>No, I have one, I just haven't played it much. Partly because I know
>it will eventually fail me, mostly because I didn't get my principal
>ME2 game quite right and I haven't been arsed to replay it the right
>way up.

I have a "bad end" ME2 save somewhere that I need to import into ME3 at some point just to see how much of a clusterfuck it ends up being and how amusing it makes some of the DLC.

Short version: I blew Wrex away on Virmire, and arranged things so that the only three people to walk away from the Collector base were Shepard, Zaeed, and Morinth; everyone else is a corpse, I sold Legion to Cerberus, AND I handed the base over to the Illusive Man.

(This is actually SUBSTANTIALLY harder to engineer than the good ending. Damn tough bastards wanted to keep living.)

Morinth, of course, ends up thoroughly Reaperized in the third game, and Zaeed gets shot off-camera by a bunch of thugs.

Should be interesting times when I finally get around to dumping THAT pile into ME3.

>>his men. (Try and imagine Alexander Vandegrift choosing to remain with
>>the Navy rather than going ashore to Guadalcanal.)
>
>Weren't you just saying a bit ago that a general who finds herself in
>actual combat has done something wrong? MUYFM. :)

I know you're funning with me, but to respond semi-seriously, Vandegrift never actually went into combat himself, although he had to keep his head to keep it from getting blown up a number of times. (I should hunt down a biography of the man at some point; I've read, like, eight books on Guadalcanal and TWO bios of Chesty Puller, but not one of Vandegrift.) But the point is, he wasn't manning a machine gun along the Matinakau; he was back at his command post.

But he WAS enduring the same privation his men were, because the corporate culture of the Marines is all "every Marine is a fighting Marine, every Marine is a rifleman, etc." He ate the same shitty food, got the same awful diseases, wore the same clothes until they were rotting off his back. If their position had been overrun, it would have been his ass in the last bunker.

Of course, the culture of the EAM may not bear much resemblance at all to the USMC.

>>I'm curious then; assuming it has a judicial branch, has the
>>Federation made a ruling on the compatibility of the Psi Act with the
>>Federation's ostensible commitment to sentient rights?
>
>Sort of; that's what the 2407 Psi Corps/IPO détente was about.
>
>This has been touched on a couple of times, but only gently, because -
>as noted above - I have limited interest in depicting legal wrangling.

Fair enough. I, personally, can't get enough of it. If the Psi Act actually existed, I'd likely read the whole damn thing. And then read the lengthy body of jurisprudence surrounding it. :)

> Early in Requiem for a Lensman, for instance, Gryphon and
>Utena have a short conversation in a turbolift in which Utena asks
>him, essentially, "Why are we letting them get away with this?", the
>answer to which boiled down to, "I'm not entirely convinced we
>actually have to burn the galaxy down to save it yet, but I think I
>can see the place where I will be from here."

Hmm. Question: I dug through the entire Annotated Documents section, and couldn't find a summary or precis about what exactly is in the International Police Accords... does Clark being the President of the Federation give him any influence over the IPO?

Here in the real world, the actual Interpol is run by consensus of its participating nations, in order to maintain political accountability. The IPO is substantially more muscular than Interpol is (Interpol is notoriously gunshy when it comes to crimes that have any kind of political dimension) but...

Well. As you said, the WDF are stateless mercenaries with independent funding. Gryphon and Zoner didn't have to answer to ANYONE back in the day, except possibly Lord F. If you had a problem with what they were doing, you had better have had the raw firepower to back it up.

But the IPO are technically law enforcement, right? Doesn't that mean there's political accountability somewhere baked into the Accords? Zoner is, I'm sure, a gifted diplomat, but most sovereign powers are not, I think going to respond with a hearty "Yes, please!" if he sits down and asks them "Hey, want to give Ben Hutchins carte blanche to operate his elite team of peacekeepers within your borders?" Asriel would probably react well to that sales pitch; I'd be amazed if most other powers or, indeed, the Federation Assembly, were quite so enthusiastic. They'd want some sort of oversight or advisory body put into place, yes? If the IPO is going to be the face of Federation-backed transtellar law enforcement, one imagines the Federation would want a say in how it's run.

(I could be wrong about this. It's your universe, after all. And I apologize if there IS a copy of the International Police Accords somewhere and I just missed them.)

The point I'm trying to edge around to is I'm wondering if Bill Clark has the power to come at the IPO sideways now that he's in the big chair. Do shit like reduce the Federation share of their funding, hold hearing after hearing after hearing (forcing valuable Lensmen to be tied up endlessly in Paris) other stuff like that. The EA already withdrew from the Accords; engineering a complete Federation withdrawal from them as well would doubtless be quite satisfying to him.

Coming at Gryphon sideways has a hell of a track record; worked great for Genom back in the day.

-Merc
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