Honour

Nearly every clone soldier in existence has some kind of military or combat background, from Mordu's Legion or the various empire militaries, from a time when military units were close-knit and death had a more permanent effect than just a financial loss. Honor was also an often used concept within these military units, dishonourable acts and betrayal was greatly frowned upon and led to severe repercussions, sometimes even death. When these mercenaries and professional soldiers then became clone soldiers and started forming their own corporations, many of them kept on their concepts of honour. Then when these corporations began assaulting districts in Molden Heath after they became available, they faced a nasty surprise, awoxing.

Basically, someone from their corporation betrayed them, turning against their own friends and wreaking as much havoc as possible, through friendly fire mostly, to make sure that the opposing side would win. I met the member of a corporation, where the recently promoted CEO went rogue, emptying the corporation wallet and disbanding it entirely, and this member was very angry. He was shouting about finding that traitor and reporting him to an empire to remove all his clones and permanently kill him. His corporation's motto was even "Death before dishonour", which kind of explains the irony of honour within capsuleer and clone soldier circles.

There simply isn't any.

Ask yourself, how would a regular soldier get punished if he were to awox, kill his own friends, destroy his squad's assets and relaying intel to the opposing side? He would be killed, or discharged permanently from duty, that's pretty much it. Among capsuleers and clone soldiers, death is irrelevant and a financial loss at best, and the only discharge of duty possible would be to fire that person from your corporation, CONCORD or the empires don't even lift a finger to deal with these sort of things. Repercussions of betrayal are minimal at best, and when you can do pretty much anything without suffering negative consequences from it, it brings out the worst side of humanity:

People are selfish, self-centered idiots who only care about themselves when the call comes.

There is a common saying we say to capsuleers and clone soldiers who get betrayed or scammed in some way: "Welcome to New Eden", which shows how normal betrayal and distrust is in here. The only way to really combat betrayal and make sure it doesn't happen to you is being very careful of who you trust, those who trust people too much usually get betrayed easily.

This dishonour also applies to places which might not always involve corporation management and ISK scams, for instance within ground combat. For instance, after we gained access to flaylock pistols, people noticed how powerful these things were and began using fits with two flaylock pistols and absolutely wrecking everything. People cried foul, saying that it was "dishonourable" to use this kind of equipment, and demanded that we used less optimal equipment in the name of "fairness". Of course this is simply a fallacy, and the continued use of flaylock pistols would have kept on forever, if they wouldn't have been tweaked to be less effective. This doesn't mean that honor is non-existent though, sometimes I have witnessed two scouts, facing off each other with nova knives, while nobody else interfered with them in the name of having an enjoyable duel, for instance.

But point is, in a world where death is meaningless and dishonour leads to basically no repercussions at all, people quickly turn against each other for their own selfish gains. That is the sad truth and all you can do is to adapt or fall with those who stubbornly cling on their pre-capsuleer and clone soldier ways. As for myself, my loyalty stays with the Intaki Liberation Front, and I can't think of a better offer to join another corporation right now. But this might change later down my career, I'll never know for certain. Whatever comes in my way, all I can do is adapt, or die.

ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ  

Dangerous Equipment

Have you ever considered how dangerous the profession of a clone soldier can be? We throw ourselves into a wall of gunfire willingly every day, endure huge amounts of pain for a couple hundred thousand ISK worth of profit a contract. But have you ever considered how dangerous our own equipment can be? Sometimes, it's our own equipment that is more dangerous than the actual hostiles we are engaging.

Consider the Amarr Drop Uplinks, which use quantum entanglement and miniature wormhole technology. Ever wondered why you're very disoriented when you first spawn to an uplink? That's because your body is being bombarded with lethal radiation, which would lead to your death in a span of days, if not hours. But you don't care, you're going to be dead in 30 minutes anyway.

And even when you do die, the trusty Nanite Injector that can revive you. You basically get pumped full of nanites that repair the damage to your body and restore regular cardiac rhythm. Mind you, this very technology is used to kill you in the most excruciating way possible. But obviously it's nothing. Just a few seconds of agony and excruciating pain as your internal organs are liquified before waking up in a new clone again.

The reason we don't care about this is because we are "immortal". Death is a financial inconvenience at best, and pain is something we experience regularly as a part of our occupation, so we get numb to it. Because of this, we often ignore safety protocols installed within our weaponry for more lethality, prime example being the Laser Rifle. Normally there would be a failsafe installed to these weapons to prevent excessive overheat and lethal damage to the user. But with all the body armor we are wearing, and the general not-giving-a-damn attitude we have, they have been removed from the versions clone soldiers use, I have seen people being killed because they overheated their weaponry too much.

Even if it isn't our own equipment killing us, we have modules and dropsuits that can be very painful to use, or have questionable features. Let's start with the standard Amarr A-1 dropsuit. They integrate a hydra-membrane graft directly into your neurological system, in other words the dropsuit is directly fused with your spine. This might improve reaction times, but at the same time they use your body's own energy output to power the suit's shield systems or the exoskeleton in heavier frames for example. In essence, the Amarr dropsuit is a parasite you willingly let into your body.

And finally, there are the biotic modules, implants that are integrated directly into your body's bodily functions to improve them. Cardiac Regulators for instance attach an implant into your body that regulates your heartbeat, allowing for greater stamina and less energy consumption. Imagine if this implant malfunctioned, you'd instantly go into a cardiac arrest, in other words a heart attack. Myofibril Stimulants is a system which directly stimulates the muscle fibers in your muscles to make you punch and kick harder. If this implant malfunctioned it could possibly leave you paralyzed. Kinetic Catalyzers basically increase the kinetic energy your sprinting creates by pumping you with drugs, which makes you run faster. Do I even need to explain why this sounds questionable?

When reading all this, I suspect that the greater danger to our healths are not the hostiles we fight, but our very own equipment. Does it stop us from using them? Of course not, we are "immortals", we simply don't care. It improves our combat capabilities so we use them anyway, regardless of their negative side-effects they might have. That is a dangerous mindset to have.

ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ 

Bad Arguments

Ever since the start of the mercenary Intergalactic Summit, there has been a constant debate between the Gallente and Amarr, most of them seeming to be boiling down into the same circular argument:

Gallente Mercenary: "You Amarr are dirty slavers!"
Amarr Mercenary: "All of you Gallente are corrupt hypocrites!"

There are some merits to these statements, but most of it is just glaringly exaggerated stereotypes.

The most common stereotype the Amarr have revolves around their ideals for slavery. Most non-Amarr think that slavery performed by the Amarr is brutal, bloody and involves lots of torture, rape and other vile means. If you look around the Galnet a bit, you can find an article detailing the methods on how slaves in the Amarr Empire are controlled, and it is very brutal at times. However, most of the Amarr I know argue that there are strict laws on how holders and slavers treat their slaves, and that the methods of control only apply these methods when the slavery is disobedient, not just whenever they feel like doing. This argument does have some weight to it, and I have the utmost respect to my Amarr contracts, but I still do not accept these methods of control, even if they are seldom used.

However, they often point out that the Gallente are not as good and pure as they often portray themselves to be, or think they are. They specifically have pointed out to the case of Anvent Eturrer and the way he was executed. His execution was done by the Federation, and was exceptionally brutal and inhumane. On top of that, there have been lots of rumors about Gallente torturing their prisoners, which have always been denied by the Federation. However, several Caldari Prisoners of War have been extracted from Gallente facilities, often in very poor condition which would refute these denials.

Then there is the case of the Intaki, who have been taking lots of flak from the Federation ever since the start of the Gallente-Caldari war centuries ago. We have been living in lowsec Placid at the mercy of pirates ever since CONCORD and the security systems were established. At the start of the Caldari-Gallente war, all Intaki that were supporting or sympathetic to the Caldari were exiled permanently, and from these exiled the Intaki Syndicate and Mordu's Legion were born. And finally, with the CONCORD's Emergency Militia War Powers Act, all kinds of capsuleer militias have been further causing trouble within lowsec Placid. I could mention several other cases too where the Gallente navy and the Black Eagles have done questionable acts in the name of "security", but you get my point. Gallente are not the pure and righteous good guys they are often portrayed as.

But don't mistake this as hate for the Gallente. For all the bad they have done, they have also done good, which has often been downplayed by the Amarr mercenaries arguing with Gallente mercenaries. For example CreoDron, a Gallente corporation has always been the frontier of drone technology, which has been an immense help in industry, healthcare and other important aspects of society. Its founder, Ceul Darieux was also an icon of the Gallente ideal, he even had a solar system named after him.

In the end, both the Amarr and Gallente have their good sides, and their bad sides, in their own way. Believing that there is a universal good or bad is a false belief.

ཟར༴ཐ٦ཡཐ༴ འཤན༴བ བ༴ཏ༴མ༴ར٦ ٦ནད༴བ٦ ༴འ٦٦ད ན٦བ༴༴ٲ