Did Margaret and Lucan really fight in coreward Fornast?

[Whipsnade]

After eight years of war she shouldn't be.

Eight years, but not eight of the same years. Margaret's war has been nothing like the war every other faction has seen. For various reasons, she and Delphi have been spared most of the fighting. Her region has seen raids by Dulinor, there have been clashes in Fornast between her supporters and Lucan's, and scouting elements of the Confederation have probed her rimward border, but none of the other factions have launched any resembling an offensive towards her let alone a major offensive.

This lack of pressure is one reason why she and advisors are still fighting the "last war" eight years on. They haven't been hammered or substantially threatened in all that time so they think their policies are working.

The Rebellion's factions break down into three main categories; Majors, Minors, and Wild Cards.

Majors

• Lucan
• Dulinor
• Solomani

Minors

• Strephon, both Real and Retcon
• Vland
• Daibei
• Deneb
• Antares
• Margaret

(The Wild Cards factions are Aslan, Vargr, Varian, and Zhodani. They don't figure in this.)

The Majors are the factions with the resources to swing hammer blows at each other and various Minors. The Majors call the tune almost all the time. Because of this, the Minors tend to react more than act. Now, look at the war the other Minors have "enjoyed" compared to the war Margaret has seen.

Strephon? Caught in a three way war with two fighting elephants. He's attacking Dulinor and Lucan while being attacked by both in turn.

Vland? Hit with a major offensive by Lucan after declaring independence and, if you can swallow it, sandwiched between the Vargr in Corridor, Lishun, and along it's coreward border.

Daibei? Smaller than most yet hit hard by the Solomani along with major raids by both Lucan and Dulinor.

Deneb? If you can swallow it, hit by Vargr in Corridor and Aslan to along it's rimward border with the Zhodani watching. Despite that arguably the least effected faction apart from Margaret.

Antares? Independence triggers a major offensive by Lucan. Joining the Protectorate causes internal uprisings by some factions, leaving the Protectorate causes uprisings by others.

Margaret? Some raids by Dulinor along the spinward and coreward borders, some skirmishing with the Solomani along the rimward border. She's not just on Lucan's back border, she not even on his stove. She also inks a ceasefire with the Solomani presumably so they can concentrate against the Vegan Redoubt and Daibei.

Margaret's been in the war for eight years, but she's been a wall flower in that war.

 

[jcrocker]

PS-Why did the Vermene turn on her? Never got that and haven't read an explanation. I assume as IRIS or others were becoming more of an influence on her OR she was always supposed to be a puppet for a Tukera takeover (something I have mused at times...) and then actually started acting/thinking like she was in control.

"The Vermene was perhaps the only honest group out there, because at least they tried to kill Margaret when she stopped listening to what they had to say when IRIS started whispering things in her ear about becoming Empress." - Illilek Kullgaan, Traveller News Service interview, 122-1127

 

[Whipsnade]

"The Vermene was perhaps the only honest group out there, because at least they tried to kill Margaret when she stopped listening to what they had to say when IRIS started whispering things in her ear about becoming Empress." - Illilek Kullgaan, Traveller News Service interview, 122-1127

Just another of the Rebellion Era's many unreliable narrators. And just another of the Rebellion Era's many personalities eager to re-brand, spin, and otherwise outright lie about their role in the events.

As Dulinor's chief intel weenie, Kullgaan was an integral part of the plot which sparked the Rebellion. The fact he later "resigned" and fled has nothing to do with some epiphany or desire to make amends and everything to do saving his own filthy neck.

There were thousands like Kullgaan. He just gets the attention because he managed to survive until the Reformation Coalition found his low berth.

 

[Kilgs]

"The Vermene was perhaps the only honest group out there, because at least they tried to kill Margaret when she stopped listening to what they had to say when IRIS started whispering things in her ear about becoming Empress." - Illilek Kullgaan, Traveller News Service interview, 122-1127

Bah, fake news. Everyone knows that Margaret created IRIS out of nothing to manufacture a fake validity to her claim. A secret, psionic agency that no one knows anything about that holds the keys to the succession? That just happens to show up in Margaret's Domain first? Yeah, right. There's a reason Strephon refused to allow them to test him. He knew they were just creations of Margaret and likely would either discredit him or assassinate him.

Don't believe the hype, sheeple.

 

[Ulsyus]

Bah, fake news. Everyone knows that Margaret created IRIS out of nothing to manufacture a fake validity to her claim. A secret, psionic agency that no one knows anything about that holds the keys to the succession? That just happens to show up in Margaret's Domain first? Yeah, right. There's a reason Strephon refused to allow them to test him. He knew they were just creations of Margaret and likely would either discredit him or assassinate him.

Don't believe the hype, sheeple.

But at the time it was bought wholus-bolus by the sheeple! The logical explanations about why it had existed in the shadows seemed to be believable, and it wasn't until well after the collapse of everything that it was examined and found not to be what it claimed. In that sense, it did just what it was designed to do, just not in the way it claimed it was designed to do it.

 

[epicenter00]

Just another of the Rebellion Era's many unreliable narrators.

That was actually one of my favorite parts about Survival Margin.

People in the TNE era believe the guy because he lived through the events so is a first-hand observer, but it doesn't take much reading between the lines to realize that the RC people want to believe the worst of the Imperium so when bitter old Kullgaan starts saying bad things about the corruption of the Third Imperium, it fits neatly into their preconceptions so they lap it up, never asking if he was qualified to talk about it - it's like believing someone who lived in the 1AD Roman Empire's province of Nabatea about goings on Gaul; just because this someone lived during the time of the Roman Empire doesn't mean he's qualified to talk about anything beyond Nabatea and maybe not even all of Nabatea.

It's back to the old addage about history: If you get far away enough, distances and time start to blend together; King Tut and Cheops and Cleopatra become contemporaries. Agamemnon and Socrates become contemporaries. Nobody in the RC ever asked how Kullgaan would know about the goings on over in Margaret's Safe from his vantage point in Illieish it's "not even a few inches" on a 8.5" x 11" map of the Imperium between Margaret's Safe and Dulinor's Safe so of course he'd know ... right?

The truth is Kullgaan didn't know. He was just making it up, theorycrafting without evidence.