You been erupted a whole day and you haven't heard from Devries? Man, someone is in fucking trouble.

You know sweetie, we're not all mud-sloggin killers. The lady does hire folks for investigations and science stuff too. Keep us in mind.

I don't have to join one of these groups do I?

You're a nova now. One way or another, you'll find yourself in a group of some kind, even if it's simply the group of unaligned novas. :|

Though I'd recommend that anyone considering Devries should read Tales from the Front Lines: how Elites destroyed the Third World. It was written by a baseline who was in charge of supplying the Elites on the front lines, so it has a view from the bottom-up, as it were.

So we have more groups than we can count. QNA, Teragen, Green War, T2M not to mention all the L33Ts just to name a few. Any of you on the sign up sheets with these guys?

Myself I am thinking about just building a tree house. Serving punch and pie every Wednesday at 7pm CST. There will be a rope swing.

The Teragen.

Intriguing.

How interesting. Someone is being honest. May I ask why you choose an organization with such a dark reputation?

Nice .sig, Zer0. That was a fun game.

I would by lying if I didn't say that I actually like what he was trying to accomplish. It strikes a chord.

Ah well, baselines are imperfect creatures. This is far from news, I think.

Again with the video game reference, but I believe that 90% of all baseline conflict can be linked to the immortal quote from Warcraft III: "Our Gold Mine Is Running Low"

In a roundabout way, sure. Most wars are started because population density threatens to outweigh resources, be they land, food, spoils, whatever. Once you've taken away plunder and necessity as reasons to fight, all that remains is ideology, which I suppose is going to be a problem as long as there are two sentient beings who disagree.

I do not think it is population density is as much of an issue as people make it out to be. Otherwise events like the nova proxy wars would not be happening as often, since one purpose of war would be to 'thin the herd' so to speak.

If I may chime in with a pop culture reference here, may I say that Divis Mal makes me think of X-Men's Magneto? He might have all the best intentions in the world, but it doesn't change the fact he's a terrorist demagogue.

If the Teragen is not an organization and is simply a philosophy, then why do those who act "In the Name of the Teragen" do that? "The Teragen" implies quite strongly that it is an entity.

This is as opposed to, say, Buddhism, which is a philosophy. There isn't "The Buddhism".

So if you don't mind, which is it?

If I may chime in with a pop culture reference here, may I say that Divis Mal makes me think of X-Men's Magneto? He might have all the best intentions in the world, but it doesn't change the fact he's a terrorist demagogue.

To follow the natural terminus of your own line of reasoning, no, there is not a "the Buddhism", but there is a formally recognized Buddhist priesthood, complete with prayers, rules, monks, the whole fucking circus. What those guys in the saffron robes decide may be the decisions of "Buddhism" or "the Buddhist priesthood" (or "the Mahayana priesthood", if you want to get all specific) but that doesn't mean those decisions apply to or will be acknowledged by every Buddhist.

And the Teragen doesn't even have that. We have a group of guys who first got the group together, not unlike a club, and then put out an open invitation for anyone who shared their ideals to join.

Going back to something I said earlier, a better way to think of the Teragen is as a political party. Let's just use the Republicans for a laugh, because I know it'll piss them off. You've got all these Republicans, and they've all got differing agendas, but they're all basically Republicans, right? Some are really big into being fiscally conservative, some are just Jesus assholes, some believe in big government or big business, whatever. And within the Republic parties, you start seeing these knots of like-minded Republicans form around this issue or that: we're the pro-death penalty Republicans, or we're the anti-immigration Republicans, or we're the pro-life Republicans, and we're going to take this agenda or that and run with it, make it "our" thing. And then, after all that, you get some tit who's like "I'm a pro-life Republican and I'm going to fucking kill doctors." And while some of the pro-life Republicans are going to applaud you, a lot more are going to be like "Whoa, too fucking far, man", while the Republican party as a whole is going to be like "We sympathize with what the guy was saying, but seriously, that asshole doesn't represent us". And sadly, since we haven't started passing out fucking membership decals, we run into the same problem. I sympathize with Geryon's anger, but I don't operate the same way he does, and then there's guys like Epoch, who I think is a fucking tit and frankly pretty embarrassing.

There is a "The Teragen", but the problem is anyone can claim it.



It's downright fucking precious when the rookies get all patriotic like this. I once wore the stripes, too, hen, and there's a reason I don't anymore.

But enough nostalgia. I'd like to know: exactly what acts of "terrorism" has ol' Divis committed? Can you name even one?

Or would they be declared "Baseline pawns" because of the similarities and ignored?

It's downright fucking precious when the rookies get all patriotic like this. I once wore the stripes, too, hen, and there's a reason I don't anymore.