Conviction Chapter 14

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All about the Subjugation, Insurrection, and Unification books.

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Hello World
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Conviction Chapter 14

Post by Hello World »

So that wraps up the final chapter of Conviction, and man, is there ever so much to talk about (I really shouldn't really be doing this at 3 AM in the morning given how busy I am tomorrow).

1. DAAAWW, Aria is just so cute.
2. I'm glad that the fleet commander got what she deserved. Although the lunar prison makes me wonder, is it solely for Terra or is it for the Confederation? But that's not really that important.
3. Anyways, the IP system has been developed. This means a huge shift in combat since now, even an average ship can tank huge amounts of damage from anybody besides the Karinnes, the Empire, and the Coalition. Wonder how the other races are going to deal with this problem. Sure, not being able to do anything to each other may prevent ship to ship combat, but there's nothing stopping somebody from sending a shielded bomb onto a planet (ex: a pirate that wants to blackmail an entire planet).
4. Aria's vision for Jyslin. I'm guessing the mask refers to the fact that Jyslin has to hide her Generation abilities? But I'm not too sure.
5. Aria's vision of Dahanai. Now this is interesting. I might be looking down on the Empire a little bit, but it seems like Dahanai will play a fairly large role in freeing the Dreamers (unless the vision was interpreted completely wrong). This is somewhat surprising seeing as Karinne ships are superior to Imperial ones in every other way and many of the ships of the other civilizations are close to that of the Empire's. Edit: Never mind, I just remembered that the Syndicate will probably have ground forces as well. Which means that the Imperial units would be more than a match for the Karinnes thanks to their telepathy.
6. The Dreamers. I kinda wonder what will happen to them and where they would live. It seems like there would definitely be enough assholes that would be willing to use them in the Milky Way so they would need extremely high security. Heck, they wouldn't even have to kidnap the Dreamers. They just need enough DNA from a precog to mass produce them. First guess would be Karis, but Dahanai seems to want to help them as well.
7. The supership loot. I'm surprised that Jason didn't ask for more. Each one of them is apparently billions of credits worth of materials and the Karrines probably went through a fair amount of money in the war. Although given how many ships there are, the large supply could cause a drop in the price of metals. Edit: Apparently temporary memory loss goes hand in hand with sleep deprivation. I completely forgot about the section where it says that wrecks can be salvaged from Andromeda. Although I do wonder why the Syndicate/Consortium haven't salvaged those wrecks yet. After all, they still present a significant source of raw materials.
Last edited by Hello World on Wed Apr 26, 2017 3:41 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Conviction Chapter 14

Post by Wolfee »

Man I am so glad I went to bed early last night otherwise I would have been up till I finished the chapter!!
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Re: Conviction Chapter 14

Post by SoronelHaetir »

I am surprised that Aria would have any modesty. Given how she was treated (i.e. the Benga simply didn't care about her - or even think of her - as a person at all) I would think modesty would get in the way of what little personal care they would have given her.
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Re: Conviction Chapter 14

Post by GotToGo »

Hello World wrote:
5. Aria's vision of Dahanai. Now this is interesting. I might be looking down on the Empire a little bit, but it seems like Dahanai will play a fairly large role in freeing the Dreamers (unless the vision was interpreted completely wrong). This is somewhat surprising seeing as Karinne ships are superior to Imperial ones in every other way and many of the ships of the other civilizations are close to that of the Empire's.
6. The Dreamers. I kinda wonder what will happen to them and where they would live. It seems like there would definitely be enough assholes that would be willing to use them in the Milky Way so they would need extremely high security. Heck, they wouldn't even have to kidnap the Dreamers. They just need enough DNA from a precog to mass produce them. First guess would be Karis, but Dahanai seems to want to help them as well.
7. The supership loot. I'm surprised that Jason didn't ask for more. Each one of them is apparently billions of credits worth of materials and the Karrines probably went through a fair amount of money in the war. Although given how many ships there are, the large supply could cause a drop in the price of metals.
I'll give my take on a few of your points after reading the chapter (right or wrong):

5. above - Dahanai and most of immediate family are now Karinnes, other than the Dreamers have brown skin they are Faey; "First Contact".

6. above - Remember Jason has a several continents finishing up being terra farmed and he has another planet in his system that will be in 4 years. Coincidence?

7. above - I believe was well explained why by Jason thoughts about that in the chapter. (I will reread anyway so I will keep this in mind).

I do love your take on Jyslin and her mask!

I am of the belief that sooner or later we going to find that Aria and her race of Faey have naturally developed Commune between them as a defense of the Benga. It could explain why the Benga killed them off so young before they expressed and tried or did escape from them. Plus how else did implant their language, both spoken and written, in Aria's 6 year old mind?
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Re: Conviction Chapter 14

Post by kyli »

Jyslin's mask - There is only one explanation I can think of off the top of my head. Aria takes off the mask in the dream and I wonder if that means that she discovers Jyslin is a generation and the mask is her hiding that secret. Although I personally don't think Aria can commune; if she had the ability, she would discover Jyslin's secret the first time she'd here Jyslin commune.

And I really loved the scene where Jason personally kicked Sha Ra's butt. I actually thought he killed her at first and was pretty surprised, but in hindsight, killing her himself without a trial would have gone against what he believes in I think, though I think he was angry enough at her because of what they did to Aria to do it.

And my suspicions about Project G being completed (or mostly, anyway) were correct. I had a feeling it would be part of this chapter and it seems its as much of a game changer as i thought it would be. Karinne ships will be all but invincible with this new system and the other Confederate ships will be kick-ass too. And the Karinnes will maintain their edge in armor systems. But I think we've now seen a full reversal is armor vs. weapons tech is the series now. With the introduction of Torsion weapons early in the series, the balance shifted heavily towards the weapons side. With the diffusers, a balance was again achieved. Now, with IP armor systems, the balance has shifted heavily towards the armor side. At least, pulse weapons are still effective. Against a standard Confederate vessel, I think a Wolf fighter with IP armor would win one on one, given how tough this will make the Wolf and the Wolf's pulse weapons will still do major damage.
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Re: Conviction Chapter 14

Post by GotToGo »

kyli wrote:Jyslin's mask - There is only one explanation I can think of off the top of my head. Aria takes off the mask in the dream and I wonder if that means that she discovers Jyslin is a generation and the mask is her hiding that secret. Although I personally don't think Aria can commune; if she had the ability, she would discover Jyslin's secret the first time she'd here Jyslin commune.
Remember Aria has not expressed yet as she too young and been repressed by the Benga! I am waiting till she does.

Loved the rest you wrote above.
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Re: Conviction Chapter 14

Post by SYED »

I thought all dreamers were oracles, not simply one in a million. Could it be their dreams instead perceive either the past or the present? Jason plan is cool enough, but if the dreamers see it too early, it might buy the benga time enough to evacuate atleast some of their oracles. I wonder if we will ever discover what caused the faey to fully telepathic, or that race to be highly telepathic or even the viable precognition.
From all we heard of the generation program, it wanted to make powerful telepaths, bridge the mind machine divide, and it made them all telekinetic. The thing is I never heard about any effort to gain the other faey gifts, empathy or precognition. I could understand avoiding attempting precogs due to the potential insanity, but why not attempt empathy, such a rare gift would be a powerful wild card.

With the confederation aware of the dreamers, Jason can ask them to aid him in the search of the Dreamers origins. Different races may hold different pieces of the puzzle, so need to bring them together. He should ask the kimdori to also search both the syndicate and consortium historical archive. We know that the benga secured the dreamers on a moon, but we have heard next to nothing about their home world.

Does anyone one the movie, the core? It is a movie where they created a vessel to travel to the earth core to get it spinning once more. If the Karrines could create something to induce a planet into creating and maintaining an EM field, then it would aid in terraforming. Or at least make it safer for domes on a world.

Next story, we will see shaman magic more fully which will be awesome. I hope that it can also be used to more fully heal the little girl mind, and even perhaps allow her to use her precognition without enduring such terrible nightmares. I bet the nightmares are largely due to the benga desire to control and dominate everything. A properly educated oracle could be a superior asset, but would be more independent then the benga would ever accept.
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Re: Conviction Chapter 14

Post by GotToGo »

My question to Fel and you all is why Jason and the Kimdori not interdicting the Consortium fleet all the way over to Andromeda and hitting them autonomous weapons all along the way?
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Re: Conviction Chapter 14

Post by johnnieholic »

GotToGo wrote:My question to Fel and you all is why Jason and the Kimdori not interdicting the Consortium fleet all the way over to Andromeda and hitting them autonomous weapons all along the way?
I'm pretty sure the fleet is made up of mostly civilians trying to escape the syndicate. The bugs and the leadership might be willing to do evil things but the people just trying to survive as far as we know don't know about any of that stuff.
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Re: Conviction Chapter 14

Post by SYED »

I have had a cool idea about the dream involving the empress. It is implied her fleet is needed. I have a couple of theories. Firstly, all her navy are strong telepaths so no risk of the benga overpowering their minds. Secondly, I think her ships can jump in the indication fields, possibly only out but still useful. Thirdly and most importantly, the imperial navy are uniquely armed with MPAC weaponry. My theory is the defences here are most vulnerable to these types of weaponry.
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Re: Conviction Chapter 14

Post by GotToGo »

Has anyone out there made up a spreadsheet file to convert measures and weights Fel is using here into metric and std. inch/lbs.? If you do please post it.

Thanks
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Re: Conviction Chapter 14

Post by Tuga555 »

SYED wrote:I thought all dreamers were oracles, not simply one in a million. (...) . but why not attempt empathy, such a rare gift would be a powerful wild card.

With the confederation aware of the dreamers, Jason can ask them to aid him in the search of the Dreamers origins. Different races may hold different pieces of the puzzle, so need to bring them together. He should ask the kimdori to also search both the syndicate and consortium historical archive. We know that the benga secured the dreamers on a moon, but we have heard next to nothing about their home world.

Does anyone one the movie, the core? It is a movie where they created a vessel to travel to the earth core to get it spinning once more. If the Karrines could create something to induce a planet into creating and maintaining an EM field, then it would aid in terraforming. Or at least make it safer for domes on a world.

Next story, we will see shaman magic more fully which will be awesome. I hope that it can also be used to more fully heal the little girl mind, and even perhaps allow her to use her precognition without enduring such terrible nightmares. I bet the nightmares are largely due to the benga desire to control and dominate everything. A properly educated oracle could be a superior asset, but would be more independent then the benga would ever accept.

I don't know but I think that that, although the dreamers are precogs, the oracles are the very strong ones, those who go mad.
The Benga solved that problem by questioning the oracle with nightmares and connecting the answers of those infinite possible futures to a "probability computer".
I also think that another tactical and strategic problem the Benga have is that; the oracles NEED questions to work, they won't volunteer dreams. Questions that I don't think they will even be able to make, like: Does the other galaxy know about you guys? After all they are a secret that even only a few Benga know. I also agree with Kell that the Benga are facing a dreamer 5th column,"dreamer oracles" that try to shape events to help the liberation, and the Benga cant find it with the oracles because they can't conceptualize the problem -See above-

About empathy, perhaps they could only work with what they had? No genes of empathy? Its not easy to find in Fae.

About the core... open a gateway to someplace in a planetary core and pour power into it, or simple plasma or some grams of antimatter, little enough to not blow the planet, rinse and repeat until melting replace matter with heavy isotopes to keep the heat going and voilá...

Shamans..very very interesting.... Perhaps the precursores were such a powerful race that also had hiperlight travel and voisited all the galaxies around then finally got tired all of that technology and retired peacefully to do some gardening...
You see there are these fabulous trees that.....
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Re: Conviction Chapter 14

Post by artreus »

i really didnt like the part where Jason confronted the Benga General,

it didnt feel like Jason at all, totally out of character, for him and his bodyguard,
he isnt allowed to go to the parry without armour, but he can go to un-interdicted space, to a planet that has been under Benaga control for months,
in the flesh, without armour to fight hand to hand with her.

Who's to say the benga didnt plan any viral agent for the first meeting when they didnt they were going to meet bionoids,
even his victory wasnt 100% sure, he only had a hunch that she wasnt used to fight small oponents
Why would the general be the only one with a hidden weapon, would he as easily deflect when fired on from behind ?

The whole scene reminded me more of some were-cat then Jason ( only the magelight and landscape altering was missing)

When Jason told he was going to show what he could do, i was rather expecting him and some other generations to merge with there CBIM and telekinetically destroy some superships , like they were a prop of paper .

later in the chapter he tells Jeslyn : 'we use our power only for self protection and defense' , but there he goes , ignoring any decisions the federation made, on a matter that isn't really that urgent ( unless u consider the urgency Fell probably felt to end this story thread ? ),

the only thing that makes this work in Jason's character, is that it costs less lives then the other options
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Re: Conviction Chapter 14

Post by artreus »

but otherwise, i still love the story, and when a certain Rahnee was mentionned, i really got confronted with the need for a re-read, so i know what to do for the coming weeks,

thx Fell
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Re: Conviction Chapter 14

Post by kyli »

Actually i dont know if it is all that out of character for Jason. Remember, Jason is really pissed off at Sha Ra and the syndicate for what they did to Aria. I think the scene shows that outrage. If not for Aria, i might agree with you more. I do however, agree that it was a bit out of character for Aya, but again, i think the key here is Aria. Aya is capable of emotion too, you know, and Jason probably wasnt the only one righteously pissed off. Ryn saw some of Aria's blocked memories and even if she didnt share them with the other guards, they would have still noticed, like Jason did, the effect those memories had on Ryn. So i think it was vengeance that made both Jason and Aya act a bit out of character. I loved that scene, btw.
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