The distant sounds of drones echoes from beyond the doors of the negotiation chamber within your grand Hive ship as the human standing before your drone shifts under your gaze. Your speaker chitters as it hoists itself up and folds its hind legs together into a bipedal stance with several loud cracks of chittin. “Your representative is not needed.”
“I assure you, it's a matter of mutual convenience.” Morgan says. “To prevent misunderstandings and-”
“The Hive has one.” Your speaker says. “A better one.” Morgan looks back to the others in momentary confusion as a door flexes open across the chamber and Lee walks through as it flexes shut behind him, sealing out the sounds if distant hive drones throughout the ship's countless halls.
“Hello.” Lee says quickly as he gives a short wave. “It looks like you're in the middle of something. Don't mind me.” He adds as your speaker leans in closer to Morgan.
“Humans have involved themselves in the Hive's affairs. You are fortunate we choose to allow it.”
>QUICKLY SERVERS, WHAT ARE THE CHEEKIENESS OF THE HIVE? >OVER 9000 DRONESSSS!
Jordan Long
>“Humans have involved themselves in the Hive's affairs. You are fortunate we choose to allow it.” That sounded vaguely threatening.
Ian Perez
“Hello.” Lee says quickly as he gives a short wave. “It looks like you're in the middle of something. Don't mind me.” He adds as your speaker leans in closer to Morgan. “Humans have involved themselves in the Hive's affairs. You are fortunate we choose to allow it.” Spoopy
James Brooks
That's the point.
Jordan Brown
>“Hello.” Lee says quickly as he gives a short wave.
Anthony Price
>“It looks like you're in the middle of something. Don't mind me.” He adds as your speaker leans in closer to Morgan. Lee's bashful aw-shucks-itude works in our cheeky favor. The level of 'well don't worry the speaker's just got a few extra arms but the Hive's alright once you stop being a dick' adds a huge amount of spoopy to the table.
Carson Hall
Good cop bad cop, and the good cop isn't a bug. I like it.
Isaiah Evans
>your speaker leans in closer to Morgan. >ofw
Aaron Perry
Well I guess we can now get to the business of releasing the captives
Grayson Garcia
>Bitch I will fucking cut you
Julian Campbell
Should that be now, or after major concessions?
Tyler Wright
we should get the shit first, so we know they won't dick us over.
Daniel Sullivan
Definitely after. Did we remember to remove their parasites?
Jose Russell
Probably after they mention Lyle or the lab.
Lincoln Morris
She'll do much worse than that.
Eli Scott
Probably wait a bit until we get to the diplomacy part of negotiations. It seems that they've more or less caved to our demands. Since they have no other option, really.
Once we're done demanding, we can get the nice friendly stuff done.
Jacob Rivera
Morgan keeps his gaze on your drone, and your drone matches it with its unblinking eyes as the other humans stare at Lee as he looks uneasily between Morgan and your drone.
"I mean, they have a point. You... we, the Union just sorta started stomping around their ancestral territory digging up the graves of their old friends and started systematically doing every single thing wrong that could be done wrong. When I was found injured and bleeding, they helped me, gave me water, and carried me back to camp. When it was flipped, and we thought we were the technological superiors, we, well you, I was tricked into participating, but you sent an agent to attack them and kidnap their drones!" Lee says as he leans over from behind your drone.
"And placed human nukes in orbit." Your speaker chirps.
"Yea, and-" Lee catches himself. "They put nukes in orbit?" He says to your drone, then turns quickly back to Morgan. "What the hell?"
cont.
Joshua Clark
>"Yea, and-" Lee catches himself. "They put nukes in orbit?" He says to your drone, then turns quickly back to Morgan. "What the hell?"
THIS SASS, HOW DO WE KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT?
Brayden Richardson
Lee takes a quick breath as he continues to speak. "Look, what I'm saying is, they went out of their way to help me any the Clark crew when they had no need to. We then turned around and were just terrible to them because you guys thought they couldn't do anything about it. Well they can do things about it, but so far have managed to restrain themselves while they watched you bang the giant evil alien bomb against a wall in their own back yard." Lee almost looses his footing as he leans around your drone, his foot squeaking loudly against the floor. He quickly looks around and pulls out a seat before looking back to your drone and the humans.
"You guys want to take a seat? I'm gonna just take a seat." He says and slides into a chitinous chair. Your drone and Morgan continue to hold their locked gaze for a moment longer before he gives your drone a courteous smile.
"I don't mind if I do." He says.
>Demand all of the expanse be abandoned by the Union >Demand the Union release the Expanse to the Hive, but allow those living there to stay if they choose >Demand specific systems in the Expanse (write in) >Only demand the artifacts >Other
Jayden Myers
>"Yea, and-" Lee catches himself. "They put nukes in orbit?" He says to your drone, then turns quickly back to Morgan. "What the hell?" Can our speakers make this kind of face? Because I want them to make this face right now.
Blake Gutierrez
"oh yea, i wonder what would happen if i released black box protocol to the public."
Kayden Brown
We're a Mother of course.
Grayson Rogers
>"Yea, and-" Lee catches himself. "They put nukes in orbit?" He says to your drone, then turns quickly back to Morgan. "What the hell?"
wait, did Lee legitimately NOT know about the nukes in orbit?
Parker Kelly
I'm just giggling like a retard at everything in this post, this is even better than I was expecting.
Camden Perez
>Demand the Union release the Expanse to the Hive, but allow those living there to stay if they choose Under joint governance, of course.
William Watson
>>Demand all of the expanse be abandoned by the Union
Grayson Bailey
Guess not. We never told him, AFAIK.
It's cool, he's rolling with it.
Jose Perez
>>Demand the Union release the Expanse to the Hive, but allow those living there to stay if they choose
Easton White
>Demand the Union release the Expanse to the Hive, but allow those living there to stay if they choose If this is too unfavorable to the Union, maybe just a few buffer systems between our own developed colonies and theirs.
Anthony Russell
That doesn't seem very meaningful
Jordan Fisher
You mean under hive governance. That's what releasing it to us means.
See, this will let the Union keep people there that they THINK will be spying on us, but they basically can't spy on anything important, because all our walls are living flesh cameras so we know where they are at all times.
Matthew Bennett
>Demand the Union release the Expanse to the Hive, but allow those living there to stay if they choose
Sebastian Powell
>>Demand the Union release the Expanse to the Hive, but allow those living there to stay if they choose We could do with a human population. If we can make a few scientists or inventors out of them they could help compensate with the Hive's difficulties with inventing new technologies.
Oliver Johnson
Of course not. We never told him.
>>Demand the Union release the Expanse to the Hive, but allow those living there to stay if they choose
They won't agree, but we can bully down from a high haggle
Mason Smith
>Demand the Union release the Expanse to the Hive, but allow those living there to stay if they choose >Demand the return of ALL artifacts.
Nicholas Cox
>>Demand the Union release the Expanse to the Hive, but allow those living there to stay if they choose
Propose it as a mutual defense treaty. Say that, due to human actions, they will be attacked and the only way they will be able to survive is if the hive mobilizes extremely rapidly. Explain that we may have been hiding before, but that human actions destroyed all subtlety that could be had. Imply the alternate to allowing our full occupation of the expanse region is a full scale invasion.
Ryder Cook
kek how awkward >Demand the Union release the Expanse to the Hive, but allow those living there to stay if they choose
Grayson Hall
>Demand the Union release the Expanse to the Hive, but allow those living there to stay if they choose under protection and control of the Hive >Demand that the Union recognizes the sovereignty of the entity known as Theseus/Union
Camden Murphy
>>Demand the Union release the Expanse to the Hive, but allow those living there to stay if they choose
No, joint governance implies the Union will have a say. If the Union decided to do something retarded, we would be forced by the agreement to at least work with them on it.
No, it should be our sovereign territory. We answer or make deals with nobody on it. Split ownership is how you get shit like the Gaza Strip or West Bank.
Landon Hall
Uh.... are we not getting a sense of Morgan's emotional state through the moderate relays out the ass that we have?
We should be able to passively sense his emotions and general intentions behind his completely and utterly stoic poker face, shouldn't we?
Anthony Reyes
>Demand the Union release the Expanse to the Hive, but allow those living there to stay if they choose
Caleb Green
Are we still going to give them the report card?
Samuel Sullivan
>Demand the Union release the Expanse to the Hive, but allow those living there to stay if they choose We can also allow an open border policy and a trade arrangements with the human settlements for at least a few years to help lessen the sting
Blake Jackson
Looks like we're going to have to look at either letting those planets govern themselves, or we'll need to work on setting up a government ourselves.
Jeremiah Powell
What planets are meant by the Expanse? I thought most of them were not settled.
Christopher Anderson
>>Demand the Union release the Expanse to the Hive, but allow those living there to stay if they choose
Also, right, we have to quickly surprise attack the Valen right after this meeting so we can keep their half finished hypergate as a research subject!
If we give them time to abandon the planet that shit will be dismantled or destroyed.
We will become best frenemies.
Jordan Baker
>>Demand the Union release the Expanse to the Hive, but allow those living there to stay if they choose Humans themselves are not the threat, and some continued integration will be good for our relations. After all, we've got no problem with the Commonwealth so far.
If they hesitate at all, suggest that we could offer our services in communicating a desire for a peace treaty to Theseus and acting as mediators if desired. If they're gonna give up the Expanse, they could at least be assured that they could negotiate a scenario where Theseus wouldn't railgunning them while based beyond our borders.
If they still hesitate, make an offhand complaint that the Commonwealth has been far more cooperative. They'd get that message.
Nolan Gutierrez
By the way, every human remaining in the expanse will be under our rule. They can stay, but we are the authority, period. Our house, our territory, our rules.
Grayson Young
>Demand all of the expanse be abandoned by the Union We need those resources
Carson Cruz
>everybody gets a parasite.
Robert Wilson
We should actually, yeah. Maybe it hasn't been relevant yet.
Jayden Thompson
Yes. Remember Kissinger's grade
Henry Moore
Good point, we're using the ambassador drone here right?
I wouldn't be down with forming a mutual defense treaty with them. The commonwealth would be a much more reliable partner for defense and we're already running joint military ventures with them.
Sebastian Barnes
Of course, but so far it's mostly been you chewing him out for almost killing everything ever, so his emotional state has been at a baseline of "oh boy we really fucked up this time."
Nathan Russell
>Demand all of the expanse be abandoned by the Union And negotiate down to. >Demand the Union release the Expanse to the Hive, but allow those living there to stay if they choose Or >Demand specific systems in the Expanse (write in) Djin, darwin, desmond and any planets that we know belonged to the hive queens of old. Can we ask the scarred queen what planets she knew belonged to other queens?
Julian Brown
Each major quest number has an updated territory map.
Good, nice to see we're getting through to him alright.
Parker Powell
hahahah nice.
Aiden Cook
Don't make it sound like we're totalitarian psychos just waiting to commit genocide because of a filing error now.
Luke Robinson
Excellent.
Charles King
You are right we ARE willing to commit genocide over IDIOTS almost letting Cthullu and hastur rape the universe
Camden Ramirez
What, you're not looking for the Union to fuck up hard enough to justify starting a space war?
Adam Kelly
Look, there's going to be a space war even if we don't start it, because the Black Queen is going to show up.
Cooper Perry
I'm not that upset honestly, we let it happen after all. I'm all for acting upset so we can grab the expanse without contest though. If we have to fight them off every planet it would be annoying.
Cooper Thomas
No we aren't. We aren't going to kill innocent people because some dude they never met was an idiot.
No? We have actual problems to deal with, remember?
Joseph Ross
Why not both? Half the expanse and the artifacts.
Elijah Hughes
We aren't going to genocide them, and we can make that clear.
Leaving shit like "Who is the ultimate ruler of this territory?" as a grey area is just asking for things like the Hundred Years War to happen.
Also, we shouldn't link all these humans to the hive mind. We should appoint leaders favorable to us and acceptable to them and let them govern themselves... provided they fulfill any objectives and obey any rules we make. We will just issue the orders, the governors of each planet/settlement will get it done in ways acceptable to humans.
Make no mistake, though. They will be our humans.
Gavin Wilson
After this diplomatic meeting should be keep our Citadel in orbit until their leaders come to a decision? Keep it there as an ominous looming threat that promises destruction if they try anything.
Jayden Fisher
Yeah, so let's not waste our resources blowing up the apes when we could have them help blow up the Obsidian Queen too.
Our mother didn't die so that we could throw it all away to spite some monkeys.
Jaxon Clark
Actually, I take that back. I want an excuse for a space-war. People are whining too much about innocents and that kind of nonsense.
Leo Hughes
I hope Morgan overreacts when we demand the entire expanse just so we can say "Don't worry, this is a small payment. Besides, if we added all the rest ancestral systems we'd have to include earth."
Tyler Lopez
Not advocating making it a grey area at all user, I'm just saying you're coming on super strong. It was already obvious we'd be the only authority there once they'd leave.
Josiah Gomez
Sorry if it was unclear but I don't want a space war versus humans.
Daniel Ramirez
Oh boy, I'm so excited. Mother is finally going to be adopting a big mass of humans. They'll be OUR planets, too, which means we could roll out unfathomable bio-medical tech to massively improve quality of life as a show of good will.
Jackson Barnes
The commonwealth is still there, and we can clone the humans even if they aren't.
Josiah Collins
We've got a damn space war, we're already actively at war with the Obsidian Queen and the Scavengers, and it's going to get worse before it gets better now that the void gods have their eye on us.
John Nguyen
If we "Demand the Union release the Expanse to the Hive, but allow those living there to stay if they choose" (which I already voted for) can we please leave this open to negotiation so that even if the Union feels like they're being strongarmed (which they are) we allow Morgan to save some face and not just give us everything we're asking for (which would weaken his administration).
John Rogers
>let's not waste our resources blowing up the apes when we could have them help blow up the Obsidian Queen too. >Implying having the union fight OQ won't lead to her having shields and everything else. The humans cannot interfere in our war.
Joshua Young
If we live to do it!
We've got enough of a power jump on the Union that I think we're forgetting that *our entire species aside from us* is either dead or driven mad by the void gods, and the final battle is still coming.
Ian Sanchez
>help blow up the Obsidian Queen
>putting reverse-engineerable human tech anywhere fucking near an enemy hive
We can't convince the humans to self-destruct their own ships as easily as we can our own drones you realize, to deny salvage.
Fuck having humans help, hive space is too distant from their own, they probably won't dare to spread themselves that thin, and we ain't giving them a faster FTL drive just for that.
Daniel Bailey
These aren't public negotiations.
He can go back and say that he saved the world from a huge galactic misunderstanding and is the hero of everything if he wants. Not like anyone will know.
Ryder Torres
We can return prisoners from the Hope!
They're going to need to defend themselves. We can't let OQ win any engagements with the humans, however.
Jonathan Thompson
We can't guarantee that.
Henry Perez
She's undoubtedly already working on it.
Kayden Jackson
>Don't want space war versus humans Do even know about half the terror weapons we've saved up that we've never had a chance to use? I'm not even talking about just the bioweapons either, there's also the psionic warfare we've never tried, like the nausea field. Don't you want the chance to see what they're capable of just once?
Jordan Smith
Then at least let's not weaken ourselves by losing anything to the humans. We'd probably win, but we'd be weaker for the near future, not stronger.
And if the Union actually aligned with any of the void god servants, they could cause us a serious problem at the wrong time.
Jack Rogers
We'll be able to use them against the Ceph and auntie.
We actually should mention Auntie to the Union. She's kind of a big deal?
Isaiah Sanders
>undoubtedly
Jeremiah Wood
She needs samples to work on it. We couldn't invent shields ex nihilo, we needed data. She has about as much data and samples as the ancient Earth PS3 had games.
We can minimize it and not give her MORE opportunities than she already will take.
Thomas Butler
They are already gonna put a lot of money into building anti hive defenses since we just jumped on their capital planet and gave a lot of people heart attacks.
Bentley Phillips
Good, I hope it pays off for them, because all it takes for a hive to wipe out the humans is one single super-AIDS strain.
David Stewart
It's useful for the Union needs to think we're willing to go to war over this, and we'd do it if we had to, but we don't actually want to fight a war against them right now. It'd be a perfect time for the OQ to attack. Hell, right now would be a perfect time for the OQ to attack.
Charles Campbell
Nigga u wut? This is gunboat diplomacy, the entire point is they will give us what we want, or we will take it. And we have casus belli to do so.
Asher Jones
We still have the scavs.
Angel Cruz
The Ceph live in water on a planet that doesn't exist in space, and the OQ will counter any bio tech we throw at her. The humans are the only faction upon which our techniques will have any effect.
Kevin Morgan
Basically, we do not want a war with the Union, so stop asking for it. Sure we can posture at them right now, but that's only posturing.
We don't want humans to go full Ceph. We don't want Theseus to turn on us. We don't want to waste resources on fighting a faction that could be a valuable ally.
Benjamin Myers
>OQ attacking
That reminds me. The forest moon at Refuge is the perfect place for the new psionic towers.
Because the debris field around the Refuge system blocks the G-sensors, as well as impedes blinking into the system itself. So psionic towers are the only way to get forewarning about OQ blinking into that system at its edge.
And she does so very want that forest moon.
Really, we need one psi tower in every star system, as the first infrastructure we create when we land. Maybe we can convince the humans to let us build one such tower in each system, for 'space observation'.
Samuel Hernandez
Who live in space. Infectious agents can't really cross the void between ships.