Drakon Question

Rosencrantz

If Gwen had won at the end of Drakon, would the Draka conquest be a brutal worldwide campaign of genocide or would they they try to keep casualties to a minimum?

Being preservationists, the Draka wouldn't be too keen on nuking their new prize let alone killing all 6 billion potential serfs.

On the other hand, they're Draka.

Thoughts?
 

Mad Missouri

Rosencrantz said:
If Gwen had won at the end of Drakon, would the Draka conquest be a brutal worldwide campaign of genocide or would they they try to keep casualties to a minimum?

Being preservationists, the Draka wouldn't be too keen on nuking their new prize let alone killing all 6 billion potential serfs.

On the other hand, they're Draka.

Thoughts?
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By our standards it would be genocidal, by theirs they would likely be playing nice. It's almost guaranteed nukes (or whatever the future version of that weapon is), chemical and biological weapons would be used by the Draka.

They are huge environmentalists so they won't be destructive just for the hell of it, but they are also very longterm thinkers/planners with experience rebuilding their own world after a nuclear war so they are not likely to be too worried about using weapons of mass destruction in large amounts to get the job done.

The one variable that might work in our favor is they might have other uses for our world rather than straight out conquest. We're so backward compared to their technological levels, and they haven't fought a real ground war since the 1990's Final War, it is very possible they seize a beachhead, like say North America, and use the rest of the world as a live fire training area to get their forces some practical experience for dealing with their real enemy's invasions. Or since the Draka are thrill junkies, we might become a very dangerous theme park.
 

Rosencrantz

So something like a global shock and awe campaign? Something that cripples us but doesn't wipe us out?

Yes a planet sized theme park sounds very Draka haha.
 

EWHM

Draka would almost certainly use some sort of tailored virus/bioweapon to reduce the population, probably by around 80-90%. The humans are way more likely to initiate any nukes than the Draka.
 

Rosencrantz

They did mention "bio bombs" during the final war in their timeline. I imagine those are either viruses or neutron bombs.

So it looks like its gonna be genocide then?
 

sdrucker

Banned
Rosencrantz said:
They did mention "bio bombs" during the final war in their timeline. I imagine those are either viruses or neutron bombs.

So it looks like its gonna be genocide then?
Click to expand...

At least until the leadership of critical countries surrender. IMO they'd start by using neutron bombs, kinetic weapons, or anti-matter weapons on military installations, Then they might follow with waves of ghouloons and drakensis taking out the military and any civilian resistance at a macro level, and for all I know have some biological pheromone trick to cow "feral humans" into docility. But part of the "fun" of being Draka is to do these things personally, so hunting armed soldiers and guerillas might their idea of an amusement park.

My guess is that they start with full-blown shock and awe, and then get out the biobombs to take out serious pockets of resistance or populations that are too big to be controlled, although I don't put it past Gwen to try the subtle approach and raise an army of human serfs as Janissaries to keep order during the first generation of the conquest, and rule through a select number of human bureaucrats that they can make true believers. At any rate, Gwen indicated that they'd be using a tailored virus to turn future children into servus, so they might be willing to do a more measured approach knowing that without 25 or 50 years, the problem would more or less be solved on their terms.
 

Rosencrantz

It makes sense to wipe out the world's militaries but it would be easier to keep the governments relatively intact.

There are only 100 million draka in their TL so they would be heavily outnumbered when they arrived. They would need the local governments to help manage things. Carpet bombing the cities would just create bedlam which the Draka would struggle to contain even with their tech advantage.

Whether the governments of earth would cooperate is a good question.
 

Meatshield

There was a fanfic, Domination Centuries, co-written by Stirling himself, that showed the outcome of Ingolfsson winning.


Basically, the Domination pushed a bunch of orbital battlestations (that could enter the atmosphere as well) through the portal, made their presence known and stated their intentions....then arranged a time and place for the Earth's militaries to take their best shot (without risk of collateral damage, and with the Draka promising no retaliation).

Seeing evidence that megaton-yield nukes weren't effective weapons, the nations largely surrendered peacefully, and the resistance was limited to wildcat guerillas and some groups sponsored by the Samothracians (implied to be Lafarge, offscreen). The Draka cut a deal with the Samothracians (who shut down their sponsored guerillas), and eliminate the wildcats (hard to have an active resistance when the cops have real truth serums and can download your memories).

A few decades later, the Earth is a well-run Draka colony (though the human serfs mostly belong to the State at large, rather than private owners, and have rights....and the Draka decide not to turn the population into homo servus, due to evidence that servus & drakensis are less imaginative than baseline homo sapiens). Most regular folks don't encounter Draka in their daily lives, as they are a thin layer (low thousands) on top of a massive (low billions) human population.

The primary author of the fanfic (Sterling, IIRC, wrote a few sections from Ingolfsson's POV, and shared some general insights) has a serious thing for the D & S side of the Draka, so the fanfic is basically the Draka being awesome and sexy, and awesomely sexily killing or seducing those who oppose them. YMMV.
 
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Catsmate

Catsmate

EWHM said:
Draka would almost certainly use some sort of tailored virus/bioweapon to reduce the population, probably by around 80-90%. The humans are way more likely to initiate any nukes than the Draka.
Click to expand...
Rosencrantz said:
They did mention "bio bombs" during the final war in their timeline. I imagine those are either viruses or neutron bombs.

So it looks like its gonna be genocide then?
Click to expand...
Large scale depopulation via biological weapons, Gwen already started the process and considered the Earth over populated and ecologically damaged.
 

sdrucker

Banned
Faeelin said:
Are we sure Stirling wrote them?
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I was on the Stirling Yahoo list at the time (back before ISOT and the Emberverse) and Anne-Marie did mention that OFA himself wrote the Gwen POV sections, for Fun in the Woods and at least one of the Domination Centuries fanfic novels. That was before the falling out with Baen and effectively blanking out that period of his career creatively. As Stirling put it in an interview somewhere, he's moved on.

As for the lesbian sex parts, as good a writer as she was/is otherwise, you have to tune them out eventually or the chapters can become unreadable due to the repetition.
 
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Dave Howery

catsmate1 said:
Large scale depopulation via biological weapons, Gwen already started the process and considered the Earth over populated and ecologically damaged.
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yes, she released a virus that would cause all women everywhere to become infertile after giving birth twice. And you have to wonder just how that would affect our world even if she doesn't win/events in the book... while many in the first world don't have more than two children anyway, it's a different story in the rest of the world, and they are going to notice pretty quick what's happening...
 

Rosencrantz

There's also what would happen if the portal had failed and Gwen had to conquer the world with no support from the Domination.

That would be a fascinating timeline though I have no energy to start one.
 

Mad Missouri

Rosencrantz said:
There's also what would happen if the portal had failed and Gwen had to conquer the world with no support from the Domination.

That would be a fascinating timeline though I have no energy to start one.
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She had already cloned herself once so after a while there would be others to help her. I guess unless she found a way to reproduce a strange male clone child on her own the Draka would become a race of females.
 
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