# Two Questions About Imperials **URL:** \ **Category:** Fanfic\ **Created:** [December 6, 2024, 8:11pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/two-questions-about-imperials/3360 "2024-12-06T20:11:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![zakueins](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/zakueins/32/65_2.png) [@zakueins](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/zakueins)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2024, 8:11pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/two-questions-about-imperials/3360/1 "2024-12-06T20:11:35Z")
First is how good the vector controller most of them have is. Assuming you have only one shooter, and using Earth guns, can you deflect bullets with your vector controller? Second, how would Imperials respond to taking vengeance on someone who killed a person that they had promised to protect and defend, namely by destroying the entire _business model,_ along with the organization and family of the people responsible for the death? (Said response is utterly eliminating all of the male members of the family, destroying the cartel, and fixing the parts of the human brain with nanomachines concealed in every vaccine made over the last six months that make it so _easy_ for people to get addicted to narcotics.) ---
**Author:** ![avatar](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/eldraeverse.discourse.group/avatar/32/2_2.png) [@avatar](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/u/avatar)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2024, 11:04pm UTC](https://eldraeverse.discourse.group/t/two-questions-about-imperials/3360/2 "2024-12-06T23:04:25Z")
> [@zakueins](#): > > First is how good the vector controller most of them have is. Assuming you have only one shooter, and using Earth guns, can you deflect bullets with your vector controller? Trivially. The problem isn’t the technology, which is easily up to the job, or reflexes (which no-one’s running on slow chemicals these days); it’s awareness. Since even Earth’s fat, soft, and slow bullets outrun their sound, you will need to have sight or some other fast sense of the shooter if you want to catch the bullet. Or, indeed, take the bullet, orbit it round you a few times to show off, then send it back and shove it up the shooter’s nose. Or you could just create a generic psychokinetic barrier around yourself and let the bullets bounce off it and/or simply stop and drop to your feet (a variant preferred when you don’t know what they might bounce _towards_), an ability which most people master the first time they’re caught out in the rain. But rather than doing that, if you’re going to head into some crime-ridden barbarian hellhole (defined as anywhere that petty street crime isn’t front-page news and an obvious sign of the impending collapse of civilization), you might as well just wear the mechanical version and not have to think about it. (At least until it’s time to turn around, sneer your sneeriest sneer, and say “I permitted that, as a demonstration of futility.”) > [@zakueins](#): > > Second, how would Imperials respond to taking vengeance on someone who killed a person that they had promised to protect and defend, namely by destroying the entire _business model,_ along with the organization and family of the people responsible for the death? I must say by way of preamble that a _daryteir_ is expected to be honorable, just, courteous, and temperate _under all circumstances_. For the latter, in this specific case, read _measured_. One must be precisely measured in all things, and since justice can be defined as the principle that all debts must be paid and that everyone receives precisely what is owed to them, the yardstick for measuring one’s vengeance is very clear. The Maiden of Storms, whose purview includes vengeance, gets _real unhappy_ when it isn’t. After all, if your vengeance isn’t just, the vengeance due shifts to the _other_ side of the scale. (And, of course, this isn’t a _human_ society, which relies on helplessness and squeamishness rather than principle to make people safe. The Code and the Excellences are Very Serious Business indeed.) As such: > [@zakueins](#): > > destroying the cartel Probably not a problem. The actors, the people who gave them their orders, others involved in the decision or its execution, etc., etc., are all legitimate targets by the rules. (If you are going out of your way to carry out a pogrom of every even loosely-connected person who had no idea what happened and wouldn’t have approved even if they did, contrariwise, you would be going too far.) > [@zakueins](#): > > utterly eliminating all of the male members of the family This is a problem insofar as members of the _family_ does not overlap with members of the _cartel_. We are civilized people. We don’t transfer blood guilt, or any kind of guilt, based on genetic relations. Only _involvement_. And we certainly don’t go around killing innocent third parties to injure our targets. These are the behaviors of savages and monsters, not _daryteir_. (Also, weirdly sexist. “Male”, as a criterion, would not occur to an Imperial. The targets here may come from a culture that cares about this distinction, but you are not in the business of taking guidance on what’s appropriate from barbarians. Especially dead barbarians.) Go down this road, the Empire will not protect you when vengeance comes for you in turn. (And if it’s legal vengeance, their courts will convict.) > [@zakueins](#): > > fixing the parts of the human brain with nanomachines concealed in every vaccine made over the last six months that make it so _easy_ for people to get addicted to narcotics …and now we’ve pole-vaulted right over the pale of potentially acceptable actions and are heading rapidly for the horizon. Congratulations. You’re now [a Renegade of this type](https://eldraeverse.com/2012/04/05/a-good-man/) and outlaw, with your very own entry on the Red List. Fourth Directorate, Black Justice PWG, will be calling on you shortly to deliver the most serious censure, leaving behind a small pile of ashes and a note explaining that several million charges of battery, coercion, and fraud is something up with which the Empire does not put. (Your family performs the rites of legal disownership and hopes one day to live down the embarrassment of your existence.)