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The Elite - Pod Pilot Identity

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Blake Rathen Caldari State Security and Intelligence Celestial Imperative	Posted - 2008.07.22 21:21:00 - [1] Help me understand why we exist (pod pilots)! I'm lost in the backstory. Quote from The Elite chronicle: "Yet despite the desire of the empires to keep their ship captains on a leash things have developed differently. Because of the exulted status of the ship captains theyÆve managed as the years have passed to make themselves ever more independent from the empires that spawned them. Most ship captains are still employees of an empire company or organization, but what work they do is largely self-controlled. " This story ... it makes me think of a rogue captain who has discarded loyalties to his homeland for the existential life of a pirate (read: freelancer). Or a retired captain who is now a bounty hunter, but why oh why would an empire spawn a pilot who has no direct loyalty? This has no doubt been discussed before, so if you know the thread, please post a link! (I couldn't find it)
Blake Rathen Caldari State Security and Intelligence Celestial Imperative	Posted - 2008.07.22 21:21:00 - [2] Help me understand why we exist (pod pilots)! I'm lost in the backstory. Quote from The Elite chronicle: "Yet despite the desire of the empires to keep their ship captains on a leash things have developed differently. Because of the exulted status of the ship captains theyÆve managed as the years have passed to make themselves ever more independent from the empires that spawned them. Most ship captains are still employees of an empire company or organization, but what work they do is largely self-controlled. " This story ... it makes me think of a rogue captain who has discarded loyalties to his homeland for the existential life of a pirate (read: freelancer). Or a retired captain who is now a bounty hunter, but why oh why would an empire spawn a pilot who has no direct loyalty? This has no doubt been discussed before, so if you know the thread, please post a link! (I couldn't find it)
Kai Zion The Zion Accounts	Posted - 2008.07.22 21:45:00 - [3] Edited by: Kai Zion on 22/07/2008 21:46:01 Think of us capsuleers as an investment made on behalf of the Empires (and others...as I'll get to later). For each one of us who runs off to nullsec and shows no loyalty to the empire that raised them, there will be at least some others who repay the favor happily. Those that do make the whole process of "rearing" a worthwhile one. It's a matter of economics. Like the chronicle states: The ever-increasing number of ship captains entering the market alleviates this problem for the empires and has allowed them to increase the number of captains working for them despite the fact that proportionally more and more captains are going totally independent. If you went off ingame, mechanical realities - namely, that most people live in Empire and run missions for Empire corporations - then it actually seems like the "disloyal" ones are rare and even they might pop back from time to time to raise the odd ISK doing some jobs. Additionally, there are supposed to be capsuleer loyalists who are actually directly in the employ of the various empire corporations (i.e. NPC Eggers). That stuff goes against what the Chronicle says with regards to "proportionally more going independent", but it's an interesting thing to note nonetheless. There was a news article that was related to this concept, but it's so old I dunno if I can find it. Someone else might know the one I'm talking about. Basically it said that so long as the current trend of loyalist eggers continued to keep filling their ranks, then there was little to be worried about for the empires. So...we exist because we're a valuable economic tool, basically! Now...The Empyrean Age throws a whole new dynamic on to all this. Now we are tools of warfare just as much. The empires fight their wars of proxy with us, the elite race they raised and...were losing their grip on. Some players roleplay the belief that all of this CONCORD Emergency War Powers Act stuff is really just an Empire-based ploy to make sure that loyalist podder numbers don't dwindle and hell, maybe even begin to pick back up. It's certainly an interesting take on the whole situation! Lastly...keep in mind who kicked the capsuleer era off in the first place. It was the Jovians passing the technology to Ishukone that began it all. This, at least to me, suggests there is a level of Jovian self-interest motivating our conception and perhaps even our continued existence. It's not hard to imagine what some reasons behind creating might be. They are a dying race after all (every Jovian suffers a terminal illness that keeps them in a "reproductive straightjacket"). Perhaps by raising us up to their level they think we may be able to help with a cure, or perhaps there is something far more dark at work, and we are simply being cultivated as cures and one day will come the "harvest". Who knows, but the Jovian disease and their decision to spread capsule technology to the empires are two pieces of the same puzzle to me. I may very well be wrong, of course. They do also sell technology in order to keep the empires off their backs and something like that is also a suitably fitting self-interest motivation. There ya go, some food for thought.
Blake Rathen Caldari State Security and Intelligence Celestial Imperative	Posted - 2008.07.23 18:41:00 - [4] Kai Zion - thanks for the very detailed answer. You actually gave answers to questions I had in my mind that were not posted. Okay, I accept your argument. I suppose it can be likened to governmental subsidies for med school students in RL. In this light, it sure does make more sense as a matter of economics. The tricky part becomes the military aspect - why raise an army of mercenaries instead of loyal navy pilots? But I suppose even that could be explained away somehow. The part I'm struggling with is the inviduality part. As you put it, "NPC Eggers" do exist and throw a bit of a wrench into the mix. The individuality situation becomes even more complicated for the Caldari main bloodlines who are more likely to be loyal and follow cultural norms of honor and duty (Achurans however, may reasonably be less stereotypical Caldari as they are an add-on and have their own sub-culture). Your thoughts on this? Also, do you know if anyone has come up with fiction describing the recruitment procedure of the state academies? If not, I can run with my own ideas, but I prefer to go off well-established histories. Ah, and then the Jovians! I too wonder about their hidden intentions. One of my theories is that we are being offered a similar genetic path (read: academy training) to the one they took. They will keep monitoring our 'progress' to help find where they went wrong, then use that information to reverse-engineer some genetic cure for themselves. Or they could be altruistically passing over their collective knowledge in a slow and consistent way to gradually help the rest of us since they realize that they are doomed. Thanks again for your post.
Stitcher Caldari Duty.	Posted - 2008.07.23 20:24:00 - [5] Originally by: Blake Rathen The individuality situation becomes even more complicated for the Caldari main bloodlines who are more likely to be loyal and follow cultural norms of honor and duty (Achurans however, may reasonably be less stereotypical Caldari as they are an add-on and have their own sub-culture). Your thoughts on this? Time for my ISK+0.02 Across the Caldari State, notions of honour and duty can vary enormously, driven in part by the "personality" of the megacorp that Caldari belongs to. For many, loyalty and honour only apply to the corporation, and towards other members of it. For others, those same concepts might extend to the State as a whole, or to the whole of humanity... or even inwards, encompassing only family and close friends. Secondly, the average Caldari will be quite mercantile in their outlook. That's how I play my character's long stretch of independence. In Stitcher's backstory, his tuition fees and academic sponsorship were covered by his pension when he retired from Ishukone Medical R&D. At that point, he believed that the books had been balanced - The debt owed him by Ishukone for years of loyal service had been paid, and he was free of any further obligations to them or the State. It took the Malkalen disaster to prompt him to return to the State's service. Finally, although the State does strive to be a model of civil efficiency, it's impossible to create a human culture where individualism does not thrive to some degree. Any given caldari citizen is likely to operate any point in a broad spectrum of political opinions, philosophies and beliefs - all of which he is powerless to formally express unless he is either rich enough to purchase voting shares in some corporation or another, or influential enough to become an executive. Nevertheless, there are no rules to say that a Caldari can't speak his mind - after all, if his advice is sound, it's worth hearing - or, if he has the means, there's nothing to stop him from acting on his beliefs either. - Lt. Verin "Stitcher" Tarn-Hakatain.
Blake Rathen Caldari State Security and Intelligence Celestial Imperative	Posted - 2008.07.24 21:32:00 - [6] Originally by: Stitcher Time for my ISK+0.02 Thanks for your thoughts, Stitcher. :) I can agree with you on the mercantile outlook concept; that makes a lot of sense to me. However, I'm still having some trouble with the "broad spectrum" of beliefs for the Caldari... partially after reading chronicles such as this one. Maybe it's a moot point to argue social boundaries, but I'm really just trying to find the distinguishing features that differentiate my race's cultural norms, ideals, etc., from that of the other races. I know that pod pilots are an elite class and I don't want to fly off the handle with an absolute stereotype, but in RL some concepts do get ingrained in us from our cultural heritage, and it would be nice to reflect that to some degree that approaches "EVE realism" (TM). New and different viewpoints always welcome.
Stitcher Caldari Duty.	Posted - 2008.07.25 00:49:00 - [7] well, something else that came up during a discussion a few nights ago... The Caldari have a very "alien" outlook on the world. Caldari Prime was and is a botched terraforming project. Without properly-qualified maintenance to keep it running properly, the TFing process didn't go quite according to plan, with the result that the planet isn't a terribly nice place to live. In fact, it's cold, barren and unforgiving, not to mention somewhat polluted by the fallout from a sustained orbital bombardment. In fact, for about three hundred years post-EVE collapse, it was entirely uninhabitable, and yet a few colonies managed to survive, and eventually grew up to become the Raata empire and, ultimately, the State. Surviving in an environment like that would require incredible teamwork and altruism, not to mention something of a callous disregard for the life of any individual human. call it "mimetic Darwinism" if you like - the environment would have selectively culled certain memes that promoted selfish behaviour or more than a certain amount of human empathy. By the time the Caldari became part of the interstellar culture, they'd have been conditioned to think very, very differently to all the other ethnic groups, with their nice, cosy, habitable, fertile homeworlds. In practical terms, that means that a Caldari's ability to empathise with individuals is pobably quite limited, and their capacity to understand another culture is generally going to be almost academic - actual adoption of their principles and complete conversion to their way of thinking would be very rare. Caldari probably make friends slowly, especially outside of their own culture, and firm, lasting friendships where both partners trust each other implicitly are something that a typical Caldari might expect to have only one or two of in a lifetime, if any. Family bonds, however, would be stronger. In a society as focused on collective success as the State, your family and its future generations represents a lasting legacy and a smaller cause on a scale more comprehensible to its occupants. Caldari probably trust their nuclear families implicitly, their cousins as good friends, and everybody outside that sphere as they would any other citizen. All of which ties into the Machiavellian scheming that goes on in the highest echelons of corporate life and, to a lesser degree, in the lower tiers as well. Every level of Caldari society would be a tangle of intrigue to a greater or lesser degree, ranging from something as simple to workers lobbying for promotion, to full-blown industrial espionage and covert corporate wars in the background. The Caldari don't view this as dishonourable, however - in their view, advancement through competition ensures that the people in charge are highly competent, and have a thorough understanding of the corporate system. I'd wager that the more "honourable" a citizen is by contemporary (Or Gallentean) standards, the less upwardly-mobile they would be. That's not to say that paranoia is the order of the day, however - just friendly and fair competition. The interesting thing is, however, that all of this scheming and intrigue would come second to the overall well-being of the State. Shop-floor workers might jockey for position in search of that management job, but while they're actually working, then they become focused exclusively on doing that job as well as they possibly can. Partly because that's their duty and partly because one of the best ways to move up in the world is to prove that you're a dilligent worker. And if you can give some of your closest friends, family and confidants a leg up in the process, well, then... it's always good to have people who owe you. Basically, Caldari have different ethical standards to everyone else. "Evil" would be entirely the wrong term. I prefer "alien". - Lt. Verin "Stitcher" Tarn-Hakatain.
Stitcher Caldari Duty.	Posted - 2008.07.25 01:16:00 - [8] Edited by: Stitcher on 25/07/2008 01:18:03 Edited by: Stitcher on 25/07/2008 01:17:27 (cont...) Now, the above might at first glance seem to be a contradiction. A culture bred for selflessness that is nevertheless constantly engaged in low-grade infighting and power-brokering? It's less paradoxical than it might seem if you realise that Caldari don't do all that machiavellian scheming for themselves - they do it for their group. That group might be the family, or the corporate division, or the corporation as a whole. Even power plays among the highest-ranking executives are generally performed because the players believe that the philosophy of their faction is best for the megacorporation. Caldari have a strong sense of "belonging" to their particular circle, hence the tendency to be slow to form trusting relationships with others - trust means taking it on faith that the other will work for the benefit of the collective YOU belong to, as well as their own... or even that they will favour your group over theirs. For all you know, they could be exploiting your trust to further the aims of the organization they belong to. Corporations, families and social structures tend to share a common philosophy. "Factions" would be the better term. The Patriots, Practicals and Liberals are the most obvious examples, but within those would be hundreds of thousands of smaller sub-factions, each vying to see their particular take on the larger faction's policies realised. Sufficiently powerful power blocks might well amass the resources to purchase shares in a corporation, or attract powerful executives and shareholders, formally cementing their power which, up until that point, was only implicit. This process replaces democracy within Caldari society. Individual citizens don't get a vote, but the incessant maneuvering ensures that powerful, sensible policies will attract the support of families and work groups, resulting in the formation of a faction. Powerful, popular factions will grow and become more succesful in making their views heard, while unpopular philosophies will be starved for membership, and fail. If at any stage a Caldari feels that things need to be done differently, then they are perfectly at liberty to defect to a faction that more closely represents their views or, more rarely, try to form their own faction and convince people of the validity of their argument - much like I did, with my protests outside the Kaalakiota HQ a few months back. As it happened, the idea was unpopular with the Caldari populace, and as a result the political "faction" I was trying to create never got off the ground. The founding of a corporation is a slightly more formal form of the process - corporations typically embrace a particular philosophy, or embrace that of a political faction, and their financial power serves to underpin their political power. The key point here, however, is that Caldari, while undoubtedly ruthless and frenetic in their business dealings and constant infighting, typically do it all on behalf of a cause greater than themselves. *** I'd just like to note, however, that all of the above is my interpretation and extrapolation, and is in no way either supported by or indeed contrary to the PF. I don't think I've actively fabricated anything here - just glued together a rough picture from the information available to me - both the official stuff from CCP, and the unofficial stuff made by the RP community. It's how I play Stitcher, at least, and I've yet to have anyone scream at me "you're doing it wrong!" so I assume I'm going the right way. (tbc...) - Lt. Verin "Stitcher" Tarn-Hakatain.
Stitcher Caldari Duty.	Posted - 2008.07.25 01:43:00 - [9] Edited by: Stitcher on 25/07/2008 01:43:55 Now, where do capsuleers fit into all this? Firstly, capsuleers represent a powerful force in this world of schemes and intrigue. Firstly, their earning power is theoretically well beyond that of all but the top-level executives and officers, and even in the State money is power - loyalties can be purchased, after all. A Caldari who has no particular opinion of their own will often adopt and support the philosophy of the corporation they belong to, simply because that's easiest. Secondly, any given capsuleer, once they've become well-established, is effectively a small corporation unto themselves. They employ hundreds or even thousands of men and women to crew their ships, do their paperwork, administrate their assets and tend to the needs of themselves and all the other employees. That means that a Capsuleer has the backing of a lot of people who will, owing to the aforementioned tendency to adopt the collective philosophy rather than an individual one, most likely echo his own personal beliefs - which in turn might echo the beliefs of his family and whatever faction (of any size) the family in turn belongs to. If the pilot belongs to a corporation, more often than not they will have joined it because the corporation's philosophy gels with their other political commitments. On paper, an independent Caldari pilot's list of contacts, affiliations, favours owed to and by, and loyalties is likely to resemble a mangrove thicket, and the flow of obligation would be highly complicated. Thirdly, independent capsuleer - the ones who have resigned from their position as an employed citizen of the State - fall outside the usual structure of power within the State - they lack formal authority over anyone but their employees, but neither are they subject to being ordered about. This position outside the usual corporate "ladder" gives capsuleers unprecedented freedom. Provided they have the money, they can influence pretty much anyone at any level. The power-jockeying continues to happen at this level too - with their access to vast resources, it's comparatively easy for a capsuleer to pay for information. Sometimes, that information will come courtesy of some liberally greased palms. Otherwise, it might come from a network of "friends", contacts, agents and co-conspirators. Assuming they desire it, a Caldari capsuleer might have little trouble setting up a complicated thicket of data-gatherers. What that information is used for is entirely dependent upon the capsuleer's philosophy. Indeed, many (maybe even most) of them will not bother to do anything with it at all (assuming they bother to gather it in the first place), preferring not to meddle in the affairs of a corporate hierarchy they no longer belong to. Ultimately, a capsuleer typically comes to represent influence and prestige. If the pilot's loyalties still lie with his family or some other cultural clique, then he may continue to back the political agenda of that group. More often, however, the pilot will assume leadership of the group (by becoming head of the family, for example). Either way, the patronage or membership of a capsuleer is typical considered a great honour to his group, and a considerable source of pride for his family. Still, compared to the massive size and influence of the largest political and philosophical factions within the State, and especially considering that most often the Capsuleers will in turn belong to one of said factions, the actual amount of power wielded by any individual plot is likely to be small or even negligible. Pilots don't change the world, so much as support the people who do. *** ...Yeah, it was a long conversation, and I'm not entirely sure I've done justice to the ideas covered in it. Feel free to ignore everything I've said here if you disagree. - Lt. Verin "Stitcher" Tarn-Hakatain.
Logan Xerxes State Protectorate	Posted - 2008.07.25 16:41:00 - [10] Originally by: Stitcher Awesome stuff This is great. I fully agree.

Blake Rathen Caldari State Security and Intelligence Celestial Imperative	Posted - 2008.07.29 14:09:00 - [11] Wow, Stitcher. That's an incredible wall you've built. Actually, I took in every word. Lots of well-thoughtout ideas and understanding there. Have you ever been to Japan? Your description of the intricacies of duty, relationships, and positions sounds a bit similar to my view of Japanese culture. But, I digress. I think Blake will be the loyal type, will responsibilities over his own flock, as you've described it. Have you ever watched a little anime show called 'Eureka 7'. I think a Caldari captain could fit nicely into the role of Holland as the head of Gekkostate. Maybe I'll post more later, after I've had a chance to digest. Thanks for all your thoughts.
Stitcher Caldari Duty.	Posted - 2008.07.29 18:27:00 - [12] Hehe, I think it's fairly well-established that the State draws a lot of inspiration from both modern and Feudal Japanese cultures. For a start, all the Caldari Navy ships have names like "Tanto" "Wakizashi" "Katana" "Shuriken" and so on. then there's the fact that the language (Caldanese) borrows very heavily from Japanese as well. I believe the rule of thumb for inventing a word in Caldanese is to translate it or one of its synonyms into both Japanese and Finnish, then amalgamate the two resulting words into one. (So, for example, the Caldanese for "I apologize" might be "Gomantaa" from the Japenese "Gomen" and the Finnish "Antaa") - Lt. Verin "Stitcher" Tarn-Hakatain.
Conrad Davanev	Posted - 2008.07.30 19:39:00 - [13] Excellent insight into the cladari mindset. My character might be one of the more independent types but there is alot of good stuff here about the way in which a Caldari character might view the universe around them.
Stitcher Caldari Duty.	Posted - 2008.07.30 22:53:00 - [14] Hhehe, I refuse to be given the credit for it. Most of this stuff in fact came from Longshots, not from me. I just thought it sounded good, and wrote it down. - Lt. Verin "Stitcher" Tarn-Hakatain.

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