaten. The Lanaktallan Overseers had to lose, get culture cracked, give up, and ally themselves. The Mantid had to be systemically destroyed so their worker castes could rise up and negotiate. The Treana'ad fought to the bitter last before one individual thought to talk, the Pubvians restructured their entire society over their loss. We former neosapients were beaten completely, and had to learn to fight again. The margite weren’t sapient, but the aktrena are.

The rules and morals followed by the confed dictate a 1% fight. This decision should be made on the 1% line, giving them a chance for one last appeal, considering the following.

Fight like a xenocide and break their backs, destroy their offensive, crush their forces, but make it formal and stay the hand. If they should be xenocided, let it be an execution of criminal survivors, not a rout of a broken army.

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OUR VOTE IS: NAY

//USER BREAK

//MOVING TO END OF FILE

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

The official tally has been done.

Terran Descent Humanity and its offshoots do not possess Gestalt numbers to vote. As a xenocided member their vote is the ONLY vote that may be listed as "abstain" and is recorded as doing so.

All Active Gestalts made the points and counterpoints available to their population for examination. Population votes to the gestalts have been tallied and the most upvoted rebuttals or supports have been recorded.

Each Gestalt has voted with at least 66.67% of the population that voted voting yay or nay.

With all of that having been entered into record, the following tallies have been recorded.

IN SUPPORT OF THE ACTIVATION OF OVERPROJECT NANDEVAL UPON XENOSPECIES ATREKNA: 85

IN REJECTION OF THE ACTIVATION OF OVERPROJECT NANDEVAL UPON THE XENOSPECIES ATREKA: 92

THE MOTION TO ACTIVATE OVERPROJECT NANDEVAL HAS FAILED TO PASS.

LEGISLATION OR ARGUMENTS TO ACTIVATE OVERPROJECT NANDEVAL UNDER THIS NAME OR ANY OTHERS MAY NOT BE ATTEMPTED UNLESS SEVERE MILITARY/CIVILIAN LOSSES OCCUR, WARFARE MODES CHANGE, OR 101 YEARS PASS.

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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

I don't know how to feel.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Hey, how come CONFEDMILINT, CONFEDMIL, and CONFEDINT didn't get a vote.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CONFEDMILINT

We're data aggragations. We don't have the full ranges you do.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CONFEDMIL

We also carry out what is decided, not make policy.

We're the gun.

Your decisions is what aims us and pulls the trigger.

You don't ask the gun's opinion.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

HAT WEARING AUNT

Now what do we do?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CRUSADE OF WRATH

Now you are ready to hear our words.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---