Worldbuilding: Those Wacky Galians - General

January 2025

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Jade Nekotenshi <nekotenshi0@gmail.com> on 2017-03-20 07:50:26 wrote:

One question regarding the Galians - are they actually a sufficiently skookum polity, economically and militarily speaking, to manage to be a thorn in the galaxy’s side, or are they mostly the local equivalent of the KKK? (That is to say: nasty, disreputable and occasionally the cause of some localized hate and discontent, but mostly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.)

Alistair Young <athanasius.skytower@arkane-systems.net> on 2017-03-26 12:59:05 wrote:

That kinds of depends on which bit of the galaxy you mean, but mostly the latter, unless the circumstances change somewhat.

One might best compare them, Earth-wise, to one of our fine Middle Eastern regional powers, inasmuch as they’re a bunch of asshats with big enough boots to make things absolutely miserable domestically and for their neighbors, but they’re not a realistic military threat to the Great Powers.

(As far as asymmetrism and terrorism of various kinds goes - well, depends on the Power. They are rather more of a problem for, say, the League of Meridian, whose approach to the War on Space Terror has all the disadvantages of the WoT approach of your standard Western democracy that wants to be liked and has chunks of its population willing to buy into any old bullshit than they are for, say, the Consolidated Waserai Echelons, who they know perfectly well are more than willing to kick their shit up one side and down the other.

At the far end of this spectrum, the Galian secret police actively tries to root out people enthusiastic enough about the Cause to cause the Empire trouble, because they also know perfectly well that it’s not just willing to deliver a shit-kicking, but there’s more’n one of its factions that would positively love a Conclave-ready excuse to blast Galia’s worlds back into Stone Age impotence on general principle… so unless they can figure out how to deliver a knockout blow, they’d best not try and deliver anything that might serve said factions as a casus belli.

[As will come up explicitly at some future point in the non-canon, the Galians are very good at mistaking “nice” for “weak”. They did that with the Empire once already, and it ended sufficiently badly that the lesson has stuck for now - even if they haven’t figured out that they ought to generalize.])

Liberty <Liberty@goggle.co.kr> on 2017-08-24 07:05:38 wrote:

Those disgusting vile Space Middle Easterns…

BTW, Islam has never been a peaceful religion, as ME regional powers themselves openly, and proudly, proclaim…if you dobut that, look human history.

To be fair, there has been not a single religion which is genuinely peaceful. Even Buddhism is not exception; it contains enough violent elements whose barbarity being comparable to Islam.