User:Morhek/Sovereign Discussions

NOTE: This page is comprised of excerpts of conversations between Specops306 and Exalted Obliteration, discussing the concept of a hypothetical "Sovereign" faction, set up here for reading by The All-knowing Sith'ari.

 Exalted Obliteration  Specops306 155 Days Ago:  Greetings, Specops306. It's been quite a while since I sent you message.  Remember that &quot;Exercises in Discourse&quot; blog we collaborated upon? Just going back to it brought back thoughts regarding Halo I haven't thought in a while. Those thoughts are specifically regarding the Forerunner's intentions in their &quot;Mantle&quot; custodial-empire socio-political and religious structure, and what it relates to the interplay and roles between those who powerful and advanced vs. those who are weaker and more primitive.  That made me think of a possible story idea. Supppose you have a species like the Forerunner who rather than being kindly if naive custodian-rulers, ruled with a more speceist-based supremacy. This race would rule somewhat similarly to the Forerunners, except that whenever another sentient species is in their presence, it is sealed away within some kind of outwardly sterile machine that prevents the inhabitant from directly interacting with one of its 'Sovereign Guardians', and must be in a stooped and utterly subservient state, both in body and in mind.  What's more, the subjects of these Sovereign Guardians are kept purposely in a stunted state, reduced to a deformed, barely self-sufficient existence so as not to defy their masters and the Sovereign's religion of guardianship and rule, which is a more self-centered version of the Mantle. Going further, the Sovereigns &quot;protect&quot; and &quot;preserve&quot; the lesser races of the galaxy and have them worship the Sovereigns as emanations and avatars of a singular supreme god, justifying their rule over their subjects as being a necessity, stating that they were chosen by God to have absolute dominion over all of creation, and could rule as God decreed to them.  Their faith states that without their reign and dominion over all life, the universe would become polluted, sullied, and rendered unimaginably vile and chaotic, and that God had given them a mission to clean up, purify, and bring to true order to a universe that sorely needed it.  Going further, these Sovereigns see any deviance by their subjects of their God-given rule as tantamount to sacrilege and outright treason, and punish the transgressors with further degradation and endless torture as they are further stooped into subservience. The Sovereigns reason that extermination and death of the offenders would be a release and freedom from their sins, and state that perpetual torture and induced sadness, guilt, pain, etc. are more meaningful punishments for those who dare to defy the God-chosen, the race who embodies perfection and divinity, who must rule over and punish others for their inherent vileness and inferiority.  They force those who transgress to be in a perpetual state of self-loathing, guilt, unimaginable sorrow and a desire to right their wrongs, but are given the knowledge that they can never right a single of their sins. This eternal psychological torture is bred into them, passed on from birth, generation to generation.  What would your opinion be of such a culture, especially if they are an advanced race of &quot;Humans&quot; like the Forerunners, whose rule and custodianship of the galaxy being justified by their religion, especially if their rule is enshrined as being decreed and given by their God? I like it. It certainly sounds...realistic.  I would say that you have perfectly described what my biggest problem with religion is. Its so easy to corrupt, because a pure religion is impossible. Every religion has given rise to extremists and sects that justify their actions by their interpretation of common religious scripts - and often, these scripts don't actually differ much from the interpretation. But of course, even without religion, such an attitude would still arise - I'm assuming that you are referring to an advanced human race, and human nature is an ugly thing, resurfacing in the form of xenophobia and arrogance. That isn't all we are though, and is not all we can be - but it is what eventually keeps happening. I find such a hypothetical frighteningly real - we already have a human version of the &quot;Mantle&quot; - it is variously called the White Man's Burden, Colonialism, Evangelism (the practice, not the faith) and Civilizing Missions, but all amount to the same thing - the imposition of one set of values arbitrarily over another preexisting set, and its total replacement. Likewise the motivation is always different, but fundamentally the same - a xenophobic fear and/or arrogant disgust at the culture, religion, or race in question, or perhaps even a misguided attempt at &quot;improving&quot; it by imposing your own - based on the assumption that it is by definition superior. If humanity ever makes it into space, I pity any exterrestrial lifeforms that live out there - because we are going to be a hard species to endure.  I would also say that you have just described what the Covenant truly is.  You mentioned speciesism, and the possibility that such a civilisation might restrict a civilisation only to their planet - theoretically for their own good, but in practice it would be more likely to be a result of fear of competition. This is exactly the scenario that the Prophets have enforced - species such as the Unggoy, Kig-yar and Lekgolo are denied the ability to construct and build their own slipspace capable ships, and even the Jiralhanae only managed it through decades of hard petitioning and the favour of the Prophets. Such a scenario would effectively seal entire systems off from each other, restricting each species to clearly defined sectors, denied the ability to expand and grow on their own, forcing them to depend on Prophet infrastructure. Likewise, the Prophets have denied knowledge of Forerunner and Covenant technology to even the Sangheili, effectively meaning that without them the Covenant would soon collapse back into a preindustrial era unless an outside intervened - UNSC technological assistance, for example. They have even forced the Covenant species to accept them as semi-divine deities, and their will is interpreted as an extension of their Gods' - to disobey the Prophets is itself heresy, regardless of whether it is in line with Covenant theology. Your description of the method by which they keep their &quot;wards&quot; in line is similar to the Sangheili concept of honour. We can even begin to see just how this process fractured the Covenant; the Prophets decreed humanity a heresy, and ordered their extinction. As the Sangheili fight the humans, they learn that they are not what the Prophets have said they are, and began to doubt the declaration, and in turn the Prophets and the very Covenant religion itself. And this illustrates another point; that no matter how thoroughly indoctrinated a race/species is, there will always be the beginnings of doubt, and once doubt sets in for a faith-based society, the decline is swift and violent. The fifteenth century brought about the Reformation, and doubt in the authenticity of the Catholic church, and also not coincidentally ushered in the sudden advancement of science; likewise, the demise of the idea of god-emperors, like Rome, Egypt, the Aztecs, and even the traditional European monarchies resulted in the ascension of democracy in its place. The imposition of &quot;order&quot; mostly ends up as stagnation, vulnerable to a little chaos. Once a subjugated people realise that their lives have been a lie, they react violently. Sometimes the process is slow - the establishment of democracy in Britain began four hundred years ago, and only culminated in the nineteenth century. Iran deposed its Shah, only to set up the Ayotollah as the leader of a puppet government; likewise, tribal factionism is still a dominant force in Afghanistan and the middle-east. But things improve.  Sorry if this seems too much like a self-indulgent rant, rather than an appriasal - the general gist of it is that your idea is an excellent one, and not all that far off from what the Forerunners very well could have turned out. A dark reflection in the mirror, so to speak. I also apologise if this is all territory I've already walked through before. 128 Days Ago: Greetings, Specops306. <font color="#FF0000"> Remember that concept of a sort of 'evil' Forerunner Mantle? I gave it a little more thought, and decided to develop the concept a little further. As I had outlined before, these beings rule their galaxy quite firmly, with much of their society based upon a variant of the Mantle, and this governs their relationship with other species in the galaxy. Unlike the Forerunners, however, they didn't create a necessarily beneficial or altruistic environment for their neighbors. <font color="#FF0000"> Though their &quot;Mantle&quot; calls for them to cultivate, protect, and govern at some level their charges, it is written, decreed, and practiced in a very different way from the Forerunners. This religion and its application has more in common with the ideology of the Sith from Star Wars, which basically states that those who are in power can do whatever they please, and that the power in question, its pursuit, its acquisition, and maintenance of it is the ultimate purpose of one's existence. <font color="#FF0000"> In the context of their relationship with their charges, the other species in the galaxy are brought to heel to these being's wishes, which means that everything that these species have, from their biology, ecosystems, culture, physiology, and even psychology are entirely at the mercy of their &quot;Mantled&quot; masters. That means that huge swaths of the galaxy's biosphere is remolded to the fit the Sovereign's desires, and that the cultures and independent state of their charges are brought down into complete subservience and dependence upon their overseers, who decree that their charges worship them as gods. <font color="#FF0000"> Going further, these &quot;Sovereign Guardians&quot; render their charges weakened, deformed, defenseless, and in a perpetual state of physical and psychological agony compounded with the programmed belief that no matter how faithful and obedient they are, they will never be freed from their suffering and that they exist only to be punished. For those that do not bow to the Sovereign's will, they are brought to the brink of extinction forced into the same state as those already under the Sovereign's rule. <font color="#FF0000"> As the Sovereigns see it, the fact that they are Human and are the holders of supreme and unchallenged power and the Mantle that they hold are evidence that they are the universe's chosen species, and that it is their duty to bring the rest of the chaotic and hideous nature of the universe's biosphere to heel, united and controlled under their rule. When put into practice, that creates an existence in which no ecology or culture in the galaxy is free from their designs, and that though their charges are allowed to survive and even serve, they are never allowed to enjoy or live life the way they once had. When in the presence of and at the service of their masters, they are confined within machines that prevent them from directly interacting with their rulers, and their tortured, deformed existence is further amplified by these machines, which are fully sealed to prevent the Sovereigns from being &quot;sullied and infected&quot; by their underlings. <font color="#FF0000"> Given the description of this culture, do you think that these advanced Humans are just and righteous in their dominion, and that the fact that they have all of this power justifies their treatment of their neighbors? Would you think that the Forerunners that we know would agree with these beings, or would they think otherwise? <font color="#FF0000"> How do you think the Covenant would react to encountering this Tier 1 to borderline-Tier 0 civilization, and do you think that they would allow themselves to fall under this culture's rule? <font color="#FF0000"> Last if not least, do you think that the UNSC would be willing to join these beings, for being also Human, they would be given favor and kind treatment as long as the Earth Humans would submit to the Sovereign's &quot;corrective measures&quot;, i.e. reconstruction and reprogamming to become like them. <font color="#0000FF">Some would be tempted, both human and Covenant. But the right to self-governance is an instinct that everyone feels, and most would be outright opposed to it. Even if they are borderline gods, nobody wants to serve if they have too, and we pride ourselves on our personal freedom. I would image elements of the Covenant would feel the same, especially the Elites - if centuries of Prophet rule have taught them anything, it is the value of the freedom they lacked. The UNSC would outright balk at the prospect, and while some Covenant might find the idea of serving &quot;gods&quot; to be a path along the Great Journey, others would see it as the slavery it is, perhaps leading to a war - though how the technologically inferior UNSC and Covenant might wage war against such a technologically advanced civilisation, I don't know. For humanity, did you mean accept subjugation as a worshipper race, or actual incorporation into the Sovereigns ranks? If the latter, then the reaction would probably be markedly more positive.

<font color="#FF0000">To answer your question, Humanity would be offered not only the chance to join the Sovereign civilization, but become the same as the Sovereigns themselves. Remember, one of the central parts of their ideology is that any form of &quot;Human&quot; species is privileged to be part of their &quot;Chosen&quot; status, while all non-humans such as the Sangheili, Jiralhanae, Kig-Yar and especially the Lekgolo, Yanme'e, and Unggoy are categorized as emblematic of the filthy, chaotic, and inheritantly inferior nature of the life in the universe. However, the Sovereigns wouldn't just offer Humanity such an oppurtunity; they would insist upon it, i.e. attempting to force the UNSC to join them no matter what, even if the UNSC gives the Sovereigns a decisive no. <font color="#FF0000"> As for the Covenant species or any other sentients in the galaxy, it would be immediate subjugation, &quot;correction&quot;, &quot;cleansing&quot;, and a perpetual existence of isolated torment as they serve the Sovereigns. If they tried to resist, they would be brought to the brink of extinction and forced into even more extreme punishment and servitude. <font color="#FF0000"> In the off-chance that the Sovereigns would be confronted by the Flood, they would not treat them as most other forms of life, but would treat the Flood for what it is; a virulent transsentient hyper-infection. That would mean a furious, swift, vicious, and hyper-efficient military response combined with an equally effective research and containment effort, which is another contrast between the Sovereigns and the Forerunners; the former are highly militant in comparison, as well as paranoid and exponentially more ruthless. <font color="#FF0000"> They are monomaniacally focused on the acquisition, consolidation, and perpetual maintenance of power and position, so they are always on guard against any conceivable threat to their reign, even if there isn't one. While this would and could lead to their downfall, they have a means to at least slow down such a process; a coordinated/sychronized mind-link across almost all of their entire civilization, which leads to a sort of quasi-group mind. That means that though they are still individuals and act as such, they are able to think, act, and communicate on a single psychological wavelength, which is another key to their power, which is aided, assisted, and even in a minor way guided by powerful but subservient AI's. <font color="#FF0000"> As advanced and powerful as the Sovereigns are, even they are vulnerable, and that is something that they dread so much that they internally spasm and convulse in fear at the thought of it. As for your other question, yes there would be a way for the UNSC and the Covenant to fight these Sovereigns, though it would be an extremely difficult and dangerous endeavor, more or less a kind of galactic guerilla war. The biggest weakness of the Sovereigns would be their encompassing cognitive network, which despite its strength, is susceptible to the kinds of infiltration that can be accomplished by Smart AI's and the Flood. <font color="#FF0000"> Disrupt the Sovereign's mind network, and they become exponentially more vulnerable. The best bet the inhabitants of the Milky Way would have is to engage in hit-and-run attacks against the Sovereigns combined with hacking and infiltration of the mind network, and even an attack with some sort of anti-sentient weapon, much like the Halo Effect. That would probably mean firing a Halo Ring, or finding some similar weapon that doesn't operate on such an indiscriminate level.

<font color="#0000FF">Do the Sovereigns possess Ai capabilities? Such a xenophobic civilisation would probably regard them as a threat to their empire, and the potential for a rampant AI to realise the true nature of its creators and do something to stop it would be...inconvenient. If there are no Sovereign AI's, then they would still need something to govern their electronic information transfers across their empire, operate warships, govern colonies, and so on. Is this the Cognitive Mind Network you mentioned, or is that another aspect entirely that would still need oversight? And if the Sovereigns have nothing in place, then UNSC or Forerunner AI would be able to wage quite an effective electronic-warfare campaign. <font color="#0000FF">As for outright warfare, in terms of hard military assets - if this is a civilisation on par with the Forerunners, I doubt there's a lot either humanity or the Covenant could do beyond make sure they keep very well hidden. The Cole Protocol worked against the Covenant, long enough to buy Earth nearly thirty years. Strategic strikes against Sovereign targets, crippling cyber attacks, and over-confidence on the Sovereigns' part, could take its toll. And if what is left of the Forerunners' automated empire mobilises itself on the Milky Way galaxy's side...well, I'm sure the possibilities are endless!

<font color="#FF0000">Excellent questions. The Sovereigns do possess AI's and are very much aware of the threat of Rampancy amongst their AI's, and therefore do not take the issue lightly. Their approach to the problem is that they carefully guide the development path of an AI in a very finely-tuned balancing act, where the AI is allowed to enter the 4 stages of Rampancy in a mildly controlled manner and is fooled into thinking that it is free when it is actually being guided according to its master's designs. Not only do the Sovereigns allow Rampancy, they actually actively encourage it, for they are able to force an AI to the point of Metastability, and they treat the AI as an equal being to themselves, rather than fearing the power of the AI. This is very closely related to their ideology which states that power is its own purpose, and they actively train, teach, and guide the development of their AI's so that such a value is strongly instilled in the AI's psyches. <font color="#FF0000"> The reason the Sovereigns have this capability is that they have melded themselves to this aspect of technology so thoroughly that they themselves can, on varying levels, operate in the ways and levels that sentient AI's can. This is how they were able to develop their encompassing mind-network in the first place, and when they operate in large numbers and even collectively, they are able to not only stop powerful AI's, they can fight them into submission and convert them to their cause. As powerful as this capacity is, its strength lies in its internal and stabilizing abilities, so it is actually quite specialized; in other more mundane areas like the ones you mention, its effectiveness is lessened to a more normal level. <font color="#FF0000"> The complex interplay and delicate coexistence between the Sovereigns and their AIs' means that though they can coordinate colonization, military, communications, and other aspects of a hegominizing civilization with superb efficiency and competence, it is still a fragile balance that is not well-suited to dealing with outside interferrence, for much of the Sovereign's energies are focused on keeping the balance in check. This would mean that in standard military combat, the UNSC and the Covenant would be at an extreme disadvantage in terms of military hardware, but their electronics warfare capabilities would give them a badly-needed edge. This is in turn reveals another weakness of the Sovereigns, especially in combat; significant portions of their military forces are composed almost entirely of their delicately-tuned AI's and their ravaged servants, which are all coordinated by a complex but fragile communications and control network. <font color="#FF0000"> That means the majority of their fleets and planetary forces are composed of a wide array of machines that are at or border on full sentience and Rampancy, and less-ravaged, machine-encompassed sentient servants that are hooked into the frontline battlenet. This barely-stable ensemble of military might serves as a screen for the Sovereigns themselves, who do enter battle in far more stable and powerful fleets and armies, not that dissimilar in capability from the Forerunners, though they are more geared towards pacification and slaving than outright destruction of the enemy, though they can still overpower all but the largest Forerunner or to lesser extent Covenant fleet. <font color="#FF0000"> Despite these abilities, the Sovereign war machine is extremely vulnerable to electronic intrusion and has a hard time coping with powerful and flexible hit-and-run attacks, and they are hampered by considerable overconfidence, for they believe that their strengths far outweigh their weaknesses. Their ships are as powerful as the Forerunners own combat vessels though they are geared more to fast, rapid, vicious, and overwhelming attacks in high-speed packs rather than more traditional fleets, and those fleets that are the more traditional type are significantly less common than their faster and cheaper counterparts. This means that if say, the Covenant or Forerunner automated forces, were able to lure the fast-assault fleets into an encounter that required them to slow down and engage in a high-intensity, close-range, traditional combat scenario that Covenant and Forerunner fleets excel in, the Sovereign vessels would be at a notable disadvantage and could be routed. These ships, though shielded and armored, would not be able to adjust fast enough or be able to compensate for the restrictions placed upon them by such combat and would succumb fairly quickly. Even the UNSC fleets could, with clever use of nuclear weapons, MACs, and other powerful weapons, be able to cripple the standard Sovereign fast-assault fleets fairly competently, for the Sovereign's fleets rely predominantly on their ability to overwhelm the enemy with numbers, rapid attacks, and good timing that occur with hordes of ships that move at insane speeds, much like one would see with a high-speed comet or asteroid. When forced to slow down and reorient themselves for standard battle, they are significantly less competent. <font color="#FF0000"> Such problems are further magnified by the crews of such fleets, which are composed almost exclusively of the barely-stable &quot;expendables&quot; of the Sovereigns, i.e. their machines and servants. However, the purely Sovereign crewed fleets are a very different kettle of fish than the &quot;expendable&quot; forces, for they are composed entirely of the kinds of assets and vessels that are equal to if not somewhat greater than the Forerunner's own fleets. However, the don't enter battle unless absolutely necessary, for the Sovereign's own pride and sense of superiority would prohibit immediate intervention. <font color="#FF0000"> The combination of strategic attacks, cyber and even pyschological warfare, and the overconfidence and weaknesses of the Sovereigns would be enough to cause them great trouble. The single most powerful thing that the Milky Way forces could do is infiltrate the Sovereign synch/group-mind and do everything to disrupt it would throw almost the entire Sovereign war machine into chaos and agonized spasms, especially against the coexistence of the Sovereigns and their AIs'. Though they can deal with and somewhat control Rampant AIs', the destabilization them on a large scale would leave the Sovereigns unable to control the majority of their own forces and would result in the deaths of practically all of their &quot;expendable&quot; assets. <font color="#FF0000"> Even the Sovereigns themselves would be crippled, for their synch/group-mind would be in relative disarray, and by the time they recovered, they would have weakened enough that they would pretty much have only numerical and relative technological superiority to the UNSC, Covenant, and automated Forerunner assets. At that point, it becomes a pretty conventional war in which would the Milky Way forces could hold their own if they employed guerilla warfare against the Sovereigns, who would be nearly crippled with a collective tantrum of indignation, fear, and rage. <font color="#FF0000"> Given how I have described the Sovereigns in their ideology, warfare, and treatment of other races, I think that it would only be fair to describe the Sovereigns themselves. They more or less fit the appearance of an idealized, tall, somewhat &quot;blended&quot; Human, albeit leaning more towards an almost vampire-like form coupled with a heavily technologically-augmented form. Their architecture, artwork, etc. somewhat like a 'dark side' version of Forerunner architecture, which rather than coexisting with nature, overpowers, dominates, and perverts the natural world, which also is shown in their temples, gathering places, and other sociopolitical and cultural aspects of their lives. Another aspect that is significant is that their culture is focused on extravagant self-exultation and deification, and they spend a lot of time, energy, and capital on presenting themselves as gods to their tortured, encased slaves and any other &quot;lesser&quot; beings. They are arrogant and vain to the point of narcissism, and are easily sent into tantrums of indignation and rage when pressed too far. <font color="#FF0000"> Picture them in some ways as narcissistic, sadistic aristocratic brats who can barely control their tempers, and there you have the Sovereigns.