Fav Traitor Group/Faction

Fav Traitor Group

  • Pilgrims

    Votes: 2 4.3%
  • Black Lance

    Votes: 26 55.3%
  • Society of Madrian

    Votes: 15 31.9%
  • Belisarius Group/Y-12

    Votes: 4 8.5%

  • Total voters
    47
Well some of these guys are saying the Black Lance wasnt either. It just takes this stupid library computer so long to load stuff that I didnt look up all 9 pages on this subject. Their listed in the poll as traitors.
 
Originally posted by Ripper
Well some of these guys are saying the Black Lance wasnt either.

ahhh....no....we weren't saying they weren't traitors...I just said I have a hard time totally labelling them as evil as they were trying to help the Confederation....

There acts were quite traitorous, and they were traitors....
 
Originally posted by Skyfire
(Hold on, I'll tell you whether I did or not once the heartattack dies down. :) )

I'd tend to concur with that. Although I do have to ask how reliable Confed's intelligence network was if Tolwyn could so easily hide his activities. (In the novels, they were rather top notch, if I remember correctly.)

Confed Intelligence (finding out the enemy's secrets) was quite good. OTH, Confed's counter-intelligence (detecting spies and treasonous activities) did let quite a few slip through, including Tolwyn, Hobbes, foreign Minister Jamieson's co-operation with the Kilrathi, Jazz and Minx, ect.

Best, Raptor
 
That's probably a good point. I guess that'll probably be beefed up quite a bit after the whole fiasco that Tolwyn instigated.
 
Originally posted by Ladiesman^


ahhh....no....we weren't saying they weren't traitors...I just said I have a hard time totally labelling them as evil as they were trying to help the Confederation....

I seem to remember in the WC4 novel that Blair overheard some of the BL pilots making jokes about the victims of the chemical bombardment. That doesn't really seem like a helpful spirit to me...
 
Which made roasting their Master Race hides over the next few missions all the more fun. :D I guess they justified what they were doing by telling themselves that the people who died were genetic dregs anyway, or that they were "just following orders", or whatever.

Best, Raptor
 
Originally posted by Raptor
Which made roasting their Master Race hides over the next few missions all the more fun. :D I guess they justified what they were doing by telling themselves that the people who died were genetic dregs anyway, or that they were "just following orders", or whatever.

Best, Raptor

And of course Blair slaughtering vast numbers of Confed pilots who most likely knew nothing about the Black Lance was perfectly acceptable.....

hehehehe...I still remember the first time I played WC4 (where I refused to defect until I figured out it was impossible to stay with Confed, and then got the evil Blair ending...), at some point after defecting to the Border Worlds I accidently lit up Maniac with a dumbfire (cause the dumbass flew right in front of me), and then I got the message "Traitors never win"...I got a kick out that....
 
Originally posted by Ladiesman^ And of course Blair slaughtering vast numbers of Confed pilots who most likely knew nothing about the Black Lance was perfectly acceptable.....

You're right. Taking down fighter pilots in combat who are trying to kill you and your shipmates is morally the same thing as using bio-weapons that are designed for genocide. :rolleyes: Like it or not, Confed was in the wrong in WC4. The line pilots might not have known it, but they were helping Tolwyn carry out his plot. Yes, it's sad that they had to die, but that's the nature of war. The alternative would have been letting them kill Blair and the Intrepid crew. That in turn would have meant would letting Tolwyn and the Black Lance sleepwalk to victory.

As for "traitors", who is the real traitor, the person who aids in the slaughter of billions of his people because he was "just following orders", or the person who goes rogue to stop it? Given the way Confed treated Blair and Maniac at the end of WC4 (promotions and rewards all around) compared to what Tolwyn got, the way Confed saw it is pretty obvious.

Best, Raptor
 
Ehh, that's *highly* debatable in a *lot* of instances. There are cases where the Project threw uninformed units against the Border Worlds... and those are excusable... but did the pilots defending the factories and shipyards at Speradon 'deserve' to die because the Border Worlds thought it would maybe be a fun idea to steal some ships *JUST IN CASE THERE'S A WAR*?
 
And that, as Wilford himself said, was one of the more phyrric victories of that campiagn. Without the Lances, the Princetown and the Flashpaks though, could the Intrepid bunch have stopped the Project?

PS: Where did I say the Confed pilots deserved to die? I said it was sad that they had to die.

Best, Raptor
 
See...this is the same thing I was saying about the Black Lance....

Apparently Blair's treason is ok, because it was "good treason". He figured the best way to help Confed was to kill a bunch of it's military personnel....

Blair racked up quite a few kills there...I mean, how big was the crew of the Vesuvius?

Granted, the Border Worlds generally only attacked those who were attacking them (with some exceptions). Tolywn was attacking those who he felt would doom all of mankind if another big war were to break out....they're really doing the same thing.....
 
I see your point, Ladiesman. Blair and the Border Worlders fighting Confeds to protect themselves after a Confed based group attacked them is pretty much the same thing as what the Black lance did. Similarly, what the Americans are doing in attacking Afghanistan after a an Afghanistan based group attacked them is the same thing that Al-Queda did. Granted, the Americans are mainly fighting to defend themselves while Al-Queda attack those they believe would doom all of us by doing the work of Satan on Earth, but it's all really the same thing. :rolleyes:

There's a difference between self defence against a clear and present danger or illegal activities committed to defend your nation against such danger, and atrocities committed in name of some fanatical ideology. Confed made that distinction pretty clearly at the end of WC4 when it rewarded Blair and Maniac, but senenced Tolwyn to death. And after all, it's Confed that decides who is a traitor to it or not.

Best, Raptor
 
Originally posted by Raptor

There's a difference between self defence against a clear and present danger or illegal activities committed to defend your nation against such danger, and atrocities committed in name of some fanatical ideology. Confed made that distinction pretty clearly at the end of WC4 when it rewarded Blair and Maniac, but senenced Tolwyn to death. And after all, it's Confed that decides who is a traitor to it or not.

Yes...that they do....and for the most part, they rightfully should have been rewarded. Or at least, some of their actions should have been excused. SOME of them, however, should not have been, like the aforementioned attack on Speradon...
 
Yes, because eliminating two of the four Dragon squadrons at Speradon went a heck of long way towards beating the Black Lance, and capturing a squadron of them actually gave the Blair and the Border Worlders a fighting chance they wouldn't have had with their Sabres and Rapiers. Not to mention that being able to use the Dragons captured at Speradon to infiltrate a Black Lance base allowed the Border Worlders to expose the conspiracy in time to save Confed. I agree, it's absoluely inexcusable that Blair and his comrades actually seized the initiative and brought the conspiracy down, rather than simply staying on the defensive till Tolwyn had framed them for the atrocities committed by the Black Lance, thrown all of Confleet at them and crushed them. I mean, it's just not cricket if the people you're planning to massacre actually fight back. :D

Whatever the wisdom of choosing it as a target, Speradon was a military target. Telamon wasn't, and neither were all the refugee and civilian transport ships attacked and destroyed by the Black Lance. That's the differance between the two sides. The Black Lance instigated the killings without provacation, and would have killed billions more if they hadn't been stopped. Blair and the Border Worlders did what they to fight effectively (which includes taking the fight to the other side, especially if you're massively outnumbered and iutgunned), and because of that, they stopped the murder of billions of Confed and Border Worlds citizens.

To be honest, I just don't understand the argument that Blair and the Border Worlders should have been fighting with one hand tied behind their backs. Sure, a group like the Black Lance needs all the help it can get when comes to opponents who actually shoot back, but you would think that having fighters and weapons that were years ahead of their opponents, a state of the art super-carrier, and all of Third Fleet to do their dirt work would have been enough even for them.

Best, Raptor
 
No matter how Wilford decided to looked back at it the situation, the Speradon operation is in my mind the ultimate proof that the Border Worlds are certainly *not* saints. And isn't to assume otherwise -- that they're some kind of perfect wonderful organization to Confed's evil monster -- to ignore the lesson of WCIV in the first place? That the nation we served as good and noble can very easily do wrong.

I mean, lets look at Speradon: the Border Worlds is trying to prove that they've been unjustly accused of attacking Confed. Great. So what's the strategy? ATTACK CONFED! Given the *tiniest* opportunity to hurt Confed militarily -- without there being a war, without them knowing that Confed Proper (Blair had spoken to Tolwyn about this!) was behind the attacks -- they took it!

They destroyed a wing of Lances -- great. But they didn't know there'd be Lances there! This situation would be like me deciding that it's up to me to stop murder and that the best way to do this is to break into peoples houses, kill them and hope that some of them were murderers. And if not it's okay because I had a noble goal! Also, I can steal their stuff, because I had *ideals* and they were just dirty may-or-may-not-be-murderers!

And the idea that it was *necessary* is a load of fish -- this is a very rare instance in history (pseudo-history?) where we actually *can* look back and see that it could have happened differently. They could have stuck to defending their own interests in Circe (a moral tragedy in and of itself...) and still have ended up with the exact same results.
 
I never claimed that the Border Worlders were saints. I said that what they were doing was nowhere near the level of what the Black Lance were doing. The Border Worlders fought for their interests, of course, (there are very few countries that don't) and in the process they helped save Confed's bacon. They fought for survival and to prove their innocence. They did what any other country would. The Black Lance, on the other hand, went out and killed people to provoke a war, both Confeds and Border Worlders, and in the process comitted war crimes.

What I have an issue with is the idea that the Border Worlders were meant to sit back and take it passively, and if they didn't, they somehow became the aggressors, and Blair becomes a traitor for helping them. Their ships had come under attack, their territory had been invaded by Confed forces, their worlds were coming under increasing attack from Confed or Confed backed forces (including that Circe attack you mentioned), so when they saw a chance to dent the military capbility that was being used to hurt them and hopefully gain some respite, they took it. That's a very valid military tactic. How might the battle at the end have turned out if the Princeton had been fighting againt the Border Worlders instead of for them?

Were the Border Worlders saints in WC4? No. Were the Confeds saints in WC4? No. Does any of that in any way justify or mitigate what the Black Lance did? No. Does any of what the Border Worlders did make Blair a traitor to Confed? No. By doing what they did, the Border Worlders brought the Black Lance in to the open, and Blair played a huge part in that. Whatever we might or might not agree with regarding their tactics, the fact is that they were successfull using those tactics. (They might have been successfull with other tactucs, but then again, they might not.) They might not have been saints, but they did prevent a huge massacre of Confed citizens. That was why the Confed Senate gave Blair a promotion at the end of WC4 instead of a jail sentence.

Best, Raptor
 
But this is all just a case of history looking favorably at the victors. They attacked Speradon while believing that the Confed authorities were trying just as hard to deal with the "renegades within Confed who sow disorder." They were assured by the head of Confed's fleet that the attacks in the Border Worlds were *not* authorized by Confed HQ. There is a huge difference between "sit back and take it" (by which you mean, of course, *defend your own nation*) and "attack completely unrelated forces because you can", which is what the Border Worlds did. It was a dumb strategy that killed innocent people for no reason.

And again, we *know* how the battle turns out if the Princeton had stayed in Confed hands because we can play WCIV and choose to defend civilians instead.

Given the knowledge posessed by the Border Worlds at the time their actions are absolutely *not* justified by what the Black Lance did. In fact, in perspective, the Black Lance hadn't done anything horrific at this point -- they'd attacked shipping (of both sides!) and jammed some computers. The attack on Telamon came *later*.
 
It's more a case of history looking favourably on who was telling the truth. By defeating the Vesuvius, the Border Worlders hadn't defeated Confed by a very long chalk, or the military power that Tolwyn could command. If the Confed Senate had believed the Border Worlders were aggressors who had killed Confeds in cold blood, they could have gone after them while still crushing the Black Lance. They didn't, and in fact went out of their way to honour and reward Confed officers who had taken part in it.

As for being told that Confed was trying just as hard as they were to deal with the renegades, maybe they didn't believe it, because they didn't trust Tolwyn. They would have
been wrong in the first while being right in the second. Agin, I'm not saying that they're perfect. I'm saying that what they were doing was light years away from what the Black Lance were doing. Telamon might have come later, but it had been well in the planning.

As for what they *knew* at the time, in how many wars we *know* everything that the enemy is doing? As often as not, commanders have to make their decisons based on what they suspect and what they fear in equal parts as what they know. (Such as the kidnapping of a prominent expert on nano-tech for instance.) The Border Worlders acted as if there was a survival to their existence based on everything that was happening. And guess what, they were right. Because they acted as they did, they were able to oppose a conspiracy that Confed Intel didn't *know* about. If everyone had waited till they had known, the Black Lance would have been home free.

A couple of direct questions, though: Do you personally believe Blair was a traitor to Confed? Or that his actions are no differant from Tolwyn's?

Best, Raptor
 
It's more a case of history looking favourably on who was telling the truth. By defeating the Vesuvius, the Border Worlders hadn't defeated Confed by a very long chalk, or the military power that Tolwyn could command (as we see if you lose the argument.) If the Confed Senate had believed the Border Worlders were aggressors who had killed Confeds in cold blood, they could have gone after them while still crushing the Black Lance. They didn't, and in fact went out of their way to honour and reward Confed officers who had taken part in it.

Now, lets be fair -- *what the senate believes* is not the same thing as *what actually is*. As you already pointed out, it is possible to lose the game so that the senate believes Tolwyn was acting in Confed's best interests -- them thinking this doesn't make it true. Similarly, winning the game and convincing the senate that the Border Worlds was the better party doesn't mean that the Border Worlds *weren't* 'aggressors who had killed Confeds in cold blood'.

As for being told that Confed was trying just as hard as they were to deal with the renegades, maybe they didn't believe it, because they didn't trust Tolwyn. They would have
been wrong in the first while being right in the second. Agin, I'm not saying that they're perfect. I'm saying that what they were doing was light years away from what the Black Lance were doing. Telamon might have come later, but it had been well in the planning.

That conjecture doesn't completely make sense, though -- Blair wouldn't have released Tolwyn if he believed the Admiral were lying...

But then here's a good question: could the fact that the Border Worlds became outright beligerant at Speradon have allowed the Black Lance the impetus to attack Telamon?

As for what they *knew* at the time, in how many wars we *know* everything that the enemy is doing? As often as not, commanders have to make their decisons have to make their decisons based on what they suspect and what they fear as what they know. (Such as the kidnapping of a prominent expert on nano-tech for instance.) The Border Worlders acted as if there was a survival to their existence based on everything that was happening. And guess what, they were right. Because they acted as they did, they were able to oppose a conspiracy that Confed Intel didn't *know* about. If everyone had waited till they had known, the Black Lance would have been home free.

This is beside the point -- there *wasn't* a war, and Confed wasn't the enemy. The Border Worlds attacked them irregardless of this. And in the case of Speradon -- and they go so far as to admit this -- they were *not* right. They gave up defending their own citizens at Circe and further provoked Confed.

A couple of direct questions, though: Do you personally believe Blair was a traitor to Confed? Or that his actions are no differant from Tolwyn's?

Yes, anything else would be a politically correct gloss-over. He fired on his wingmen, he ignored his orders and he joined up with an opposing nation. He wasn't *wrong*, but he was clearly a traitor by the simple definition of the word.
 
Back
Top