Author Topic: Society Victory  (Read 6312 times)

Stormlion1

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Society Victory
« on: 08 July 2012, 19:49:17 »
Here's a question for you all, does anyone here actually think the Society could have achieved a victory over the Homeworld Clans? Or in the Periphery nearer the Inner Sphere? What do you think they could have achieved for themselves? Would they essentially have been able to split the Scientist Caste from the control of all the Clans and become essentially a free agent for hire? To me there rebellion seemed odd with no real goal other than a lame attempt to seize control of the Clans, a plan right out of a James Bond novel.
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wundergoat

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #1 on: 08 July 2012, 21:43:28 »
IIRC there was mention of the Society disseminating Betrayal of Ideals or something similar with the intent of getting the lower castes to revolt, but it had the opposite effect and steeled the lower castes against them.  I imagine if the Society had managed to spark a caste war they would have had a shot.

cold1

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #2 on: 09 July 2012, 07:19:27 »
Step one in rallying the lower castes against the warriors is treating them better than the warriors did.  Not using them as test subjects and placing them in prison camps or out right starving them all to death.

The problem with the scientists is they lacked a unified front or leader to inspire and rally around.  The stronger clans survived because they were able consolidate and hold together.


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JadeHellbringer

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #3 on: 10 July 2012, 14:30:18 »
IIRC there was mention of the Society disseminating Betrayal of Ideals or something similar with the intent of getting the lower castes to revolt, but it had the opposite effect and steeled the lower castes against them.  I imagine if the Society had managed to spark a caste war they would have had a shot.

Bingo. The warriors form a small part of one percent of a Clan's population. They have all the guns and such, sure, but finding the rest of the Clan rising up against them... eventually they lose. Not just sheer numbers against them- lack of support. Eventually you run out of ammunition, supplies, repairs, etc.- if the scientists had accomplished this, they'd have had a real chance to overthrow the status quo and take control. Instead, they weren't even the lesser of two evils- they were even worse than the warriors. They never had a chance to gain any kind of power with the way they did business.
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Atlas3060

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #4 on: 10 July 2012, 14:41:35 »
Bingo. The warriors form a small part of one percent of a Clan's population. They have all the guns and such, sure, but finding the rest of the Clan rising up against them... eventually they lose. Not just sheer numbers against them- lack of support. Eventually you run out of ammunition, supplies, repairs, etc.- if the scientists had accomplished this, they'd have had a real chance to overthrow the status quo and take control. Instead, they weren't even the lesser of two evils- they were even worse than the warriors. They never had a chance to gain any kind of power with the way they did business.
Ironically if they had the ability to show how the "lower castes" do in the Inner Sphere there might have been more grumblings and some victories.
Problem for the Society was the Homeworlds are too distant and insulated to do such a thing and the Society didn't infiltrate the more liberal Clans well enough to do anything.
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martian

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #5 on: 10 July 2012, 14:52:55 »
Seeding discontent is nice, but it is not enough. Society leaders would needed to come forward with some plausible idea, make public political statement, carry away lower castes on their side; sadly this would have been in direct contrast to safety requirement to stay hidden, so that warriors wouldn't execute them.

Nightsky

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #6 on: 10 July 2012, 18:32:55 »
The Society reminds of the WoB in several ways, but not least in making a hasty, ill-judged decision to pick an ugly fight. They'd have been smarter to lie low and bide their time, save what recent genetic samples they could, and move more of their own kind into positions where they could screw with the Warior caste. I guess the Steel Vipers running the show would complicate things since apparently the Society had minimal penetration into their scientist caste (to due the extreme isolationism that Clan practices) so maybe that was one angle that pushed the Society into action.

If they were really determined to fight, then Scientists should have made much wider use of their biological weapons to wipe out more Warriors.

Savage Coyote

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #7 on: 11 July 2012, 08:51:58 »
Problem was, in their mind, they couldn't wait.  With Andrews "Reave whoever you don't like to cull their genes from the pool!" proclamation, they felt their toes were stepped on and they were going to loose access to genes that had nothing inherently wrong with them.  Loose those genes to faulty logic (ie, Cobra's challenge to Reave Kufhul's legacy way back in '68 was a precurser.)  While might makes right and all that jazz, the warriors had kind of lost their collective tops and went crazy. 

Terrace

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #8 on: 11 July 2012, 11:02:17 »
Problem was, in their mind, they couldn't wait.  With Andrews "Reave whoever you don't like to cull their genes from the pool!" proclamation, they felt their toes were stepped on and they were going to loose access to genes that had nothing inherently wrong with them.  Loose those genes to faulty logic (ie, Cobra's challenge to Reave Kufhul's legacy way back in '68 was a precurser.)  While might makes right and all that jazz, the warriors had kind of lost their collective tops and went crazy.

I can buy that a good chunk of the Society joined up under that logic. But just like the Word of Blake, the ones at the top making decisions were even worse.

Dragon Cat

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #9 on: 11 July 2012, 11:22:11 »
I think it would have been cool if they had driven out the Clans or taken over

For some reason a bigger version of Klondlike for the future would have been cool
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cold1

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #10 on: 11 July 2012, 11:49:54 »
For some reason a bigger version of Klondlike for the future would have been cool

I think we'll see that with the Imperio in the near future.


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Nightsky

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #11 on: 11 July 2012, 17:39:39 »
Problem was, in their mind, they couldn't wait. 

Like I said, they should have sucked it up, safely storing what post-Invasion genetic lines they could to reintroduce them behind the Warriors' backs at a later date. Anything they couldn't get a sample of would have likely been something they hadn't already secretly been messing with anyway.

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #12 on: 12 July 2012, 03:00:44 »
I think we'll see that with the Imperio in the near future.

I wouldn't be surprised either
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Von Jankmon

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #13 on: 14 July 2012, 09:28:51 »
The Society would have had a better chance if it aimed to secede from the clans rather than take any of them over in a coup.
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GhostBear

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #14 on: 14 July 2012, 14:06:27 »
The Society would have had a better chance if it aimed to secede from the clans rather than take any of them over in a coup.

Secession is for the weak. Remember, these guys were all trueborn warriors at some point before their "fall" to a second-rate caste. They're still warriors at heart (so they think), just with added SCIENCE! to their ways and means.
Eh.

Gaiiten

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #15 on: 14 July 2012, 14:41:23 »
Secession is for the weak. Remember, these guys were all trueborn warriors at some point before their "fall" to a second-rate caste. They're still warriors at heart (so they think), just with added SCIENCE! to their ways and means.

So warriors (at heart) with wellfounded scientific knowledge are megalomaniacs par excellence?
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A. Lurker

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #16 on: 15 July 2012, 01:17:23 »
So warriors (at heart) with wellfounded scientific knowledge are megalomaniacs par excellence?

In real life that might be debatable.

In fiction-land, though? Sure. Bad-guy scientists and megalomania kind of go hand in rubber glove.

Sjhernan3060

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #17 on: 18 July 2017, 06:36:05 »
Curious how the current crop of scintist are kept in line? Random excutions to keep them on their toes?

Stormlion1

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #18 on: 18 July 2017, 10:04:38 »
Wow, talk about a thread Necro! My money is on frequent loyalty tests and much more oversight then they once had.
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Sjhernan3060

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #19 on: 18 July 2017, 12:11:42 »
Hey Stormlion you asked a good question! How do you think these loyalty tests would work? I would the limited #'s of warriors provide the additional oversight?

Crow

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #20 on: 20 July 2017, 05:17:33 »
As much as I like the Society, I feel that they were unable to pitch a new plausible political vision for the Clans to the lower castes that would have allowed them to attract the majority of the other castes to their side. The Society, with their emphasis on logic and reason, and isolated in the ivory towers of their secluded labs, put insufficient effort in understanding the ideology that keeps the lower castes in line and could not replicate the ideological apparatus that the Clans had be using more or less successfully for centuries.

The main reason the Society uprising failed, I feel, was that it was rushed.

I do, however, believe that remnants of the Society are still out there continuing their experiments and will pop up again when the time is right...
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Xeno426

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #21 on: 20 July 2017, 09:58:09 »
The Society, with their emphasis on logic and reason, and isolated in the ivory towers of their secluded labs, put insufficient effort in understanding the ideology that keeps the lower castes in line and could not replicate the ideological apparatus that the Clans had be using more or less successfully for centuries.
I guess philosophers and sociologists are not members of the Science caste.

Crow

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #22 on: 20 July 2017, 10:37:42 »
I guess philosophers and sociologists are not members of the Science caste.

Well, arguably in a warrior culture like the Clans, philosophers and sociologists don't really exist. What need do you have for those things when might makes right? That's all the philosophy and sociology that you need.

As for the Society, their MO was "we are right because Science!" This line of argumentation might be convincing enough to win over those in the Scientist caste and maybe some Technicians, but for the Merchants and Laborers, it isn't going to cut it. Think about how much anti-intellectualism can be found among real-world workers and you'll understand why the Scientists didn't win in the end
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Natasha Kerensky

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #23 on: 20 July 2017, 20:04:56 »

There's not much to go on regarding the Society's actual plans in WoR and its supplement.

There may have been no single, unified, enforced set of Society goals and playbook.  WoR (p. 152) states that "only a few among the top select members knew the objectives and directions the Society was moving in."  If there was little top-down direction, every Society cell may have had its own plan.  Given some of the Society's goofier moves (like the voice on Strana Mechty), that may have been the case.  It certainly leaves things more open for GMs, which may have been the intent.

That said, if the Society's top leadership was able to agree on and enforce a master plan, it probably looked something like what happened to the Coyotes.  Elliott McKibben, a member of the scientist caste who had tested out of the warrior caste, was able to retest, rejoin the warrior caste, and rise to the Coyote Khanship, apparently through Society subterfuge and threats.

If the Society had been able to subvert the toumans in a few additional Clans besides the Coyotes (augmented more of the Society's own specially equipped forces and tricks like HPG and warship virii), the Society would have had a reasonable shot at taking over or separating from the Homeworlds by force.  But they obviously did not have enough time to do so before the Bloody ilKhan's Reavings started.

Without enough time to subvert more of the warrior caste, I think the only other option open to the Society was more widespread use of their DNA-targeted virii.  The Society could have cut down many more bloodhouses and even whole phenotypes if their genetic weapons had been more widely deployed, effectively wiping out the warrior caste.  But the Society was probably loathe to do so because they literally had centuries invested in the development of those bloodhouses and phenotypes.  I imagine the Society only targeted individuals and bloodnames that they considered to be failures.  The Society's geneticists wanted to bring their best creations (the best trueborn warriors) under their control, not destroy them.  (Plus, wiping out the warrior caste with biological weapons would have made for a boring storyline and gaming scenarios.) 

It's also worth noting that many Society members were no doubt former warriors themselves and vulnerable to their own bloodname and phenotype virii, making them even more loathe to release those biological weapons into the warrior population less they be hoist by their own petards and die horribly.

Although the Society's battlefield technology and tactics are very interesting and flavorful -- iATMs and improved heavy lasers, ultra-heavy and modified protomechs, high-tech and highly efficient omnimechs, warship virii, etc. -- I don't think those tools alone could have won the day unless a lot more of the warrior caste had been subverted like the Coyotes or had been wiped out by the Society's DNA-targeted virii.

I also don't think that uprisings (or lack thereof) by other castes should matter.  Logically, the BattleTech rule of sheeple applies to the Homeworlds just as much as it does in the Inner Sphere.  Whether he's a megacorporation employee, a backworld farmer, or a member of the laborer caste, the average Joe just doesn't care who rules his planet.  The vast Spheroid populations in the Clan occupation zones never rose up en masse to take out the cluster or two that garrisons each of their planets after dozens of years of Clan rule.  Had the Society been more successful, I'd say it's equally unlikely that freebirths and lower castemen in the Homeworlds will have risen up against the Society.  In fact, given the rate of trials of possession, some, maybe most, Clan enclaves are accustomed to being traded to a new team every so many years.

Lastly, the one battlefield potential untapped by the Society or the Clans in general is sheer numbers from production.  If you only care about minimal quality, iron womb technology has always had the potential for turning out massive numbers of warriors.  If the Society had paired that with mass production of low-cost but effective weapons (protomechs, small vehicles, maybe even battle armor), they might have had a chance even without subverting more of the warrior caste or wiping it out with virii.  If you can send ten green or regular protos or small vehicles up against every veteran or elite omnimech on a planet, you'll win the planet more often than not.  Maybe the Society never had the resource and facilities to achieve those numbers, but things might have been very different if they had.

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Sjhernan3060

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #24 on: 09 September 2017, 19:56:17 »
The Society reminds of the WoB in several ways, but not least in making a hasty, ill-judged decision to pick an ugly fight. They'd have been smarter to lie low and bide their time, save what recent genetic samples they could, and move more of their own kind into positions where they could screw with the Warior caste. I guess the Steel Vipers running the show would complicate things since apparently the Society had minimal penetration into their scientist caste (to due the extreme isolationism that Clan practices) so maybe that was one angle that pushed the Society into action.

How deep into the jags did the society get?

If they were really determined to fight, then Scientists should have made much wider use of their biological weapons to wipe out more Warriors.

Archangel

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Re: Society Victory
« Reply #25 on: 10 September 2017, 13:02:58 »
It wasn't until the ilKhan's call for mass reavings (thus directly attacking their work for this first time) that the Society initiated a desperate (and hastily) plan to seize control.  For most of their existence they were mostly content with manipulating the warrior caste from behind the scenes.  Within the Society there were multiple factions (likely divided primarily along Clan lines to reduce potential exposure risk), each with differing short and long term goals.

The Society got its hooks pretty deep into the Jag scientist caste largely due to the Jag's harsh rule.  Clans that more strictly controlled their lower castes tended to have more problems than those that were more liberal/trusted their lower castes more.  The Blood Spirits didn't hold to this rule because their strict rules regarding communication with other Clans made making inroads into their scientist caste extremely difficult if not impossible.
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