QUOTE (Cardul @ May 11 2010, 05:49 AM)
I
1) "Why would the Treaty Nations foot the bill for Ghostwalkers Denver defense force?"
Who was paying for the defense of Denver before, if not the Treaty Nations. In effect, this was a more
neutral way of protecting the Treaty City. As far as I have read, Ghostwalker did not invalidate the
Treaty of Denver, so the various nations were still required to put up forces for its defense.
Lets be honest about one thing, by removing one of it's signatories unilaterally (Atztlan) Ghostwalker invalidated the treaty of denver at the very least the Azzies should have had justifiable reason to go to war and perhaps others to do the same. While we like to think of the Azzies as the big bad of the game historically Aztlan has closer ties to the NAN then the NAN does to the CAS or UCAS. While there have been some problems in california acting like everyone just said "Welp you got rid of the fat kid we all hated the most so your our friend now, thanks."
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2) "What do the nations have to gain by letting Ghostwalker take over?"
Well, first, since he gave the Aztlan section to the CAS, this is a good bit of evidence that, though the
national boundaries were gotten rid of, the sectors remained. First thing they gain, though, is that they
do not have to maintain the borders within the city. Keeping up everything that was used to make a check
point is expensive in the long term, and that expense was removed. On top of that, without needing a Visa
or similar to cross the borders, you have an increase in people moving between the sectors, bringing money
to spend in those sectors that previously were more difficult to get to for citizens from some countries. More
money means more taxes that are coming in. They are still citizens of their respective countries, after all, and,
thus, still pay taxes.
This is actually patently incorrect the check points are still in place per SoNA and the Denver missions campaign (which is at least somewhat canonical) so the checkpoints and restrictions on travel are still in force. The ONLY thing that Ghostwalker has changed about the situation is his ZDF forces can cross the borders without incident because everyone works sooo much better when you serve a dragon.
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3) "Dragons can be killed, why didn't they just kill Ghostwalker by leveling the city with orbital lasers and thor
shots?"
Well, we are talking about governments here, not corporations. Governments, ultimately, care about only
one thing: Taxes. Someone dismissed the idea of collateral damage, saying that no-one would care about
it to take out a Dragon. However, dead men pay no taxes. We also do not know if Ghostwalker was in
communication with the other nations in some way, shape, or form before attacking (mostly) Aztlan
territory. For all we know, the Draco Foundation sent people to the people on the other nations and
said "Look...there is a BIG dragon coming here. He is going to be on the Warpath against Aztlan, and
might be going after specific targets in your sectors. Put up ONLY token resistance, and you will not
have to worry about another Tehran." Diplomacy, after all, does not have to be just by the Dragon,
now, does it?
You majorly overstate the political pull of the Draco foundation, especially their ability as a group that's mostly seen as an arm or closely aligned with the UCAS to reassure nations hostile to the UCAS of Ghostwalkers peaceful intent, despite all evidence to the contrary. I'm always puzzled by peoples need to pencil in after the fact justifications for what is in effect crappy writing.
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As I said above, I have my own reasons for not like Ghostwalker. They boil down, though, to one statement:
"Sure, he came in, kicked Aztechnology.Aztlan out of Denver, set up his own feudal domain and made the nations
of North America agree to do his bidding in one city.....but what has he done SINCE?" I do not like thins with so
much potential essentially sitting fallow...I want to know what Ghostwalker is doing...he's a Great Dragon, he's not
sitting on his horde saying "Look at how great I am!" He is doing SOMETHING.
What are any of the great dragons doing? What are any of the couple of hundred people that comprise the ruling elite of the world doing of which the dragon's compirse a part but get a disportional ammount of screen time, which by the way a very few of that number should actually be immortal elves.
One thing that's always bothered me about the Dragons and especially the immortal elves is this base assumption that they are secretly going to be running the world, sure it makes sense that one or two dragons or immortal elves with considerable business or just people savy might parlay portions of their hoards into enough cash to make signifigant investments in corporations and Lofwyr doing it a bit better then the others to seize hold of SK makes some sense in a singular occurance, but this seeming assumption that every dragon some how has vast wealth at their disposal always made me kind of quirk my head, there's only so much of a market for raw precious gems and the like and you could only get ahead so far on what you could seize by your own personal power but megacorporate stock options seems to be part of the draconic racial modifiers table and I for one can't figure that out.