Rejected Submission 4th Elysian Empire

It's still unspecified whether they consider both Patricians and Plebeians to be on the same footing as 'true Elysians' so long as they're both natural-born, let alone what the ramifications of that are. It looks like these new slaves take the place of Plebians, so they no longer have need of an underclass. They do need more numbers, I'd think they'd get them whereever they can, and I'd assume that 500,000,000 population figure mostly describes their slave population. It would be helpful to break it down by percentage to avoid misunderstandings.

Plebeians are much rarer than they used to be, so accepting them as members of the new society may or may not have been necessary (the canon material on Elysians is still inconsistent about how far the Caelisolan project has progressed.) I can only assume that Caelisolans are cast out, and likely considered unwelcome symbols of the old regime, since by design, not one of them is naturally born, they're all made from ST copies. Those would have made up a large chunk, if not a majority of the Elysian population by the time this new empire was founded, though, so I think they're important enough to be worth mentioning the new role of in the article, along with the others.

I do think it's useful to point out how incredible it is for such a large population to arise without any of the frenetic gunboat diplomacy and resource gathering that I mentioned. This Fourth Empire draws a lot of parallels with the Shravana Hive I came up with for the Freespacers, they're doing a lot of the same things for the same reasons. The main distinction seems to be that this empire is having an extremely easy time throwing its weight around, rather than having rendered itself mostly irrelevant in the process of breaking away and isolating itself with a xenophobic ideology.

There's room for improvement, there, detailing the leaders and why they're so outrageously successful and what kind of help they've had from superintelligences they've created with stolen data (if not from true outsiders). More details means more plot potential and less room for misinterpretation by others, aside from making the whole idea of them much easier to swallow.

HAMnJAM said:

I understand breakaways, extremist remnant groups, etc., But @Gallant has a point. From what I know, Elysia was completely absorbed to Yamatai. Why would a fourth empire arise if it would be immediately threatened by the largest empire in the area?

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Agreed - given how fast Yamataian ships go, it seems to me like they would have wanted to put a lot more distance between themselves and the nation that wiped the floor with them four times in a row.

Navian said:

This sub-faction seems very, very, very bold for an unsupported government-in-exile. I'd find it more plausible if they found help, rather than bootstrapped themselves, or if they were more cautious and in hiding. Otherwise it seems strange that their lives aren't so consumed by gunboat diplomacy and resource-gathering that they don't have much time left over to be credible antagonists.

Clarify, does the 'True Elysians' restriction include Caelisolans? If so, it'd also be useful to clarify what their status is in this new-new-Elysian society, if not as citizens. It's not clear if Plebeians have higher status here than elsewhere, either, since the word 'Elysian' is used every time.

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Again, agreed. Where (or from whom) did they get the resources necessary to support themselves? There's also little to no concrete information on many, many areas:

• What is the structure of their government? Of their military?
• Where are the technology articles for their military equipment (or equipment in general)?
• What civilian/military starships/installations do they have?
• Where is the article detailing the characteristics of the Purgatory system? Where is the article detailing the characteristics of their homeworld?
• Who is in charge of the Senate?
• What is their economy like?
• As @Navian stated, what is the status (legal, social, political, economical, et cetera) of Plebeians and Caelisolans?

These are but a mere handful of the things that in my opinion should have been completed prior to submission - and I would strongly recommend that you consult the original Elysian Celestial Empire page for guidance regarding the multiple sections that need to be expanded before I grant my approval as Faction Manager.

Navian said:

[...]

There's a lot of things that are still unexplained that are troubling me, though. Elysian society has never, ever been 'for Elysians', since Elysians have been traditionally divided between the Patricians and Plebieans, the former of which hold a great sense of noblesse oblige toward the latter, and the latter who've traditionally served the former unquestioningly. That makes it hard to understand how they'd form a real 'nationalist movement', it seems it would require a thorough transformation of their social structure into one where all the all the old divisions are gone and have been replaced with new ones, French Revolution-style.

This article explains their new political structure and how they interact with other races, but it doesn't say anything about the new social structure of these Elysians themselves. It just keeps referring to them all as 'Elysians', as if we should already know what that means. It doesn't seem to be talking about old school Patricians and Plebeians, or the new system with Caelisolans in the middle. Instead it seems to be some sort of even newer group that's formed a more homogenous identity out of all or most of the old Elysian social classes. Sort of like a bunch of 'unfettered' ex-nobles and low-born Nietzschian academics performing a very grand experiment? That's my best guess at an explanation for this...

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Once again, I agree - and once again, these questions need to be concretely answered before I approve of this submission.

Syaoran said:

The population of this group however is 500 million. It's not a 'cell' It's actually a fairly large nation. The Elysian empire's population is ambiguous, but 500million is not a small chunk at all. In August Yamatai hit 10billion. That means this would literally be 5% Yamatai's population. And this is supposed to have gone unnoticed and started as an extremist faction that is rather counter to the culture it started in? Where did these 500million people come from?

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Syaoran said:

[...]

But from what I'm reading of this article it doesn't even really make sense, not only is their founding too far back, with the previous FMs not having made any steps for this previously(and stuff was being done with the Elysians between then and now) But also this is marked as an 'USO' article. This just looks like an out of character power grab to me.

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Yet again, agreed on all points - except that the founding isn't far back enough, in my opinion. 4 years is barely enough time to establish a colony and get it up and running, much less research, develop, and manufacture an entire fleet's worth of warships - and 500 million individuals is simply too many. Although @raz and @Wes would have to weigh in upon this, I'm fairly certain that were they so active (and heavily-populated),
Star Army Intelligence would have identified them as a threat and sent in a fleet or two to exterminatus the planet - and you can be sure that they would have noticed even a fifth of that number emigrating from Elysia, which would have only increased their (already-high) chances of being detected by SAINT.

Essentially, this - in my humble opinion - is a submission that simply isn't ready to be reviewed yet. A lot more information needs to be provided by @Zack, and an equal number of questions need to be answered - which is why in its current state I am disapproving this submission as Elysia's Faction Manager.

Luckily this doesn't involve the elysians that you are FMing, and the go ahead has already been given by Wes.

As such, Frost, your input doesn't really matter here because this doesn't involve your faction.

Saying 'your input doesn't matter' doesn't make the article any less incomplete. It's kind of like telling someone 'fortunately, your input doesn't matter' when they point out that your chair has only two legs before you sit on it.

FrostJaeger said:

I'm fairly certain that were they so active (and heavily-populated),
Star Army Intelligence would have identified them as a threat and sent in a fleet or two to exterminatus the planet - and you can be sure that they would have noticed even a fifth of that number emigrating from Elysia, which would have only increased their (already-high) chances of being detected by SAINT.

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While I really like to say SAINT is amazing and perfect and automatically knows everything, I'd caution against using SAINT's expertise to prevent articles from being approved. This gets approved? Heck yeah, "We Know" immediately based on multiple intelligence vectors.

That said, I was under the impression that this faction was made up of Elysians who broke away a long time ago rather than any who emigrated from Yamataian Elysia within the past decade. As in dudes who were angry immediately after one of the historical Elysian Wars. That seems feisable to me, since we don't know where all the Mishhu are, so it can go to reason that we don't know where all the Elysians are.

Maybe Zack can give some clarity on that point. I don't really agree with his little NPC star system here having constantly siphoned off Elysians for years, even though this is probably overall the least disruptive NPC faction submission in recent memory (they only get one system to operate out of and exist as a one-off enemy in Zack's plot, if I remember right).

If they're a one-off enemy for a single plot, they don't need an NTSE submission, do they? I thought this was for something for everyone to use.

The breakaway happened right after the destruction of the floating cities of new elysia by the NMX. This is largely to explain the sudden shift in Elysian personality when they joined Yamatai: the hardliners all left.

More reasonably, this probably started a bit before that and then there would be a span of a few months where immigration to the outer areas picked up following the destruction of new elysia and the joining with yamatai.

After a few months anyone who wanted to leave would have.

Zack said:

Luckily this doesn't involve the elysians that you are FMing, and the go ahead has already been given by Wes.

As such, Frost, your input doesn't really matter here because this doesn't involve your faction.

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I feel that this is farly disrespectful of Frost.

I suggest you apologize to him and take his input to heart rather than taking an oppositional approach.

Figure out how you can work together rather than against each other.

The changes seem good to me. I'll approve this if you can get a thumbs up from @FrostJaeger.

Before I approve this (with no offense intended @Wes or anyone else involved in this submission), would @Zack mind addressing some of the concerns I highlighted in my earlier post?

One of the reasons I'm requesting this is because in the far, far future I also intend to utilize this faction as antagonists in a Crusade-themed plot and/or plot arc I'm working on.

I am going to stress again that I have zero intrest in working with Frostjaeger in any capacity nor do I want Frostjaeger involved in my plots.

The big thing here is that this doesn't involve the Elysia that FrostJaeger is FM of so his approval should not be needed.


The arguments that frost brought up don't really pass my basic sniff test for me needing to respond. Namely 'Is this argument applied to everyone?' and 'Is this argument arbitrary?'

Elysians aren't far enough out
Right off the bat, double fail of the sniff test. 'not far enough out?' there are dozens of factions popping up around Yamatai all the time and this Elysian empire is further out than all of them so clearly this argument is just being made up just for me. Is this argument arbitrary? This should be an obvious yes since how are you going to determine how far out is too far out for Yamatai to find? It took Yamatai years to find Elysia during the last war and it was relatively close by.

Needs more detail on Specifics
Not buying this one either. Wes gave specific points that he wanted clarified and ok those are things that are easy to change and very specific where Frost is basically asking for me to do a Yamatai scale writeup on a faction that just started. New factions aren't held to that standard right off the bat so this doesn't pass my 'is this argument applied to everyone' test. I also have a hard time saying this argument isn't arbitrary because 'how much is enough?' Frost can easily just hold up approval by constantly asking for more and more stuff. There are already ships, a bit of society, and a bit of their military detailed in RP and those are next up for being made into Wiki articles.

Legal status of Plebeians and Caelisolans?
There aren't Plebians and Caelisolans. As heavily implied in the article.

Founding is not far back enough
Ok, this passes the first sniff test, but fails the second. 'far back enough' is a totally arbitrary quantity. Since this is tied to specific IC events I see no problem with the time line. Nor do I see how its a problem that a few hundred million people left New Elysia and its territories when New Elysia was destroyed. Not only is there already a massive outflow of people going on at the time, but its a refuge crisis. People are going to be happy that there are less mouths to feed. Certainly SAINT would have noticed people leaving but really we're getting out of the scope of this article.

500 million is too many
Again, passes the first sniff test, fails the second. How many is too many? How many is exactly enough? Totally arbitrary, nor am I really wanting to get into the game of determining exactly how many people left Elysia, what the population growth rate is, and how many artificial people were made during this time. 500 million? That's 1/14th of earth's population? Elysia had a few populated words so we're talking about maybe 1/28? 1/42nd of the elysian population? Lets say 1 out of every 50 people ended up leaving during a refugee crisis, certainly the history seems to line up well there.

Zack said:

I am going to stress again that I have zero intrest in working with Frostjaeger in any capacity nor do I want Frostjaeger involved in my plots.

The big thing here is that this doesn't involve the Elysia that FrostJaeger is FM of so his approval should not be needed.

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That statement is wholely invalid. Frostjaeger is the FM of all elysia, and anything in there comes under his jurisdiction. You're being blatantly disrespectful and if you don't want to work with Frost, you shouldn't have tried to use Elysia.

You need to work with him, and if you can't and would like me to do it, then I will.

To make it clear, we got approval to do this before frost had anything to do with Elysia. Frost should not be involved here.

He's the FM of Elysia now. Thats all that matters in this situation. I don't want to have to be the one to take over this if you can't work with people.

Even a population of 5 million would be enough for all the purposes they're intended to be used for, as far as I can tell. And that'd work even if only 15,000 of them were Elysian patricians. Big numbers get thrown around a lot for populations in this setting, but relatively low populations are capable of many things when they're using post-singularity computing and robotics technologies. (The amount of building that can be done in a few years with those is a separate question.)

When an issue is subjective (which is what I'm assuming Zack means when he says 'arbitrary arguments') that just means it's a matter of judgement, and finding a compromise is mostly about making an effort to make things more plausible. It's never going to be entirely plausible, it's never going to hold up to great scrutiny for the same reason the Elysians' ability to fly doesn't.

It just needs to go far enough that it isn't too obvious, and that's always going to be subjective. That's why the FM makes the decision, they're the ones who take responsibility for anything about their creation that's hard to swallow, whether they created it to begin with or not.

A side note, I don't think we have demographic breakdowns of the Elysian population, but I highly doubt that Patricians made up a large portion of the Elysian population to begin with. In Ancient Athens, only 20% of the population were citizens, and that's in Athens. The vast majority of the Elysian population was Plebeians. (It's again unclear how much that is now, it's likely Caelisolans outnumber them now--at least, that was what was intended from the project.)

Patricians are the highest class in Elysia is even 20 million left they would notice. Also you're using earth's population as reference for planet population size? You do realize that that is horribly off. Yamatai for instance considered rather overcrowded, hit 8 billion a few years back. Also if you got approval before Frost was a FM why is this only just now showing up? Who approved this and when? Cause Frost was approved in March. Which by the way this article wasn't made till the 22. So I have a lot of trouble believing you got this approved before Frost was FM. And again, this number of 500 million is a pretty big deal unless most of that is not actually Patrician, because Patricians were not the most numerous of the Elysians. You're taking a large portion of the 'elite'

Also something else after I looked into it. Elysia didn't really have much in the way of territory after the war. According to their page it looks like all their systems they currently have with the exception of their main one were after YE30. So no they didn't have a giant population to pool numbers from. I'd be surprised if they even had 5billion at the time.

Syaoran said:

Also if you got approval before Frost was a FM why is this only just now showing up? Who approved this and when? Cause Frost was approved in March.

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Zack got it approved in Nov. 2016 (GM/FM board, so access is restricted).

Someone mentioned earlier "why submit this at all if it's just for your plot?" I feel like Zack's mostly putting this through the submission process because he wants a record/well-written overview of his one-off badguy on the wiki. Submission mods have approved things "for use by such and such GM in their plot only," so unless something has changed that might be a possibility here.

Correct Raz, I need to start writing down this stuff better. The 188604 plot is already sprawling and I know I've already made a few mistakes because I don't have all my notes wiki-ized.

First up is the general splash page for the faction. The next two articles I want to get made is one for their standard starship and one for the new Seraphs that have been appearing. This stuff isn't really involved in plots outside of 188604.

That's an approval of the basic concept, not an approval of the faction's standing and history. And for the record the major reason this is a concern, is because it effects the Elysian image. There are already enough inconsistencies with the new ones that popped up while there was no FM. Yes an 'evil faction' is fine, but when it's such a large number of Patricians of all things, and you consider that even if the faction is NPC, players can still make characters formerly from the faction, it starts subverting things and making it difficult for the Elysian FM to manage.

No one has said this can't exist, but working with Frost, and others trying to get Elysia reentered, to make everything clear so that it can be accounted for, and make sense so good wiki writing can be done is only logical.

@raz I don't know exactly what you'd do, but if I made a faction of around half a billion Kudhacari, that behaved pretty much as an anti-thesis of how the race is. And then if you questioned me about where they came from, how they got such huge numbers, and gave me advice on how to make the article more homogeneous with the site, (As in making it so their growth and location and such, not making them more like the 'good guys') wouldn't you think as the FM you at least could expect some changes?

There's a reason Wes said he approves as long as Frost does, and in short it's because this faction effects Elysia. Firstly if we go back and calculate the population since that's missing, this faction has to be taken into account. Patricians are the government and leading scientific officials and academics in Elysia, there is no way this wouldn't make history in Elysia, it would have an effect on every Elysian character because that would now be a historical event, maybe it didn't effect them directly but it was still part of their lives.