On 23/3/22 07:29, Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml
list) wrote:
> <snip>
> Phil,
>
> Fair enough - you know much better than we do what works best for your
> game and players.  It don't work for you, chuck it verily out the next
> lock.
>
> Given real-world circumstances over 2020-2022, I steered clear of
> diseases in Parental Advisory, barring a humourous one-off reference to
> Curly spending many an uncomfortable night on the dunny in his younger,
> post-immigration, days.
>
> That hasn't stopped me trying to figure out where the Terran
> Confederation's bioweapon retaliation for the AZS' nuclear attack on
> Terra will be intended to be unleashed, where the payloads will actually
> _be_ released, and how many digits the resulting body count will have
> (given the initial pathogens will be engineered to _exploit_ the
> targeted populations' vulnerabilities - I probably could profit from
> reading _Biohazard_ again).  I'm having a hard time getting it down to 9
> digits, as it will Go _Horribly_ Right.
>
>
> Alex
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> When I first read about the 'plague' that decimated the Vilani pops in
> the (future) SolRim sector during the IPWars, I always wondered if it
> was deliberate.
>
> Makes for quite a different story, for sure.

Phil,

Canonically, the Terrans didn't _need_ to engineer anything. Terra lived
up to its reputation in other media as a deathworld, especially the
pathogens.

Said bugs had been co-evolving with the Terrans themselves in an all-out
accelerator-welded-to-floor arms race for 300-odd kiloyears after
Yaskoydray et al lifted founder populations off Terra.

Then, after 2098 AD, said bugs ran into a host population that they had
a 300,000 year headstart on (ie, the human populations of the Ziru Sirka).

I can't claim originality for the bioweapon retaliation - I first saw it
in Andrea Vallance's (pre-GT:ISW, iirc) writeup of the ISW era, where
Shululsish was not-quite-depopulated (95% casualties, IIRC - certainly
knee deep in the dead), and the TC forswearing bioweapon use after that
due to the (damned hypocritical, IMO) Terran public reaction.

Where I've extended it is the planned use on multiple hi-pop worlds,
aiming to sever the trade routes connecting the Rim Province to the ZS
Core that don't run through the Vegan Worlds.

Operation Peaceful Hands nicely ironic name, nyet?

The intended side effects will be:

     Loosen the economic ties between the extreme-Rimward parts of the
Ziru Sirka (Kimashargur Worlds, et al) and the metropole;

     Embuggerise the ZS' ability to keep said parts,

     Give dissident populations in said parts _ideas_,

     Provoke at least one overreaction where the AZS sterilises an
economically-significant ZS planet out of fear of infection (it would be
nice if the AZS kills more Vilani civilians does more economic damage
than Peaceful Hands itself does, but the planners aren't betting on it),

     A follow up diplomatic note to wherever ends up as the Rim capital
after the dust settles.  "Attack Terra again, and we get creative."

Extratextually, set up for a follow-on metacampaign where the canonical
2I and 3I are well and truly long gone, decades/millennia before their
canonical rises.

Of course, I've already said it will go horribly right (from Terran
perspective), so there will be _unintended_ side effects, as well. 
Private bioweapon deployments, for starters.

Question for the Learned Membership - how horribly right will Peaceful
Hands have to go, to merit central government attention? (The 2150s
Advisoryverse Terran Confederation would consider such an existential
threat, given Muan Issler).

Alex