Am i missing something or...

Well, Jazz didn't hit me as the lovable stray puppy either.. - but I'm happy I remembered the Mandarin story right; it really liked it at the time.

Btw - I just checked the Encyclopedia and the rest of the forums; there is no article about the Society of Mandarins. What happened to them when Ayer's Rock was blown? Was there any other reference to them ever again?
 
I'm not sure about the novels, since I haven't read all of them, but after SO2, there isn't another mention of the mandarins in any of the games. It was surprising that they just suddenly seemed to disappear since they were such an important part of the story in wc2. I've always wondered what happened to them, but I bet somebody else must have an idea.
 
Other than a reference or two in the bartender comments in Privateer (set at about the same time as WC3, timeline-wise, and produced after SO2 was released IIRC), there's not really any further canon mention of the Society of Mandarins.
 
Whenever I’ve thought about the Society of Mandarins I’ve ended up thinking about the Belisarius Group too. Both are conspiracies within the Confederation that want to insure humankind’s survival (and would likely agree, following the war, that Earth was “lucky"). But their fundamental strategies are directly opposed.

Always thought their “having to contend with each other” while trying to undermine the Confederation proper would make for an interesting story line.
 
Fatcat said:
Speaking of which, what kind of name is Downtown? It's easily the stupidest callsign next to 'Ragtop' ever.
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...Says the guy that calls himself Fatcat.

Nemesis said:
Always thought their “having to contend with each other” while trying to undermine the Confederation proper would make for an interesting story line.
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The Belisarius Group wasn't trying to undermine the Confederation, but to strengthen it. They wanted to take control of it by changing the government into a military dictatorship - but they saw this as a way of saving the Confederation (not humanity). As such, the two organisations were fundamentally opposed to each other in every imaginable way.
 
I think a close read of False Colors indicates that there's not really a Belisarius Group -- people working towards its goals believe it exists, but it's actually just a cover for Tolwyn's Wing Commander IV stuff. He talks about that after he explains about the group to Bear.
 
Possibly, but False Colors was (probably intentionally) pretty ambiguous on this count - I don't think this is something that we can be even nearly certain about.
 
"That was the constant gnawing strain that the G.E. project, the virus hidden within the bacteria of Belisarius, was perhaps the greatest moral outrage of all. Yet there was no longer an alternative. That was the hidden truth that Whittaker had revealed in theri meeting, a truth which he had kept from Jason. Belisarius was simply the Trojan Horse that would be destroyed, and then the real plan would be hatched."
 
Quarto said:
The Belisarius Group wasn't trying to undermine the Confederation, but to strengthen it.
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That’s undoubtedly how some members of the Group saw their goal, but I was speaking for myself as a fan of “the Confederation proper” that we as players–and so as Blair–are fighting to protect and preserve.

Quarto said:
They wanted to take control of it by changing the government into a military dictatorship - but they saw this as a way of saving the Confederation (not humanity).
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David Whittaker would disagree. Tolwyn too. But I’ve no doubt at least some believed that was their “true and only” purpose.

Conspiracies can easily draw in people with different perspectives/motives/rationalizations. And precisely that is what appears to have happened with the Group over time.

LOAF said:
I think a close read of False Colors indicates that there's not really a Belisarius Group -- people working towards its goals believe it exists, but it's actually just a cover for Tolwyn's Wing Commander IV stuff.
Click to expand...

I read it a bit differently, though what we’re reading is never as clear as we would like. As Tolwyn notes, in his conversation with Bear he “engaged in half-truths”. Yet, when thinking to himself, he’s similarly handicapped by self-doubt.

The impression I take away is that the Group is quite real, but Faustian in its origins and make-up, and therefore unavoidably subject to the same expediencies by which it judges everything else.
 
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