The destruction of the Vesuvius

Aeronautico

Aeronautico

Rear Admiral
Alright, we all know that in WC4, Blair destroyed the TCS Vesuvius when Tolwyn fled to Earth. That ship required 7,800 and carried 400 starfighters to operate.

7,800.......Does anyone think that the Vesuvius was operating at full capacity when Tolwyn took command of it? The ship was only online for a few days, so does anyone think that it had a full crew onboard when it was toasted? I don't think the Black Lance had that many supporters, and Blair could not live with the guilt of wiping out nearly 8,000 Terrans in one run.

Eisen had a skeleton crew operating the Mount St. Helens, and there is no way he snuck 7,800 men on that ship. This has been bothering me for a while now. Does anyone think that that many Terrans died on the Vesuvius?
 
Aeronautico said:
Blair could not live with the guilt of wiping out nearly 8,000 Terrans in one run.
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He lived with killing BILLIONS of kats in one run; he had bombed a starbase manned by human traitors in SO2; he was killing Terrans the entire time in WC4; heck, he even blew up the Lexington, where he had to know some of the crew! (Or did he leech it? I don't have that novelization.... yet.)

Bottom line, 8000 terrans compared to the billions he had killed already is not the ceiling. It's not even close to how many would die if he DIDN'T do so, and that much was clear.
 
Per the WCIV novelization, Blair leeched the Lexington. Its also possible to do in the game.

We could get into all the atomic bomb arguments about how nuking Kilrah saved lives or whatever. Blair in fact felt some guilt over the matter - it led his alcoholism to worsen by the time we see him in the WC4N.

IIRC - Vesuvius was in fact crewed almost exclusively by Black Lance personnel. Remember, Tolwyn had been head of the SRA since the end of the war. He had started creating the Black Lance (along with Vance Richards and Ludmilla Petranova) before the Kilrathi War had ended. In fact, until Blair dropped the T-Bomb, a few high level Confederation officers were considering a military coup because of what the civilian government had allowed to happen during the false armistace.

Therefore, Tolwyn had ample opportunity to staff his pet ship with people who were loyal to him.
 
Blair has a guilty conscience, at least in regards to Terrans. He hates having to kill his own kind. This was evidenced in SO2 and WC4. Killing nearly 8,000 Terrans, if any of them were unknowing accomplices of the Black Lance, would have instilled guilt. I'm sure he wished that it didn't have to come to nuking the Vesuvius, but what option did he have?

The Vesuvius was only active for a few days at the most. The game takes place over a course of two weeks. The Vesuvius was still in the shipyards when Lady Lex was launched. I just find it hard to imagine that many personnel getting on there in that time. Tolwyn may have preselected them, that would make sense. Still, as evidenced by Eisen's hijack of the St. Helens, the Vesuvius didn't need a full crew to operate nominally.

I don't know. That is a whopping number of Terrans to die on one ship. They better all have been Black Lance.
 
We could get into all the atomic bomb arguments about how nuking Kilrah saved lives or whatever. Blair in fact felt some guilt over the matter - it led his alcoholism to worsen by the time we see him in the WC4N.
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I'm not sure the alcoholism is necessarily tied to guilt over Kilrah; if that were the case then there would be nothing to stop his drinking. Rather, I think the idea is that he's bored. His uncomfort with/refusal to be in the public eye after the boming forces him into self-imposed exile... and thus boredom and drink. It's action (action killing humans, in fact) that snaps him out of it, not some greater understanding of his role in history (think General Grant).

He does mention in the novelization, as reaction to his confusion over Melek's new cult, that he had nightmares after using the bomb... but I think even there the clear past tense is important. Then, in Prophecy, he lists it as one of the examples of "our ability to kill without remorse" that the Nephilim were interested in. (As for the atomic bomb analogue, I don't think there's any argument that General Tibbets went to his grave unrepentant.)

He lived with killing BILLIONS of kats in one run; he had bombed a starbase manned by human traitors in SO2; he was killing Terrans the entire time in WC4; heck, he even blew up the Lexington, where he had to know some of the crew! (Or did he leech it? I don't have that novelization.... yet.)
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Casualties at Kilrah were, apparently, in the millions -- but then the raid also lead an "overwhelming" percent of the Empire's population to commit ritual suicide (which likely explains why Kilrathi casualty figures were so high in total - and makes him responsible for /trillions/ of deaths).

He does leech the Lexington (err, disables it by detonating his torpedo early) in the novelization.

The Vesuvius was only active for a few days at the most. The game takes place over a course of two weeks. The Vesuvius was still in the shipyards when Lady Lex was launched. I just find it hard to imagine that many personnel getting on there in that time. Tolwyn may have preselected them, that would make sense. Still, as evidenced by Eisen's hijack of the St. Helens, the Vesuvius didn't need a full crew to operate nominally.
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The Vesuvius had entered service while the Mt. St. Helens was captured while still undergoing engine trials; the indication is certainly that Vesuvius was more fully crewed -- she carries, for instance, her fighter and support complemenents.

I don't know. That is a whopping number of Terrans to die on one ship. They better all have been Black Lance.
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This seems unlikely, as the Vesuvius wasn't any sort of secret (and the crewmen on the bridge aren't wearing Black Lance uniforms).
 
I don't know. In accordance to what Bandit said, yes, the bridge crew did not wear Black Lance uniforms. But neither did Tolwyn, and he headed the program. I'm willing to bet the bridge crew was also a team of Black Lance operatives, as they did not question Tolwyn's calls for genocide. They all just simply chose to wear the conventional uniform, probably.

It is also likely that Tolwyn crewed the ship strictly with people who he knew would not step out of line, ones loyal to his ideals or at least those who do not question their superiors' motives.
 
I'm not sure the people plotting the story or costume designing thought this through as thoroughly as we are now, but in terms of uniforms, perhaps the reason the Vesuvius's crew were in standard Confed blues was down to numbers.

The crew of a carrier is several thousand and most of them must board in port. The pilots number dozens (or up to a few hundred if the carrier wing is full) and can be picked up in deep space.

So it made it easier for Tolwyn to "sneak" a decent-sized crew aboard the ship by kitting them out in normal garb. Smuggling a handful of Black Lancer flyboys or their lycra flightsuits on would be a relative doddle.
 
Why would they be Black Lance... Most of the guys you kill on both sides in WC4 are normal people. I don't see why the Vesuvius would be a special case.

We've been killing each other with gusto since we figured out how to throw rocks. I'm sure a few years of alien space cats aren't going to make it some unimaginably horrifying thing of the past.
 
It seems unlikely that the crew is entirely Project personnel. A few points:

- The Vesuvii aren't secret assignments; they're /the/ major symbol of the Confederation's post-war rebuilding effort, debated in the Senate... and being built at L5, for Gods sakes. You could likely spot the construction with the naked eye on Earth. The Confederation is an open Democracy with plenty of civil oversight; if the fleet's massive new flagship were apparently being crewed by *no one*, it would come out.

- There aren't 7,800 'GE' people to begin with. The 'first generation' is four fighter wings worth of pilots (~400 people). The 'second generation' (ground crews and a battalion of soldiers) were their offsprings. These people would have had to be born in a very narrow window, between 2653 and 2657, in order to be adults during Wing Commander IV. Even if there are 200 couples producing a new child every nine months in that period you end up with barely over one thousand -- which would just cover the ground troops.

- Following on the above, the Project didn't even crew *Axius* with exclusively 'Black Lance' personnel. Blair is recognized by a security guard who had known him on the Concordia -- even that most secret of bases was an ordinary duty station. To everyone involved, save the leadership, they are part of a legitimate Confederation military operation.

- Similarly, a ship doesn't simply require 7,800 warm bodies... it requires 7,800 different types of particular expertise. The necessary expertise comes from a vast interconnected system of Naval training and practice. Tolwyn's tiny secret organization couldn't possibly produce the sheer diversity of training that thousands of Navy postings, service academies, technical schools, development programs, etc. do. He's training pilots, infantry men and fighter ground crews -- not radar officers, riggers, weapons loaders, mechanics, reactor crews and so on and so forth.

- Remember the Lexington and the Princeton - two much less prestigious postings co-opted by The Project for launching Gen-Select strikes... neither of which were Project-crewed. Tolwyn's forces provided their specialties in both cases: ground support crews and pilots, nothing more (not even a captain!).

- There's nothing necessarily subhuman about the GE crews to begin with. Tolwyn didn't put out a sign-up sheet for cold-hearted murders with no sense of decency; it's a pre-existing project developed for fighting the Kilrathi that he co-opted... and the majority of the crews were born into the thing in the first place. We know from Tolwyn's speech that there was internal protest over using the bioweapon... we see Colonel Roberts speaking against the Project at Tolwyn's trial... it's not some universally damnable group of people.

More to the point, though: if *you* don't know who's crewing the Vesuvius then *Blair* certainly doesn't when he's making the decision to destroy it.

Remember: Blair isn't perfect... and a pig is usually a pig: when we see Confederation-uniformed crews on a Confederation ship, it's likely the intent was to show that they were Confederation crewmen and not /secret/ Black Lance members.
 
"It seems unlikely that the crew is entirely Project personnel. A few points:

- The Vesuvii aren't secret assignments; they're /the/ major symbol of the Confederation's post-war rebuilding effort, debated in the Senate... and being built at L5, for Gods sakes. You could likely spot the construction with the naked eye on Earth. The Confederation is an open Democracy with plenty of civil oversight; if the fleet's massive new flagship were apparently being crewed by *no one*, it would come out."

Makes sense. Let's face it, everyone knew war was brewing, publicly Senate-authorised Admiral Tolwyn was giving the orders, and who would really pay all that much attention to some of the pilots wearing different flightsuits? You'd probably just assume they were a squadron of enormous show-offs or were testing out a new design. Think about your day job: lots of people you don't recognise are walking around the office all the time; no-one tends to pay much attention so long as they look like they belong there.

So, yep, it looks like Chrissy-boy wasted a few thousand - essentially innocent - Confed personnel with that FlashPak.

Ouch.
 
Makes sense. Let's face it, everyone knew war was brewing, publicly Senate-authorised Admiral Tolwyn was giving the orders, and who would really pay all that much attention to some of the pilots wearing different flightsuits? You'd probably just assume they were a squadron of enormous show-offs or were testing out a new design. Think about your day job: lots of people you don't recognise are walking around the office all the time; no-one tends to pay much attention so long as they look like they belong there.
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Yeah -- and remember that the flight crews *were* transferred secretly; the ship traveled to Axius to pick them up (which is another point against an entirely Project crew; how did it get under way in the first place?).

So, yep, it looks like Chrissy-boy wasted a few thousand - essentially innocent - Confed personnel with that FlashPak.

Ouch.
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I'm sure it's one for the philosophers to debate; the story on the scene is the same whether they're unwitting dupes or willing conscripts: those 7,800 people were doing their best to kill Blair and prevent the Intrepid from reaching Earth. Their deaths means that war with the Border Worlds is averted and, even more immediately, ten populated worlds are saved from the bioweapon.

But it isn't clear cut and that makes it a great story; 'those are all bad people, it's okay to kill them' isn't anywhere near as interesting as the idea that you have to kill thousands of people who are just following their orders in order to many more who are in the same position.
 
Interesting too is that the game offers Blair a moral option. Using the flashpack on the Ella Superbase would ensure that 10,000+ personnel (many of which are civilians) would be killed. In this instance, Blair still has to torpedo the Vesuvius, in which several thousand of the crew would have been killed.

At least if Blair bypasses the Ella strike, the casualties from flashpacking the Vesuvius would be restricted to military only.
 
You know, it's a shame the aftermath of the abortive Border Worlds conflict was not fleshed out more in the canon. The WC4 novelisation was pretty much the end of the book timeline, with the following two books being set earlier. We never really got to hear how Blair got to deal with what he did to Lexington and Vesuvius, never mind all the other kills he was responsible for during that (effectively) Terran civil war.

I don't recall Prophecy going into any detail about how Blair felt, or how he was seen among the military and civilan populations as a result of his actions. We know he was respected and taught about - "What is he, like a thousand years old?" - in official circles, but I would expect someone who had butchered so many of his own (and, depending on whether the destruction of Ella is considered canon, thousands of civilians) to be a very devisive public figure.

Surely there would be a large portion of the population determined to second guess and condemn him, no matter what we know of his character and the tough choices he had to make. Might have made for an interesting story.
 
Blair did not destroy the Lexington. There is a possibility that the Lex was in service during the events of WCP.
 
At the very least, he did a lot of damage.

I remember in the book he detonates a torpedo early, causing pretty bad damage and possibly some fatalities. Can't remember the exact details.

Don't we actually destroy the carrier in the game? It looks pretty thoroughly hulled as Seether and Paulson make their exit.

Not sure which outcome is considered canonical though.

Either way, Blair does something unpleasant to Lex and her crew. I just wonder how that would be seen by the public, given that there is never consensus on these things.
 
Blair did not destroy the Lexington. There is a possibility that the Lex was in service during the events of WCP.
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That's correct, he disabled the Lexington... but I'm not sure there's any indication that she's still around in Prophecy. One of the 'text message'-style announcements on wingcommanderprophecy.com was about visiting the "TCS Lexington Memorial" (of course, that could refer to any number of Lexingtons...).

At the very least, he did a lot of damage.

I remember in the book he detonates a torpedo early, causing pretty bad damage and possibly some fatalities. Can't remember the exact details.
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He does detonate a torpedo early, which disables launch operations; Maniac notes that (he thinks) no one was hurt.

Don't we actually destroy the carrier in the game? It looks pretty thoroughly hulled as Seether and Paulson make their exit.

Not sure which outcome is considered canonical though.
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You actually have a choice -- you can destroy the Lexington or disable her with your leech weapons. The cutscene with Seether and Paulson changes depending on how you fly the mission; if you blow her up, she's a destroyed hulk... if you disable her then she's intact with lights flickering on and off.
 
I reckon I must be Evil Blair then... I always torpedo her! I wouldn't have been popular when I got home, would I?

I'll try leeching next time.
 
Don't feel bad, I think everyone torpedoed her -- it was kind of a surprise a few years later when we discovered they'd gone through the trouble of including an alternate cutscene (especially since so many other points in the game *force* you to kill Confederation crews... and they make such a point of the Lexington's remaining crew, Naismith et al, being huge jerks).
 
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