The Nightstar Zoo

https://xkcd.com/757/

That...was a scarier possibility than I had considered. Does anyone have any idea how large the hive on Eina-Afa really is?

My question now is WHY.

they're fine with exterminating the current galactic civilization just to hide?

Why not just LEAVE? With the time frame they've had, they could have built a power source for a Teraport drive big enough to move their entire STAR away a dozen times over.

Nobody would - or COULD - look for them in the void between galaxies.

I don't think the hive sizes have been mentioned. Doesn't really matter though, does it? If the hive has access to technology (and given that it was acting as an engineer I'd say that's rather likely) it could probably infect every other hive in the can.

That's a lot of hives.

Now naturally the question is "Was that actually their endgame?" and "Did they actually succeed?"
Putzho is still out there, and his narrative shoe has yet to drop. The entire attack has also not visibly killed anybody so far - all casualties have been from the defenders.

So I guess mesmorino was right after all?

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Someday... Someday a gun that shoots knitting patterns will be a useful thing to have. I can be patient.

The guys who designed the 30 inch sniper rifle need to step up their game!

I am surprised one dragon class warship can jam all of urtheep.

There is an unspoken "for now" that, perhaps, should be spoken.

Nobody really knows anything
Plus, I can't WAIT to see the look on that smug asshole's face when it turns out, he got outsmarted
Which I am reasonably certain HE HAS BEEN

Well on reflection its not too surprising. Space is huge. Being able to jam another ship means the jamming bubble can cover all of urtheep pretty easily.

I'm still caught up on "Captain Foxworthy" and male pronouns

I'm actually skeptical of Ennesby's explanation. Sure that's what it looks like from the Tough's perspective. But other than one "joke" there wasn't any evidence that the Ok-Skadat were actually hacked. If anything surely the suborned warriors would have been able to put up some resistance since they would know the hack had happened before Tagon found out.

Consider that the actual sum result of this is that Cindy and Urtheep Industries is now cut off from all outside help. That we know that the Allstar prefers not to harm others if they can help it, and that the aim of this mission was to keep the information on their location from spreading.

Now maybe the infiltrators went radically off the deep end and decided the Allstar was worth killing the current galactic civilization through a convoluted plan to hack multiple layers deep to get to Chinook. But I think it would be simpler and less risky for them to make it look like that was what was happening, and use the time that the Tough's were scrambling to stop the destruction of the galaxy to carry out their actual objectives.

In fact even if Ennesby is entirely correct and that was the Infiltrator's plan. Well now Cindy and Urtheep Industries are now cut off from all outside help and whatever other equipment that the infiltrators have suborned is running around unchecked. And if they have the capability to hack the Ok-Skadat warriors mid fight, then they probably have all the equipment in Urtheep under their control by now.

Edit: Also do we know for sure that it's Cindy doing the jamming? Why would she still be doing so after all the engineers were dead?

I'm pretty sure that things happened in this order:

1. The Toughs run a simulation that hinted that the hives could be invected and start something at the can

2. When they go to question the hive, it makes a very ill-timed joke.

3. Cindy sends tagon a quick message before disabling all coms

4. All local nodes of the hive have been destroyed.

5. the All-Star's team halts the attack as they try to figure out why those they were attacking suddenly started tearing each other apart

There's a few other "maybes" but the only ones I can see reek of bad storytelling, as if they were made deliberately unclear in pursuit of an upcoming twist.

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Rule of thumb is that if you need to use a squeegee, they're at least Laz-4.

I disagree, I think Phil was actually hacked. Like Arcanestomper said, the Tough's response actually helped the rogue All-Star team.

It makes sense tactically: they put the Tough's in a difficult position, where they had to choose between giving up their home territory, or cutting themselves off from support from said home territory. Either way, the All-Star team comes out ahead.

In the meantime, we know there was at least one other Tough that was exposed to the All-Star's equipment, and she just dumped her organs into the ship. Heck, Phil was probably hacked through that vector, and not the battlefield at all.

Looks like Kevyn adopted Elf's surname when they got married.

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Weapon: Meal, Ready to Explode.

I still want to know the why.

Like, seriously. The All-Star had BILLIONS of years to just....LEAVE. Leave the galaxy entirely, star and all.

If they were that dedicated to hiding, that they might POSSIBLY think destroying galactic civilization would be a better outcome...they could just pack up and leave.


Heck, park a few hundred thousand light years off the plane of the elliptic with a bunch of listening posts, wait for life to start populating the stars again. Send out feelers, see if anyone is actively hostile to immortality-by-uploading. If there are, wait until they aren't. It'll happen sooner or later - either they stop being against it or they die off while everyone else uploads or otherwise immortalizes.

It's not like they lack for power, with their own personal solar battery that's got a projected lifespan of LONGER THAN THE UNIVERSE HAS EXISTED.

Yeah, that took me a moment to figure out. Their wedding was only mentioned very briefly, and I had completely forgotten about it.


I think the blue sparks around the Ot-Skadaks' eyes are meant to show us that they really were hijacked by something. They weren't there initially.

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Armed with my right and left bear arms and the Coat of Arms.

It's actually possible that Phil did get hacked, but not to the extent it appeared. It would probably be a lot easier to override his speech synthesizer for a few seconds and tell the ill timed joke than it would be to take full control. Similarly it would probably be easier to shut down the warriors so they could be destroyed rather than suborn them entirely.

At that point even if it was just a simple virus that the Ok-Skadat could purge in a few seconds it would be too late for them as the Tough's would have already started attacking.



Actually I don't think that was hacking. There's no reason for a suborned unit to start shooting electricity, and nowhere else has a person whose brain was jacked started showing telltale signs. If anything a physical display means that the hack was hitting some part of their hardware. Or maybe it was from being jammed. They were just drones after all, they might not have been able to operate independently.

I do think he's wrong about the allstar wanting the long guns, they probably have their own, it's nothing new to them. Their goal with this hack was simply to disable the enemy one way or the other. No matter how the Toughs responded, infighting was inevitable, it's just a question of who initiates and with what advantage. I still think the Toughs made the right response here. The Allstar still gets a win because in standard Xanatos gambit-fashion there is no loss condition for them, but it's the smallest possible win for the situation.

For those discussing why the All-Star might want to destroy all of galactic civilization, I refer you to this: http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2017-06-23

What we're seeing at Urtheep Industries represents a departure from the All-Star's standard terms of engagement, and starting a civilization ending war is likely a further departure from those terms of engagement.

Also, we don't know for sure what the infiltration team knows or does not know about the Ot-Skadak, Eina Afa, and the long guns. We've never seen anything from their perspective, and it's quite possible that they don't know about any of those.

Yes, this is a fairly convoluted plan either way, hacking the Ok-Skadat hive to gain control of the long guns or setting up a social engineering trap to divide Tagon's force. It relies on knowledge of the Ok-Skadat and that they have a hive back home. Maybe the infiltrators know that and maybe not. Or maybe they just saw some open comm ports and hacked whatever they could, and the whole Ennesby freaking out and instigating a friendly fire incident was a bonus.

We can speculate all we want, but I don't think we'll find out what the infiltrators actual plan is until Putzo shows up and talks to or detains them.

So do I.

I want to know why everyone* thinks Ennesby is always right when he's been wrong in the past.

As he is once again here.


1 - If the All-Star wanted to kick off all-consuming galatic war, there are simpler ways to accomplish this.

For example just send a delegation to Ein-Afa and hack the Ot-Skadak there. Or hack Chinook.

Or just use their own long-guns.

You know, simpler things.



2 - For 'this' to have been their plan to had to know an awful lot about the state of the galaxy and then they had to know an awful lot about how individuals would react.

They had to have information about the Cynthetic Certianty's crew that even Keff Tagon didn't have. Let that [EXPLICATIVE] sink in for minute.

They had to know more about the crew of Kaff's, more about a crew that the captain of routinely goes out of his way to learn about. Kaff goes to lengths to find out things (this isn't shown, but the end results have been. Mostly so he can cheat to win with them).

Kaff knows his crew. These Ot-Skadok combat drones had capabilities that he did not know of.

Therefore, in this case the simplest position is: Ennesby is wrong. So wrong he wraps around and starts being right again...



My theory is that the A.S.S. (All-Star Saboteurs) are improvising at this point. They likely believe there are assets on Cindy that contain the location of the All-Star. So the A.S.S. are aiming to gain Cindy to remove it from the board. Thus when hackable assets hit the field, they hacked them. No 'long-gun war', no'galactic' kick-off. Just remove Cindy from the equation (and thus make it easier to remove the six remaining combatants from the loading bay).

And they were still acting with restraint. Why is this being overlooked? They may be A.S.S.es, but they are still acting to minimize casualties.




Yes, I am proud of myself for that last sentence.

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprise if this was the foxtrot playing out on both sides. As far as the ASS are concerned, they have to win.
I've also started to wonder if the point of the dance was to play up the danger so far that everybody else felt that they have no choice but to long-gun urtheep. The burn-it-to-ashes approach that the Toughs failed to take, relevant again against an even more dangerous foe.

It's been a foxtrot on the allstar side almost from the beginning. That's why they went off script. The Tough's are just now catching up.

I don't think so.

I think Charlie only started calling the tune when the Tough's 'ported in Cindy and Ezraene turned out to be far more cunning and adaptable than expected. Then with their A.S.S. hanging out and exposed they got desperate.

We know the Allstar did not expect its agents to act the way they did. Presumably, it would not have given them Long Gun access, since it's at least somewhat amenable to preserving galactic civilization, so if the agents want a Long Gun, they need to get it themselves. We also know that the agents are infiltrating the Urtheep infosphere - and that Urtheep had a vested interest in the Toughs, because a) the Toughs are pretty much a galactic power by now, b) the Toughs were working for them and c) the Toughs apparently hacked them. All good reasons to gather some intelligence, which may now be in the hands of the infiltrators.

The Toughs have been keeping a tight lid on long gun knowledge. Only high levels of the UNS know about it that we know of. Urtheep may well have investigated them, but I doubt they found out about the long guns.

The All-Star knows.

This presents two possibilities:

1 - Enough people know that the All-Star was able to learn of this somehow (hacking, over-hearing urban legend, etc).

2 - The All-Star can detect the use of long-guns.

Urtheep has been depicted as rather powerful so far, so I wouldn't put it past them. Plus, I'm not quite sure whether the Eina-Afa keeps the knowledge about the Long Guns secret or just their usage of them. The Long Guns are their primary defense, after all, and appearing completely defenseless makes it far more probable that you may have to defend yourself one day.

Does the All-Star know Long Guns exist in general or that the Toughs are using them? Because the first may have become somewhat common knowledge after LOTA happened.

It knows they exist. It has not been made clear if it also knows who has them.



They have a lot of money, and are a major military manufacturer. That doesn't necessarily equate to them having top notch intelligence assets.

To bolster this notion... Ezraene did have to use the Schlockverse's equivalent to a Facebook fanpage to get started on her lore-digging on Kaff.

Does anybody else feels like Ezraene was all-starred / co-opted / mind-hacked?

She went from hostile and competent to curious and sloppy after the nano-motile worm or something like that in the passageway leading to the icebox.

She is also pressing tagon on issues about his digital immortality and how he treats his digital employees as people.

I feel like the agent is trying to evaluate Tagon and his thoughts about Digital Sapients like the All-star's.

I too feel like enesby is being overtly paranoid, but who knows, I've never been right on my previous predictions other than "Tagon had a fresh backup" after he died last year.