Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => The Secret History => Topic started by: Flagnine1 on <08-31-11/1324:11>
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anyone have a date for when Evo corp established it's habitat on mars?
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Well, I couldn't find a date, but the first manned mission to Mars was in 2063. As such, Evo's base is being built fast. They have been militarizing the base since the blurb in Sixth World Almenac circa 2072. So... assuming they were using nuclear fuel to avoid Hohmann transfer orbits, about 4 months to get there and four months to get back. Figure they probably did at least 10 "investigative" missions to study the planet before being ready to set up a base; with overlap, it probably would take 4-5 years to gather all the intel. Launch the base building shuttles around 2068, with ground braking in 2069? That's a VERY rigorous schedule, but from the blurbs, it sounds like Evo is very enthusiastic about the project.
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Raises the interesting question: Why the enthusiasm?
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Might have something to do with the fact that, on the way back from the original Mars landing, the shuttle "disappeared" for six days as it entered Lunar orbit. When they re-appeared, the crew had no knowledge of the lost time.
Even more fun: the current CEO, Anatoly Kirilenko, was the lead cosmonaut on the mission.
[insert spam ad for "Authentic Plan-9 style foil hats"]
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Please, foil lining in hats hasn't stopped the mind reading and mind control satellites since they fixed that issue in 1984. Any orbitals built since then work right though them.
You need a full-face helmet with a integrated Faraday Cage, and hope it's not one of the NSA-Models that can work with a spinal neural interface.
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Please, foil lining in hats hasn't stopped the mind reading and mind control satellites since they fixed that issue in 1984. Any orbitals built since then work right though them.
You need a full-face helmet with a integrated Faraday Cage, and hope it's not one of the NSA-Models that can work with a spinal neural interface.
That's why you wear a faraday (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3XAIwEZpTg) suit (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJqoRaphiEk).
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I love it! I'll take ten!
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and wear them as a nesting shell suit??
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Oh, like I'm going to tell you what my plans are. Any of you!
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I'd bet your plans center on a pastel colored after-school cartoon with a cutesy pop-star theme song. Don't they?
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I'd bet your plans center on a pastel colored after-school cartoon with a cutesy pop-star theme song. Don't they?
You think so little of me, don't you?
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I'd bet your plans center on a pastel colored after-school cartoon with a cutesy pop-star theme song. Don't they?
You think so little of me, don't you?
That means it's working CanRay
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I'd bet your plans center on a pastel colored after-school cartoon with a cutesy pop-star theme song. Don't they?
You think so little of me, don't you?
That means it's working CanRay
That's not thinking little of you, Ray. Plans like that are just the first stage. The stage that gets you your army of brainwashed minions. Then the next stages become easy due to labor sharing.
Besides, nesting doll faraday suits.... could be like a Russian Voltron. :)
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Raises the interesting question: Why the enthusiasm?
Well, there are dragon skeletons and pyramids on Mars, and the first (inofficial) Mars mission crashed on the very day of the Awakening. So obviously there is something magic involved. Now Evo is greening the planet, which will have the side effect of creating an artificial manasphere...
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Raises the interesting question: Why the enthusiasm?
Well, there are dragon skeletons and pyramids on Mars, and the first (inofficial) Mars mission crashed on the very day of the Awakening. So obviously there is something magic involved. Now Evo is greening the planet, which will have the side effect of creating an artificial manasphere...
Source?
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The Dragon skeleton and the secret first Mars landing are described in Missions (the book of that name, not the adventure series), Evo greening the planet is mentioned in Augmentation...could also be in Arsenal, not 100% sure. Finally, one of the intro fictions in Street Magic describes that enough vegetation can even create a manaspere on a space station.
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Cool thanks.
If we put a manasphere there I fear for Horrors.
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Yeah, the last thing we need is another "Ghosts of Mars" movie!
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If we put a manasphere there I fear for Horrors.
I doubt the ersatz manasphere would exceed Earth's mana level, which is (and will be for another thousand years at least) too low for the Enemy to come over. But who knows, they are resourceful little buggers...and maybe CGL will revisit this old plot line some day, just like the are apparently doing right now with the "Ares and the Invae" story, which also was featured in Augmentation.
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Wasn't Ares deliberately infesting guard animals with insect spirits?
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Wasn't Ares deliberately infesting guard animals with insect spirits?
I can just see the Shadowrunners that deal with those "Guard Dogs"...
Gibbering madly in the corner, having flashbacks to Bug City, chanting, "I want to go back to dealing with Hellhounds, I want to go back to dealing with Hellhounds... HELLHOUNDS ARE NICE!!!"
...
Strangely, that sounds like me during one of my tech support flashbacks...
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Yes, back in Threats or Threats 2 there was a bit showing how Ares was intentionally getting bug spirits to inhabit guard critters in order to get beefier security animals. They were using something like a captive nymph or queen, or they'd 'encouraged' an insect shaman or two to man up for the cause.
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Threats 2 ;)
But that apparently was only the start, because in Augmentation we learn that the new CEO of Ares' medical service is a certain Theresa Montgomery...Readers of the novels should know that name...
She's a wasp host. And apparently Ares had some sudden success with their cybermancy program. Go figure...
There were some other hints spread over various books, and finally one of the short stories in Street Legends basically confirms Ares got more than they bargained for. If you dance with the devil, the devil don't change...
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Also why Mr. Knight's stoic Indian buddy went "What the frag, White Man? Slot this for a game of soldiers!" and left.
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Interesting bit of info is that even today NASA speculates that some microbe life may exist on Mars. If that were true in the Shadowrun universe then a very low level Giasphere could exist on Mars which could lead to all sorts of interesting tin foil hat shenanigans.
The fact that the current CEO of Evo was on the space craft that vanished for six days just screams "Species 2." If you have not seen the movie it is a "B" (possibly "C") movie that centers on earths first manned mission to Mars and what happens. Strangely enough the returning ship suffers an unexplained communication blackout which the crew cannot explain. They seem fine until they are released from observation at which point they turn out to be under the control of an alien species (read hostile spirits for the Shadowrun universe) and the insanity commences.
I hope someone picks up this story thread and runs with it as we could use another big metaplot nasty to replace the insect spirits as they have been kinda squished by "Bug City."
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Speaking of Mars and space, one day i want to play a mage character that uses Alter temperature, Levitate, Oxygenate, Earth Wall, some sort of pressure control spell, and a Magic of 13 or greater to get sucked into deep space and successfully make his way back to Earth and use the Earth Wall, Alter Temperature, and Levitate spells to survive atmospheric re-entry with a portable dome of hardened and cooled rock shielding him from the extreme heat.
The bad thing is, i worked out the formulas needed to make this work and have them stored somewhere in my Shadowrun folder. For when mason gets to Magic 14 or 15 and we have another space mission.
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Speaking of Mars and space, one day i want to play a mage character that uses Alter temperature, Levitate, Oxygenate, Earth Wall, some sort of pressure control spell, and a Magic of 13 or greater to get sucked into deep space and successfully make his way back to Earth and use the Earth Wall, Alter Temperature, and Levitate spells to survive atmospheric re-entry with a portable dome of hardened and cooled rock shielding him from the extreme heat.
The bad thing is, i worked out the formulas needed to make this work and have them stored somewhere in my Shadowrun folder. For when mason gets to Magic 14 or 15 and we have another space mission.
So, a large power focus and several large sustaining foci then?
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Most likely, though it can be done without the power focus. Seeing as Foci lose Force from background count the same way everything else does, the Force has got to be pretty up there!
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First off, sorry for resurrecting this thread; it contained snippets of exactly what I wanted to talk about, however, and after actually using the search engine I didn't think starting a new topic was prudent.
With that being said; I have found some pretty glaring contradictions where Mars is concerned, and I'd like to discuss them to see what you all think. The main sources for info on what Evo is doing on Mars are Hazard Pay and Storm Front, while some information can be gleaned from the 2nd Edition book "Missions", the 3rd Edition book "State of the Art: 2064", and the 4th Edition books Sixth World Almanac (SWA from now on) and Corporate Guide.
I see three big disconnects between the two former and the latter.
1. SWA has the latest entry dated November 10th, 2072
2. SWA states that Gagarin base was renamed New Japan (date unknown)
3. SWA states that Evo CEO Anatoly Kirilenko was part of the first manned mission to Mars which first broadcast live footage from Mars in 2063. This is somewhat corroborated by Corporate Guide, which states that he was "the head of the very successful Mars mission" (p80) and that he "presided over the first successful mission to Mars" (p85).
The book publishing order (as far as I can tell, details on publishing is tricky as all get-out to find) is as follows:
2002-05-01 Missions (FAS7325)
2004-10-01 State of the Art: 2064 (FPR25004E)
2010-06-01 Corporate Guide (CAT26221)
2010-10-20 Sixth World Almanac (CAT26205)
2012-06-20 Hazard Pay (CAT26210)
2013-03-27 Storm Front (CAT26213)
Contradictions to the above:
1. The in-game dates of both Hazard Pay and Storm Front (2074-05-28 and 2075-01-18, respectively) indicate that some of the information in the earlier material has been retconned by these later publications, as I'm about to show.
2. Hazard Pay and Storm Front both make multiple references to Gagarin, and never once mention New Japan.
3. According to Hazard Pay, Evo had been working on plans for a manned mission to Mars since early 2063, and managed to capitalize on the chaos following Crash 2.0 by putting the first metahumans on the Red Planet in 2065. Roskosmos cosmonauts charted the future location of Gagarin base and conducted surveys and sample gathering, but all personnel from this first exploratory mission were reportedly lost when a Martian storm killed two crew members instantly and compromised the remaining cosmonauts' suits and craft.
So, we have one source (Corporate Guide) claiming that the first Mars mission took place in 2063, another (SWA) claiming that Anatoly Kirilenko was a part of this mission, and a third (Hazard Pay) claiming that the first manned mission to Mars took place in 2065 and that all crew members from this mission were lost.
Given the above, I'm inclined to believe that Evo CEO Anatoly Kirilenko was not in fact a member of the crew that went to Mars, and that the whole Valentina Tereshkova story (both it's mission and subsequent six-day disappearance) is a relic from previous writers/versions of canon. My guess is that Catalyst Game Labs decided to change the story regarding Mars, despite some of the groundwork that has been laid down in previous editions.
The events of the 2nd Edition book "Missions" (not to be confused with the living campaign) can be theorized to have been kept secret by AresSpace, at least according to canon, so it is fair to assume that both SWA and Hazard Pay are in fact erroneously referring to the 2063 and 2065 expeditions as the "first" manned mission to Mars; few if any 2074 in-universe characters would even be aware of Operation Discovery, and the subsequent Project Cydonia was largely lauded as a failure due to Veil tampering. I doubt that any in-game characters would be aware of the true story behind these two projects.
The only reference I've been able to find of an in-game character having accurate knowledge of the actual events in 2011 and 2042 is in State of the Art: 2064 where a user named MUFON Boy alludes to Operation Discovery being the first successful Mars Mission, a statement that is quickly dismissed as a myth by user Skywarp, with comparisons made to the infamous Area 51.
Conclusion:
It's hard to tell what the writers were intending when they rewrote the story of Evo CEO Anatoly Kirilenko; perhaps they decided to go with less of a "Mission to Mars" and/or "Species" themed storyline for what's going down on Mars. Evidence from Storm Front seems to corroborate this speculation, as at least some and perhaps all of the Gagarin base personnel seem to have been infected with Sybil. Of course, it's all-together possible that the writing staff was simply unaware of the fact that they were rewriting history.
So, if you've made it this far; what do you think?
[EDIT]
Writers for the books in question (in alphabetical order):
Mission: Mars section, Missions
Louis J. Prosperi (early layout and concept by Chris Hussey)
Culture Shock section, State of the Art: 2064
Antonio Pucci, Brian Cross, Drew Curtis, James Nugent, Jon Szeto, Jong-Won Kim, Joshua Powell, Malik Toms, Patrick Goodman, Peter Taylor, Rich Osterhout, Rob Boyle, Robert Derie, Sergio Puljdo, Stephan Meijerhof
Corporate Guide
Aaron Pavao, Adam Large, Andreas Schroth, Brandie Tarvin, Jason Hardy, Jennifer Harding, John Dunn, , Lars Blumenstein, Malik Toms, Mark Edwards, Michael Roesner, Tobias Wolter
Sixth World Almanac
David Hill, Filamena Young, Jason Hardy, , Jason Schmetzer, Jennifer Harding, John Dunn, John Helfers, John Schmidt, Ken Horner, Lars Blumenstein, Malik Toms, Marc Tassin, Michael Wich, Phaedra Weldon, Rusty Childers, Stephen McQuillan
Hazard Pay:
David Ellenberger, Jason M. Hardy, Michael Wich, R.J. Thomas, Robert Wieland
Storm Front:
Brandie Tarvin, Devon Oratz, Jason M. Hardy, Michael Wich, Patrick Goodman, Philip A. Lee, R.J. Thomas, Russell Zimmerman, Scott Schletz, Thomas Willoughby
As one can tell, there are few (if any) overlaps from the earlier 2nd and 3rd Edition books to the 4th Edition books (as can be expected).
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Gonna have to look. BTW, sorry for that disappearing post, I've missed the second page at first, then, after noticing it, decided that it (my post) didn't make any sense in the context and erased it.
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I hope someone picks up this story thread and runs with it as we could use another big metaplot nasty to replace the insect spirits as they have been kinda squished by "Bug City."
Um, no. That would be news to Man-of-Many-Names, Sticks, Bull, Roger Soaring Owl . . . oh, and the insect spirits themselves. Conspiracy Theories has quite a chunky portion about how the bugs seem to be cranking up their game. The events of Bug City were the end result of years of effort by the bugs - and it's now ~20 years after. Okay, so there's no known equivalent of the Universal Brotherhood - that doesn't mean the bugs are gonna crawl, en masse, into a corner and die.
Sure, bugs as metaplot hasn't really been touched in a good while - just means the spotlight has been trained on other parts of the metaplot. Patience . . .
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Longshot23
Check the date on that post; the only new post in this thread is mine. Serves me right for thread necromancy, I guess, but Conspiracy Theories wasn't even released in book form when Stormdrake made that comment.
I merely wanted to discuss the inconsistencies regarding Evo's missions to Mars, but so far neither of the two people posting after me has even made it to the end before commenting. Tells a story, for sure...
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I've skimmed your post, and offer another possible explanation: the newer writers were either unaware of, or had forgotten if they were once aware of, the specific details of what had been written before. Keeping track of continuity in such a sprawling milieu as the Sixth World can be tricky, and AFAIK there's no central, easily searched repository of all the "hidden story" that the writers & freelancers can utilize. (I certainly don't know, and perhaps one of them could comment.) So I think that while a retcon is possible, it's certainly not the only explanation. My experience in another game community with a huge, sprawling history written by a large cast of disconnected writers (Traveller's Third Imperium setting) indicates that either is possible.
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Belker
Thanks for the insight! That is a very good point, and certainly a valid one.
I briefly flirted with Shadowrun in its first edition, and only returned in time for the tail end of 4th. Would you say that there tends to be a propensity for accepting newer material as "more" canon, or does canon simply allow for inconsistencies seeing as how a lot of it is being brought to us, the readers, from the perspective of in-game characters?
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Would you say that there tends to be a propensity for accepting newer material as "more" canon, or does canon simply allow for inconsistencies seeing as how a lot of it is being brought to us, the readers, from the perspective of in-game characters?
I'm not nearly informed enough to judge that, as I had a long break myself between 1992-93 and 2010, when I grabbed the 20th Anniversary book.
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You need a full-face helmet with a integrated Faraday Cage, and hope it's not one of the NSA-Models that can work with a spinal neural interface.
Had to read that line twice as I could not envision a functioning Faraday Cape!
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Belker
Thanks for the insight! That is a very good point, and certainly a valid one.
I briefly flirted with Shadowrun in its first edition, and only returned in time for the tail end of 4th. Would you say that there tends to be a propensity for accepting newer material as "more" canon, or does canon simply allow for inconsistencies seeing as how a lot of it is being brought to us, the readers, from the perspective of in-game characters?
Sadly Shadowrun has been abused a bit after FASA closed its doors.... A good many of the original writers have moved on (Steve Kenson, etc) or died (Nigel Findley), or even just retired! So, a lot of "hidden" plot hooks or details have been droped, rewritten, miss-quoted, etc....
My personal take of all of the little differences is to confine it to the edition, and chalk up any glowing inconsistancies to "data loss" after all, there have been 2 major crashes, 2 major matrix upgrades, and a host of Corps and love to rewrite history so they look like heroes.... Some shit is gonna get mixed up in the retelling :D
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That's an excellent in-game justification, Reaver, thanks!
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The missing gap of time for the cosmonauts (if we accept that version of events) could have another explanation.
Magic, as far as we know, doesn't work in space, or any kind of void area. However, the technological construct of the Matrix does not labor under that restriction. Perhaps the origins of the Sybil Virus aren't completely terrestrial? Or maybe the tech equivalent of a 'mutation' (I'm old enough to remember when computer viruses were considered the first step to full artificial intelligence.)
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Perhaps the origins of the Sybil Virus aren't completely terrestrial?
What, you mean, aliens?
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Perhaps the origins of the Sybil Virus aren't completely terrestrial?
What, you mean, aliens?
Investing in lasers is looking better and better all the time.
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Everyone imagines aliens to be sentient creatures with bodies, often interested in carrying off our women.
An alien electromagnetic field, resembling a computer virus, travelling between the stars. It encounters our cosmonauts and downloads itself into their cyberware (hence the blackout), the ship's computers, and similar devices. Slowly it spreads throughout the Matrix, not sentient (yet) but seeking to propogate. Matrix researchers find and isolate the strange code, studying it to find out what it is. And in the research, the alien gets concentrated enough, and access to enough processing power, to wake up. Now it follows its own agenda.
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Perhaps the origins of the Sybil Virus aren't completely terrestrial?
What, you mean, aliens?
Investing in lasers is looking better and better all the time.
We better get back inside; they mostly come out at night. Mostly.
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Everyone imagines aliens to be sentient creatures with bodies, often interested in carrying off our women.
An alien electromagnetic field, resembling a computer virus, travelling between the stars. It encounters our cosmonauts and downloads itself into their cyberware (hence the blackout), the ship's computers, and similar devices. Slowly it spreads throughout the Matrix, not sentient (yet) but seeking to propogate. Matrix researchers find and isolate the strange code, studying it to find out what it is. And in the research, the alien gets concentrated enough, and access to enough processing power, to wake up. Now it follows its own agenda.
You've seen Virus, haven't you? 8)
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Not a bad movie.
Not a great one either...
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Actually, no; I'm drawing from Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud. And it could simply be a computer virus, a weird code created by solar radiation that's the true origin, if you dislike ex-t in your Shadowrun. Or a disruptive virus already present (to sabotage the mission) that was altered by exposure to solar radiation.
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I was disappointed that we didn't get more information about Mars from Run & Gun, despite the extensive space section. Oh well.
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I'm pretty happy with what we did get from Run and Gun. Because now that we have stats for space gear, it means that an adventure can finally go to Mars.
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Wait, what? Arsenal has stats for space gear for 4th Edition, and Hazard Pay has environmental rules...
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All apparent contradictions in Shadowrun material are the result of active disinformation campaigns.
Meta-metaplot: Kicking the metaplot back into shape since forever.
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Corporate News' Wireless Bonus is confusing information that come direct from Corporate sources. ;D
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I'm pretty happy with what we did get from Run and Gun. Because now that we have stats for space gear, it means that an adventure can finally go to Mars.
Such as a run to Mars to extract headcases or try to destroy the entire base. After all, it's entirely taken over now.
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My guess is that Mars is going to be the ultimate solution to the CFD problem.
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Send the ones that want to live there with cloned bodies for them to use, and kill off those that want war?