thisavrou | audio;

Someone really needs to tell these guys that two wrongs don’t make a right. Going “you killed my people, so I’m gonna have to kill your people” is the sort of thing that leads to everybody being dead and the world a radioactive shithole. Like, seriously, we’ve gotta give these folks some tales to read about the evils of senseless revenge. Like the Oresteia. Or Grognak the Barbarian #6: Enter Maula: War Maiden of Mars. They can call it karma or cosmic balance or whatever, but a blood feud by any other name smells as fragrantly corpse-like. Yum.

So now that that’s out of the way...

I don’t know a thing about these people, or about their resources, and planning a strategy without any intel at all is a bitch. I figure a lot of people are probably in the same spaceboat as me, so let’s talk about it. No matter what team you’ve been assigned to or what plans we make, intel is way useful, so let’s have some. You guys who met these people before, what are they like? What do they believe in? What motivates them most? Money? Ego? Ideals? You people with the scanning stuff, what’s their ship like? Can we get a layout? Tech whizzes, what kind of technology are we facing here? And what kind of tech can we bring to bear?

That last bit, about our resources, don’t post about it over the network.

By the way, to my fellow offensive pals, three wrongs don’t make a right either. Offense doesn’t mean the same thing as violence and if we can do this non-violently that’d be awesome.

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[There are way more important things to be discussing, but...]

...You know, I actually got a copy of Grognak the Barbarian in the mail.

Seriously? Which one? I'm totally going to steal it from you. Just warning you in advance.

[Grognak is important dammit.]

...after we're not facing sudden death and destruction and stuff.

[Okay, aliens wanting to kill them might be slightly more important than Grognak.]

I know this is going to come as a great shock, but they were very concerned with equal exchanges. They had no currency, their economy was based on a bartering system.

Which, I suppose, is why they want our lives now in exchange for the planet, but even if we were to offer all two-hundred-some-odd of us, we still come up short. So really, this 'equivalent exchange' business seems more like good ol' fashioned revenge instead. I'm sure they didn't have to try very hard to apply their principles when they were already angry enough.

Anyway. We were eventually informed that we were being kicked off the planet when some theft occurred. Again, equal exchange. They seemed keen to punish all of us for something that was committed by one person though, so perhaps my earlier point about equal numbers actually only extends to material goods. Maybe they're alright punishing a bunch of people for something they had no part in, and will feel absolutely no sense of disproportion if they kill two hundred people to avenge an entire planet.

Jungle of the Bat Babies. I can loan you Unstoppables - Who Can Stop the Unstoppable Grog-na-rok? until I'm done with it.

[Aw yeah he definitely got more than one comic in the mail.

Ahem.]

But yeah, after all the...destruction.

Yeeeeah, this equal exchange thing sounds like thin justification for them just wanting to kill us all because we live in a town they don't like. If it were about making the people who killed their planet give their lives in exchange, then most of the ship wouldn't be on their quid pro quo shit list. And if they're a-okay with taking innocent lives in an equal exchange for their people's death, then they're gonna have to go murder a couple billion more random people to even out the numbers. Which would be super creepy and evil.

Maybe that should be pointed out to them, too. That this is totally not actually in accordance with their belief in equal exchanges.

Score!

Assuming we don't die soon--which is a thing I hope for most of the time--I'll hit you up for that.

I wouldn't worry about it. Our track record for not dying is pretty good.

[He probably shouldn't be making light, but it's not as if he's not taking this seriously.]

Anyway, yeah, hoping this thing gets solved with as little violence as possible. Can't say I'm super optimistic, though.

Yeah, look at how many times we've not died. We've had so much practice with the not-dying that we're total experts. It's not like one tiny slip-up could kill us or anything--oh wait, yes it could.

So what's your plan if things do turn violent? Do you hold to principles of non-violence and flower power at them or shoot them in the face with a 10mm?

Nah, you're over thinking it.

[Which is actually what William has been doing, truthfully.]

10mm. Or in my case, a railroad spike. [Or maybe .308.] Don't get me wrong, I would prefer a non-violent solution, but these are people out for revenge - for blood. I know the likelihood of this not turning violent is about as likely as a Deathclaw giving you a friendly hug instead of trying to bite your head off.

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