Proof that the CS is Evil

[Axelmania]

KC to reframe this, please support your theory that "unnatural" is used by the CS to refer to all D-Bees.

Already have.
If you want more, read the books.

where? You referring to quote below or something else?

quoted the context to you:
Regarding nonhuman invaders. The soldier has been indoctrinated to believe that all non-human creatures are invaders and a threat to human life. Even the most open-minded character will find it difficult to trust D-Bees or those who oppose the CS...

You can pretend that "all non-human creatures" means "all animals."

I'm not. It doesn't mean humans and humans are animals so it doesn't mean ALL animals... It means all but one species.

Well except for animals which are not creatures, if any unique meaning can be assigned to it.

You can pretend that the following passage that refers to "unnatural invaders" refers only to supernatural creatures instead of the D-Bees already mentioned, and the larger context of "all non-human creatures," but it'll just be pretend--make believe.
It won't be anything real, just a bizarre fancy that you've invented.
It's not how the English language actually works.

Not pretending anything: I honestly do not know if unnatural has a unque meanint or not. Barring that we have to use judgment.

I do not believe the CS views Dwarves or Wolfen to he unnatural. Changelings and Cobblers? Sure.

[Shark_Force]

well, if you choose not to even try to find out if what you're doing is morally right, no, you're not good or anywhere near it. if your decision is to just murder things and ask questions never, then that's not going to be anywhere near good either.

if you're unwilling to make sacrifices, potentially including risking some level of personal harm, then no, you aren't good.

(and also, yes, i consider the statements, canon or not, that almost everyone has personally suffered at the hands of magic users, and that the most heavily armed largest military in north america suffers major losses on a regular basis, to be a load of bull written by people who don't have a damn clue what they're writing about in those cases. unless magic users have literally got a goal of finding people they haven't personally caused suffering for, the former is ludicrously stupid, because there aren't a ton of magic users, most of them aren't wandering around looking for people to hurt, and the ones that are generally don't have "hurt people" as their primary goal, but rather they'll have some goal which has a side effect of hurting people. the latter is ludicrously stupid because officially the CS has no real organized opposition (there are organized forces that *could* oppose them, but none that actually do anything meaningful), and millions of soldiers with millions of power armours, robot vehicles, presumably artillery, and who knows how many medium and long range missile launch sites, are not something you can kill massive numbers of without organized opposition. unless "droves" means something like "thousands" (which is to say, less than 1% casualties), in which case, that's probably true... but it's also a laughably small number, and frankly, injuries in training accidents are probably a bigger problem.

or, alternately, maybe if we're talking about dog boys, which are frequently sent to deal with supernatural threats armed with a few vibro-blades and maybe some silver-plated knuckle spikes or something. they might actually suffer pretty heavy losses. but the CS regular soldiers suffering signifcant losses while facing primarily melee-range threats while they are armed laser rifles and heavy body armour and can call in SAMAS squads and such? while having blanket permission to shoot damned near anything that looks like it might be threatening? suffering significant deaths in those kinds of fights requires a level of incompetence that i don't generally assume anything worthy of being called military would display.

[Killer Cyborg]

"Mod Wrath" -- ought to be the name of a band.

[Killer Cyborg]

The problem there is that if one is to take the simultaneous tacks that:

1: Supernatural powers are too dangerous to be permitted;

2: Supernatural powers can be in anyone, since dragons can metamorph and children can become wizards and mind-melters;

You are once again left with the inescapable conclusion that the only way to 'save the planet from magic' is to destroy everyone on it, including all the humans.

Only if you look at those two factors in a vacuum.
In the overall context of the setting, there are reasons why the CS relies on Dog Boys and other Psychics.
Also, there is a certain amount of "if it looks like a normal human, it probably is one..." at play. And, as I said, the stakes are higher (from the CS perspective) when looking at suspicious humans than at suspicious D-Bees.
Their goal (one of them anyway) is to protect human life. "Kill all humans" is the opposite of that goal.
Protecting D-Bee life is not on their list of goals, so "Kill All D-Bees" doesn't conflict with saving human lives.

[Killer Cyborg]

well, if you choose not to even try to find out if what you're doing is morally right, no, you're not good or anywhere near it. if your decision is to just murder things and ask questions never, then that's not going to be anywhere near good either.

"Choosing to try to find out if what you're doing is morally right" isn't a binary equation; it's a spectrum.
There are people who have spent their entire lives focused solely on that one question, and still not come up with all of the answers.
The vast majority of human beings have other things to do with their time, so they weigh that priority in as one among many.

if you're unwilling to make sacrifices, potentially including risking some level of personal harm, then no, you aren't good.

Sure, why not grab that Ouija board and have a chat with Cap'n Howdy.
He could be a charmingly decent fellow!

i consider the statements, canon or not, that almost everyone has personally suffered at the hands of magic users, and that the most heavily armed largest military in north america suffers major losses on a regular basis, to be a load of bull written by people who don't have a damn clue what they're writing about in those cases.

Sure. Canon is wrong, and you're right.

unless magic users have literally got a goal of finding people they haven't personally caused suffering for, the former is ludicrously stupid, because there aren't a ton of magic users,

It depends on how literally you take the phrase "the vast majority of Coalition citizens have experienced the painful scorch of magic first-hand."
I wouldn't take it to mean that they've literally been physically scorched by magical fire.
I would take it to mean that they've been hurt significantly by magic in some way. Maybe they've been attacked, or maybe they know somebody who's been attacked.
It's a small world today, and the CS world is even smaller. I can certainly see the majority of CS citizens being negatively affected by magic in some way or another.

millions of soldiers with millions of power armours, robot vehicles, presumably artillery, and who knows how many medium and long range missile launch sites, are not something you can kill massive numbers of without organized opposition.

Sure you can. You just have a large number of unorganized opponents.
Again, monsters show up and attack. Not all CS soldiers are always in large numbers.
Have you never participated in any adventures where CS soldiers were killed?
Most players have, and most players don't imagine that they're the only ones attacking the Coalition.

unless "droves" means something like "thousands"

It means "herds."
If you don't think it's a big number, imagine for a moment a modern nation that was losing thousands of soldiers on a semi-regular basis.

or, alternately, maybe if we're talking about dog boys,

This passage was talking about normal CS soldiers.

the CS regular soldiers suffering signifcant losses while facing primarily melee-range threats

Source?

while they are armed laser rifles and heavy body armour and can call in SAMAS squads and such? while having blanket permission to shoot damned near anything that looks like it might be threatening? suffering significant deaths in those kinds of fights requires a level of incompetence that i don't generally assume anything worthy of being called military would display.

Tell that to the drove of forum posters who swear up and down that mages could easily destroy the entire Coalition, and that they should have by now, I guess.
I'm somewhere in between the two extremes; I see magic as a potent and deadly force, just one that isn't currently capable of toppling the CS empire, although it's certainly capable of causing significant casualties.

[Nightmartree]

unless magic users have literally got a goal of finding people they haven't personally caused suffering for, the former is ludicrously stupid, because there aren't a ton of magic users,

It depends on how literally you take the phrase "the vast majority of Coalition citizens have experienced the painful scorch of magic first-hand."
I wouldn't take it to mean that they've literally been physically scorched by magical fire.
I would take it to mean that they've been hurt significantly by magic in some way. Maybe they've been attacked, or maybe they know somebody who's been attacked.
It's a small world today, and the CS world is even smaller. I can certainly see the majority of CS citizens being negatively affected by magic in some way or another.

2 things, one do the rifts (not in general but a specific incident directly related to a person, like say your convoy got too close and couldn't get away from a nexus during high magic) count as harmed by magic and two magic users are rare, supernatural monsters apparently are not (then again we also have a magically country that has directly sworn revenge on the CS and another that has plenty of magic users supporting it, so how rare is a magic user really?seems like theyre reasonable common amongst the powers that be)

[Killer Cyborg]

unless magic users have literally got a goal of finding people they haven't personally caused suffering for, the former is ludicrously stupid, because there aren't a ton of magic users,

It depends on how literally you take the phrase "the vast majority of Coalition citizens have experienced the painful scorch of magic first-hand."
I wouldn't take it to mean that they've literally been physically scorched by magical fire.
I would take it to mean that they've been hurt significantly by magic in some way. Maybe they've been attacked, or maybe they know somebody who's been attacked.
It's a small world today, and the CS world is even smaller. I can certainly see the majority of CS citizens being negatively affected by magic in some way or another.

2 things, one do the rifts (not in general but a specific incident directly related to a person, like say your convoy got too close and couldn't get away from a nexus during high magic) count as harmed by magic

Yes.

[dreicunan]

and also, yes, i consider the statements, canon or not, that almost everyone has personally suffered at the hands of magic users, and that the most heavily armed largest military in north america suffers major losses on a regular basis, to be a load of bull written by people who don't have a damn clue what they're writing about in those cases.

Okay, so Kevin Siembieda has no "damn clue" about Rifts North America according to you. Good to know. Do you also believe that J. R. R. Tolkien had no "damn clue" about Middle Earth? Did Frank Herbert not have a "damn clue" about Arrakis?

[Shark_Force]

and also, yes, i consider the statements, canon or not, that almost everyone has personally suffered at the hands of magic users, and that the most heavily armed largest military in north america suffers major losses on a regular basis, to be a load of bull written by people who don't have a damn clue what they're writing about in those cases.

Okay, so Kevin Siembieda has no "damn clue" about Rifts North America according to you. Good to know. Do you also believe that J. R. R. Tolkien had no "damn clue" about Middle Earth? Did Frank Herbert not have a "damn clue" about Arrakis?

i think kevin has no damn clue when it comes to numbers, and that he just throws out whatever he feels like whenever he feels like, with little to no consistency. today it feels good for the CS to have 3 million soldiers. tomorrow it feels good for the CS to be threatened by like a million demons primarily of varieties that have no ranged attacks whatsoever (and, to be honest, many of them barely even have any particularly interesting abilities beyond supernatural PS and MDC), *after* recruiting up to 7 million soldiers. why? because why not.

and yes, the CS has magical enemies. so far as we can tell, the primary thing those magical enemies do is sit on their butts and do absolutely nothing to attack the CS in any meaningful way. 3 million soldiers are distracted on the entirely opposite end of their nation? well, what the heck, sounds like a great time to re-organize the old pre-rifts stamp collection. apparently that doesn't smell like an opportunity for revenge on the CS, it sounds like an opportunity to let tolkeen die because you're a petty moron and tolkeen said they didn't like you once.

also, this may sound somewhat callous, but... thousands of soldiers dying in a year to attacks? that's peanuts to the CS. that's probably somewhere between 0.1% and 0.5% of their troops. they probably lose more people to food poisoning and accounting errors than that.

[Blue_Lion]

say you meet a guy in blood drenched armor dripping with blood as he runs screaming down the road at you his eyes flashing with madness, you blow him away because he seems like a threat...now your suddenly evil because that man has never harmed another person a day in his life, in fact he is a mutant who lives on ambient PPE and has just watched his family eaten by a terrible monster he is now fleeing in fear covered in there blood.

that's the alignment system your arguing for

That is the alignment system on the books, if you do not allow for flexibility. Most GMs would in my expiernce not force you to change alignment if you attack a person you have reason to believe is guilty.

AFAIK, there are no official rules for changing alignment.
The strictest interpretation of the alignments on the books wouldn't include alignments being changed, but would instead force every character to abide by the alignment code. And not just the character, but also perhaps physics.
RAW, Principled characters will Never harm an innocent.

So in the case where a Principled character was deceived into believing that an innocent person was a guilty and active immediate threat to the Principled character's life, that Principled character could not according to RAW harm that person (assuming that we go with a strict universal standard of "innocent").
This would result in...
-the GM hijacking the PC's character, telling him, "Nope. You have no reason NOT to shoot... but you just don't shoot anyway
or
-The GM hijacking physics, telling the PC "You shot at him, and yes, you rolled a natural 20, but you miss anyway" or "You shoot him, you hit him, but your attack does not harm him."

Likewise, envision a scenario where a Principled soldier throws a grenade into a room full of enemy soldiers... and one innocent civilian that the Principled character doesn't know is there.
According to the rules, that innocent person would never be harmed by the Principled character.
In order to play the rule as written, either the Principled character would have to somehow know not to throw that grenade, or that grenade would have to miraculously not harm the innocent.

The rules of Rifts, run strictly, do not result in a reasonably playable game.

-The thing that would cause a CS grunt to take to change alignment would be unarmed foe. Burning a village full of women and children would be attacking an unarmed foe as would any time a person does not pose an obvious threat.

Attacking or killing them might conflict with the alignment, but capturing them and turning them over to the authorities (i.e., the CS) would not.

(I do not buy the idea that every one is potential threat and fair target. A person through actions, or presence of a weapon present a threat to be considered an armed foe. So any one participating in razing/killing a village or ordering one would have to be miscreant or diabolic. (I might let a charter without world experience could be acting out of ignorance believing propaganda get a pass the first time but after the first time you would know they are not a threat.)

Was Ripley committing an Evil act in Aliens, when she slaughtered all the unhatched xenomorph eggs?

The fact that the CS has by the books killed every one in a town means the CS has taken actions that are miscreant or diabolic. (and why even if he believes what he says ordering the death of unarmed civilians would make the CS emperor miscreant or diabolic.

Here is one of the places where the phrase "the CS" is misleading.
Members of the CS have killed an entire town (going with your claim here).
The CS as a whole has not killed an entire town.

The same is true of most modern nations: groups of their soldiers may have (in accordance with or in violation of specific orders) committed any number of heinous acts, including destroying an entire town or village.
But does that in the real-world mean that the entire nation--or the nation in general--is Evil, based on the actions of their soldiers?

(FYI, last time I brought this subject up, I was smacked down by the mods for bringing real-world politics into things, so let's avoid any specific examples of real-world cases)

I should point out that the CS not misleading as you claim. The CS is the regime or the policies and people that make them, it is not every single person in the nation.

During the final siege SoT the CS military launched a scorched earth campaign where they slowly approached Tolkeen destroying all towns and killing every one in them. This as I understand it was under orders from the high command an official action by the CS military. The military of a nation represents the nation as a whole so an official operation of that military is an official action of the nation. So when the military ordered the destruction of a town including women and children that means the nation they represented is accountable for the action.

The statement killercyborg posted makes it sound like the CS as a whole is not responsible for the actions of their military. Now then if the people that ordered/done such actions where punished for it then the CS as a whole would have rejected the action. Not punishing them means the actions represent the overall nations policy.(Yes nearly every nation at one time has done actions that would be evil. However now we see nations that want to be good punish soldiers for such actions, and avoid making such actions official policy.)

That does not mean that every one or even most of the people in the nations are evil, just that the nation regime itself would be evil. Hitler's Nazi Germany was evil but most the people in Germany where not evil. (Note: When I talk about the CS I talk about the national regime, Ie the policies and the people making them not every single person in the CS. Many of the people making policies are stated as evil.)

When it comes to official action or policies by a military it is not needed to prove every part of the nation took part in it to assign it to the whole nation, but instead must be proven that the official action was atypical for the whole and something that would be punished for the whole to not bare the burden of it.

[Axelmania]

Did Frank Herbert not have a "damn clue" about Arrakis?

mysterious voice: "that's right"

well, if you choose not to even try to find out if what you're doing is morally right, no, you're not good or anywhere near it. if your decision is to just murder things and ask questions never, then that's not going to be anywhere near good either.

What makes you think the CS never tries to find out? Shoot first policy isn't necessarily always-on, but rather in situations where you don't overwhelmingly control the battlefield.

If you have dozens of Psi-Stalkers who can all confirm the human toddler walking toward you isn't radiating magic/psi, dozens of Zappers who can tell you he doesn't have a fusion block hidden on him, dozens of sensitives whose Sixth Sense isn't bleeping, then I see no reason to think the CS would kill the toddler.

But hey, without those precautions, better safe than sorry.

if you're unwilling to make sacrifices, potentially including risking some level of personal harm, then no, you aren't good.

This is completely inapplicable to the CS considering their very high level of casualties even with such conservative precautions.

You want them to risk even more personal harm? They'd lose, and then far more harm would come to far more people.

i consider the statements, canon or not, that almost everyone has personally suffered at the hands of magic users, and that the most heavily armed largest military in north america suffers major losses on a regular basis, to be a load of bull written by people who don't have a damn clue what they're writing about in those cases.

Well let's look at what was posted earlier here by dreicunan:

I guess Kevin S was lying when he wrote that "the vast majority of Coalition citizens have experienced the painful scorch of magic first-hand" (Sedition, page 13, paragraph 1, which is describing the state of things prior to the Siege of Tolkeen)

This is true, but it does go on to elaborate further on:

Virtually every citizen of the Coalition States has lost a loved one or suffered in some way by magic, or knows someone who has.

So we have two groups, the "vast majority" (VM) and the "virtually every" (VE). The VM have "experienced the painful scorch" which... is kinda vague. The VE "knows someone who has suffered in some way by magic" (you know yourself, and losing a loved one is suffering, so we can simplify that down).

So vast-majority experienced PAIN while virtually-every knows someone who SUFFERED.

Both are still pretty vague, you can feel pain and suffering in a lot of ways. So this is easy to accept.

Siembieda is the writer of Sedition, he presumably wrote the "Magic vs Technology" section this is a part of. I think Siembieda does have a clue what he's writing about... what he writes can't really be bull since what he writes defines the game.

unless magic users have literally got a goal of finding people they haven't personally caused suffering for, the former is ludicrously stupid, because there aren't a ton of magic users, most of them aren't wandering around looking for people to hurt, and the ones that are generally don't have "hurt people" as their primary goal, but rather they'll have some goal which has a side effect of hurting people.

Siembieda never said they were DIRECTLY harmed by magic, or targeted for harm, so indirect harm (pain and suffering) is a perfectly plausible explanation.

the latter is ludicrously stupid because officially the CS has no real organized opposition (there are organized forces that *could* oppose them, but none that actually do anything meaningful)

Forces do not need to oppose you or be organized to harm you. A randomly summoned Devilkin for example, may not oppose the CS, and may not organize with others, but they could still just randomly go around setting houses on fire and cause many people (CS Citizen or not) to suffer.

and millions of soldiers with millions of power armours, robot vehicles, presumably artillery, and who knows how many medium and long range missile launch sites, are not something you can kill massive numbers of without organized opposition.

Killing them isn't what it states, only that they felt pain or suffering. Also: people do spend time outside of armor, or know people who don't have MDC body armor.

or, alternately, maybe if we're talking about dog boys, which are frequently sent to deal with supernatural threats armed with a few vibro-blades and maybe some silver-plated knuckle spikes or something. they might actually suffer pretty heavy losses

We're not, pretty sure Dog Boys can't be Citizens.

tomorrow it feels good for the CS to be threatened by like a million demons primarily of varieties that have no ranged attacks whatsoever (and, to be honest, many of them barely even have any particularly interesting abilities beyond supernatural PS and MDC)

I actually think this is going to happen. DB10 (Hades) pg 64
*1 action to do a restrained bite, if 4D6 damage reduces at least 1 HP, can inflict Undeath, 14 or higher means 1-13 is a failure. That is 65% of the time for those without bonuses. If they made their save, you will know within 5 days (the fever passes) and can try biting them a second time. It takes 3-9 months (average 6) to turn someone once they fail.

There are no limits here. A single death demon which comes and bites 100 villagers will produce 100 greater demons in less than a year. They can Shadow Meld at will so it would be incredibly easy for them to sneak up on victims to do this. All of them can Dimensional Teleport at over 40% so they can rejoin their masters easily.

Page 65 mentions strict controls on how many there can be, but that could easily change if the war goes south.

So how many are there? well...

p129: 1,500 in Shek'Ra
p134: 2,500 in Glaciers
p139: 1,000 in Gamora
p158: 200 in Zaglore
p165: 300 in City of the Ancients
+ unknown amount in Bazal's tower

So that's at least 5,500 communities of mortals you can seed with these creatures and infect and get a huge increase in 6 months if you need to.

Much less time than it takes a minor demon to regenerate from being killed.

During the final siege SoT the CS military launched a scorched earth campaign where they slowly approached Tolkeen destroying all towns and killing every one in them.

Interesting. But how close to Tolkeen were they when this campaign began? I'm curious about the radius here so I can know whether Hogswaller made it out.

[Nightmartree]

(I do not buy the idea that every one is potential threat and fair target. A person through actions, or presence of a weapon present a threat to be considered an armed foe. So any one participating in razing/killing a village or ordering one would have to be miscreant or diabolic. (I might let a charter without world experience could be acting out of ignorance believing propaganda get a pass the first time but after the first time you would know they are not a threat.)

Was Ripley committing an Evil act in Aliens, when she slaughtered all the unhatched xenomorph eggs?

Here is one of the places where the phrase "the CS" is misleading.
Members of the CS have killed an entire town (going with your claim here).
The CS as a whole has not killed an entire town.

The same is true of most modern nations: groups of their soldiers may have (in accordance with or in violation of specific orders) committed any number of heinous acts, including destroying an entire town or village.
But does that in the real-world mean that the entire nation--or the nation in general--is Evil, based on the actions of their soldiers?

(FYI, last time I brought this subject up, I was smacked down by the mods for bringing real-world politics into things, so let's avoid any specific examples of real-world cases)

I should point out that the CS not misleading as you claim. The CS is the regime or the policies and people that make them, it is not every single person in the nation.

During the final siege SoT the CS military launched a scorched earth campaign where they slowly approached Tolkeen destroying all towns and killing every one in them. This as I understand it was under orders from the high command an official action by the CS military. The military of a nation represents the nation as a whole so an official operation of that military is an official action of the nation. So when the military ordered the destruction of a town including women and children that means the nation they represented is accountable for the action.

The statement killercyborg posted makes it sound like the CS as a whole is not responsible for the actions of their military. Now then if the people that ordered/done such actions where punished for it then the CS as a whole would have rejected the action. Not punishing them means the actions represent the overall nations policy.(Yes nearly every nation at one time has done actions that would be evil. However now we see nations that want to be good punish soldiers for such actions, and avoid making such actions official policy.)

That does not mean that every one or even most of the people in the nations are evil, just that the nation regime itself would be evil. Hitler's Nazi Germany was evil but most the people in Germany where not evil. (Note: When I talk about the CS I talk about the national regime, Ie the policies and the people making them not every single person in the CS. Many of the people making policies are stated as evil.)

two things again! one, I asked something similar to the ripley and aliens question 4 times before I got a reply of "it doesn't matter" (actually gonna have to go see if they ever replied to my pointing out that them saying that just invalidated their entire argument)

and two, that's actually not the thing I've been arguing this entire thread, it has been confirmed without a doubt that the CS states are by book evil aligned as a country (its in canon and written, and the original point of this thread) but the argument that has continued has basically been does the CS soldiers actions vs D-Bees count as an act of war vs "evil" from their point of view and as such they maintain personal alignments other than evil (such as a scrupulous coalition captain and his good aligned subordinates)? Some people are saying that essentially by being a part of the CS military your basically gonna take a alignment shift to evil and that's that. Which is not the case, though i'd certainly believe that the higher you go the more evil you'd find i'd consider that an effect of the dehumanizing effects of war, corruption or they're just evil (not everyone is a product of their environment). But there is nothing to prevent a scrupulous aligned character from raining hell and exterminating entire villages of D-bees if he considers them evil monsters that can't be saved. And that is a view point that is entirely reasonable and understandable for a member of the coalition states.

Heck a good aligned character could be even more dedicated to exterminating D-bees than an evil, the evil will be doing it for fun or power, the good guy will have a cause to protect and a true hero will give everything for their cause, if that everything means he has die to launch the attack that wipes out every last D-bee scum and monster in that demon city...then he will do so and be hailed as a hero in the CS...and a monster elsewhere, but that doesn't change his alignment.

[Nightmartree]

it was no less evil for a person to treat another person as a piece of property before the constitution was ammended following the civil war in the united states than after.

I'm not talking about laws; I'm talking about global social understandings.
Slavery predates Columbus; he just boosted the scale.
Slavery is something that existed to varying extents for pretty much as long as humanity has. Longer, really, if ants predate humans.
I personally find any standard that puts categorizes the majority of humans for the majority of human history as "Evil" as being a bit too severe for me to agree with. I feel that it waters down the word to near meaningless, because for all we know, it applies to everybody today as well--we just don't understand what great Evil act we're committing that's perfectly socially acceptable today.

and yes, i know the CS doesn't eliminate psychics. they do persecute them and are heavily prejudiced though, and it is a simple thing to find a psychic and get to know them.

Call me prejudiced, but in the real world I wouldn't hang out with anybody who could mind-control me on a whim.
Probably wouldn't hang out with telepaths either.
Not all psychics can do that, so IF I knew exactly what powers a psychic did or did not have, then sure... I might.
But I'm not sure what you'd expect me to find out by talking to a psychic.

frankly, given the rate of psionic powers, it is highly probable that you know dozens of psychics from when you were growing up.

I don't know about "dozens," but yeah, some.

We are all evil, don't you know?Every day we live by consuming the lives of creatures that have never harmed us at all

and here is the great part, if you find a psychic and get to know them...who is to say that won't terrify you even more?do you not know people in your day to day life you wouldn't trust with the time of day let alone powers to control others, crush cars and steal your secrets and emotions? In some ways us knowing psychics personally only would make them scarier.

[Freemage]

KC: You've said you have a problem with a take that would cast most of human society throughout history as 'evil'. You can take that view--but only by tossing out the idea of a society having an alignment at all. At least, a mortal one. Beings tied to elemental concepts of good and evil might manage it, but if the CS isn't 'evil' as a state, neither is Dunscon's True Federation of Magic (other, possibly, than the elements of that society that are pawns of definitely evil alien intelligences). And that seems to go against the tone set by the books (although, interestingly, such a state IS the case in Savage Rifts, which lacks a formal alignment system--demons and angels are 'evil' and 'good' supernatural beings, but the planet is simply inhabited by people, with all our mish-mash of mud and stardust (what the estimable Mr. Pratchett once described as 'the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape').

In short, if we accept that societies that are built on slavery, rape and abuse are not 'evil', then the proper answer to, "Is the CS evil?" is not "Yes" or "No" or even "Maybe, not sure", but "Mu."

[Killer Cyborg]

KC: You've said you have a problem with a take that would cast most of human society throughout history as 'evil'. You can take that view--but only by tossing out the idea of a society having an alignment at all.

I'm not sure that's the ONLY way, but I'm also not opposed to the notion.

At least, a mortal one. Beings tied to elemental concepts of good and evil might manage it, but if the CS isn't 'evil' as a state, neither is Dunscon's True Federation of Magic (other, possibly, than the elements of that society that are pawns of definitely evil alien intelligences). And that seems to go against the tone set by the books (although, interestingly, such a state IS the case in Savage Rifts, which lacks a formal alignment system--demons and angels are 'evil' and 'good' supernatural beings, but the planet is simply inhabited by people, with all our mish-mash of mud and stardust (what the estimable Mr. Pratchett once described as 'the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape').

In short, if we accept that societies that are built on slavery, rape and abuse are not 'evil', then the proper answer to, "Is the CS evil?" is not "Yes" or "No" or even "Maybe, not sure", but "Mu."

Kinda, in that Kevin flat-out tells us (RUE 230):
I'm frequently asked, "So is the Coalition Good or Evil?" and I get a frown or head scratching when I say, "Yes."
He lays out that the CS is a villain, but one that's not entirely black and white... but people still seem to want to argue about it on a regular basis.
So that's your Mu answer, and it's pretty official.

BUT if we want to ascribe Alignments to entire nations/states/etc., there are more ways to do it than to judge them by their actions.
There is--as I've mentioned--taking the Kantian view of things and judging them instead by intent.
Dunscon's True Federation, IIRC, has the specific intent of doing Evil deeds. Therefore, they would be evil, because they have an evil will.
The Coalition?
Well, they'd still be kind of grey, I think. The leadership is very arguably evil--they have an evil will (or, at the very best, a completely selfish will).
I don't argue about the leaders--it's mentioned time and again that they're evil.
Where I get into the fray is when people want to make claims about the average CS soldier or citizen being evil just because they're a willing part of a nation that does evil (which is to say, part of a nation).
Anyway, with a Kantian viewpoint, the alignment of the CS would depend on whether you were judging the nation as a whole by the will of the leadership, the will of the people, or some combination of the two.

[Killer Cyborg]

also, this may sound somewhat callous, but... thousands of soldiers dying in a year to attacks? that's peanuts to the CS. that's probably somewhere between 0.1% and 0.5% of their troops. they probably lose more people to food poisoning and accounting errors than that.

Numbers-wise, you are correct.
Emotions-wise, you are also correct; that does sound callous.
Again, look at how any real-world nation would handle the loss of thousands of soldiers per year. Even if they had plenty more soldiers, it's not about percentages--it's about your nation's brave men and women being killed by the enemy.

[Killer Cyborg]

The CS is the regime or the policies and people that make them, it is not every single person in the nation.

That's one possible interpretation of the term.
And it's a good one.
But it's neither official nor universal that I know of.

Personally, I like it.

[Blue_Lion]

(I do not buy the idea that every one is potential threat and fair target. A person through actions, or presence of a weapon present a threat to be considered an armed foe. So any one participating in razing/killing a village or ordering one would have to be miscreant or diabolic. (I might let a charter without world experience could be acting out of ignorance believing propaganda get a pass the first time but after the first time you would know they are not a threat.)

Was Ripley committing an Evil act in Aliens, when she slaughtered all the unhatched xenomorph eggs?

Here is one of the places where the phrase "the CS" is misleading.
Members of the CS have killed an entire town (going with your claim here).
The CS as a whole has not killed an entire town.

The same is true of most modern nations: groups of their soldiers may have (in accordance with or in violation of specific orders) committed any number of heinous acts, including destroying an entire town or village.
But does that in the real-world mean that the entire nation--or the nation in general--is Evil, based on the actions of their soldiers?

(FYI, last time I brought this subject up, I was smacked down by the mods for bringing real-world politics into things, so let's avoid any specific examples of real-world cases)

I should point out that the CS not misleading as you claim. The CS is the regime or the policies and people that make them, it is not every single person in the nation.

During the final siege SoT the CS military launched a scorched earth campaign where they slowly approached Tolkeen destroying all towns and killing every one in them. This as I understand it was under orders from the high command an official action by the CS military. The military of a nation represents the nation as a whole so an official operation of that military is an official action of the nation. So when the military ordered the destruction of a town including women and children that means the nation they represented is accountable for the action.

The statement killercyborg posted makes it sound like the CS as a whole is not responsible for the actions of their military. Now then if the people that ordered/done such actions where punished for it then the CS as a whole would have rejected the action. Not punishing them means the actions represent the overall nations policy.(Yes nearly every nation at one time has done actions that would be evil. However now we see nations that want to be good punish soldiers for such actions, and avoid making such actions official policy.)

That does not mean that every one or even most of the people in the nations are evil, just that the nation regime itself would be evil. Hitler's Nazi Germany was evil but most the people in Germany where not evil. (Note: When I talk about the CS I talk about the national regime, Ie the policies and the people making them not every single person in the CS. Many of the people making policies are stated as evil.)

two things again! one, I asked something similar to the ripley and aliens question 4 times before I got a reply of "it doesn't matter" (actually gonna have to go see if they ever replied to my pointing out that them saying that just invalidated their entire argument)

and two, that's actually not the thing I've been arguing this entire thread, it has been confirmed without a doubt that the CS states are by book evil aligned as a country (its in canon and written, and the original point of this thread) but the argument that has continued has basically been does the CS soldiers actions vs D-Bees count as an act of war vs "evil" from their point of view and as such they maintain personal alignments other than evil (such as a scrupulous coalition captain and his good aligned subordinates)? Some people are saying that essentially by being a part of the CS military your basically gonna take a alignment shift to evil and that's that. Which is not the case, though i'd certainly believe that the higher you go the more evil you'd find i'd consider that an effect of the dehumanizing effects of war, corruption or they're just evil (not everyone is a product of their environment). But there is nothing to prevent a scrupulous aligned character from raining hell and exterminating entire villages of D-bees if he considers them evil monsters that can't be saved. And that is a view point that is entirely reasonable and understandable for a member of the coalition states.

Heck a good aligned character could be even more dedicated to exterminating D-bees than an evil, the evil will be doing it for fun or power, the good guy will have a cause to protect and a true hero will give everything for their cause, if that everything means he has die to launch the attack that wipes out every last D-bee scum and monster in that demon city...then he will do so and be hailed as a hero in the CS...and a monster elsewhere, but that doesn't change his alignment.

I never addressed your question about a movie because it is not relevant to rifts and is just an attempt to throw a debate off with flame based on something outside Rifts moral compass.(Your question is an attempt to get others to do a partial conversion of some one elses IP, converting others IP is a violation of PB terms and conditions. So the question is an irrelevant trap.)

I never said by being in the CS you are going to be evil. I said that the CS military has taken evil actions and any one participating in or ordering them would have to be evil as only evil can attack kill unarmed foes. (other than the war with tolkeen razing villages was quite rare.) Only about 1 million CS troops participated in that war(we do not know the number that participated in razing villages but was likely the it was not the hole invasion force), many of them could have left service after it do to PTSD. Some members of the CS military where punished for not taking the evil action. That does not mean every one in the CS is evil just that the nation itself has taken official evil actions.

[Blue_Lion]

also, this may sound somewhat callous, but... thousands of soldiers dying in a year to attacks? that's peanuts to the CS. that's probably somewhere between 0.1% and 0.5% of their troops. they probably lose more people to food poisoning and accounting errors than that.

Numbers-wise, you are correct.
Emotions-wise, you are also correct; that does sound callous.
Again, look at how any real-world nation would handle the loss of thousands of soldiers per year. Even if they had plenty more soldiers, it's not about percentages--it's about your nation's brave men and women being killed by the enemy.

Is it the CS citizens that are dying or the drags they scoop out of the burbs by the 10s of thousands?
I would think the CS high command would tend to assign people with connections inside the city state safer assignments while the missions with higher casualty risk are the drags from the burbs. Send a few thousand families in chi town their kids home dead some one might speak out, kill a few thousand burbs trash to save those who matter and no one would care.

[Killer Cyborg]

also, this may sound somewhat callous, but... thousands of soldiers dying in a year to attacks? that's peanuts to the CS. that's probably somewhere between 0.1% and 0.5% of their troops. they probably lose more people to food poisoning and accounting errors than that.

Numbers-wise, you are correct.
Emotions-wise, you are also correct; that does sound callous.
Again, look at how any real-world nation would handle the loss of thousands of soldiers per year. Even if they had plenty more soldiers, it's not about percentages--it's about your nation's brave men and women being killed by the enemy.

Is it the CS citizens that are dying or the drags they scoop out of the burbs by the 10s of thousands?\
I would think the CS high command would tend to assign people with connections inside the city state safer assignments while the missions with higher casualty risk are the drags from the burbs. Send a few thousand families in chi town their kids home dead some one might speak out, kill a few thousand burbs trash to save those who matter and no one would care.

People in the Burbs still might have friends and family inside the cities, or elsewhere.
Regardless, it's official that the majority of the CS population have "felt the scorch" of magic. So whatever answer we want to make up, it should be one that works in accordance with that piece of canon, instead of one that conflicts with canon.

[Shark_Force]

Did Frank Herbert not have a "damn clue" about Arrakis?

mysterious voice: "that's right"

well, if you choose not to even try to find out if what you're doing is morally right, no, you're not good or anywhere near it. if your decision is to just murder things and ask questions never, then that's not going to be anywhere near good either.

What makes you think the CS never tries to find out? Shoot first policy isn't necessarily always-on, but rather in situations where you don't overwhelmingly control the battlefield.

If you have dozens of Psi-Stalkers who can all confirm the human toddler walking toward you isn't radiating magic/psi, dozens of Zappers who can tell you he doesn't have a fusion block hidden on him, dozens of sensitives whose Sixth Sense isn't bleeping, then I see no reason to think the CS would kill the toddler.

But hey, without those precautions, better safe than sorry.

if you're unwilling to make sacrifices, potentially including risking some level of personal harm, then no, you aren't good.

This is completely inapplicable to the CS considering their very high level of casualties even with such conservative precautions.

You want them to risk even more personal harm? They'd lose, and then far more harm would come to far more people.

i consider the statements, canon or not, that almost everyone has personally suffered at the hands of magic users, and that the most heavily armed largest military in north america suffers major losses on a regular basis, to be a load of bull written by people who don't have a damn clue what they're writing about in those cases.

Well let's look at what was posted earlier here by dreicunan:

I guess Kevin S was lying when he wrote that "the vast majority of Coalition citizens have experienced the painful scorch of magic first-hand" (Sedition, page 13, paragraph 1, which is describing the state of things prior to the Siege of Tolkeen)

This is true, but it does go on to elaborate further on:

Virtually every citizen of the Coalition States has lost a loved one or suffered in some way by magic, or knows someone who has.

So we have two groups, the "vast majority" (VM) and the "virtually every" (VE). The VM have "experienced the painful scorch" which... is kinda vague. The VE "knows someone who has suffered in some way by magic" (you know yourself, and losing a loved one is suffering, so we can simplify that down).

So vast-majority experienced PAIN while virtually-every knows someone who SUFFERED.

Both are still pretty vague, you can feel pain and suffering in a lot of ways. So this is easy to accept.

Siembieda is the writer of Sedition, he presumably wrote the "Magic vs Technology" section this is a part of. I think Siembieda does have a clue what he's writing about... what he writes can't really be bull since what he writes defines the game.

unless magic users have literally got a goal of finding people they haven't personally caused suffering for, the former is ludicrously stupid, because there aren't a ton of magic users, most of them aren't wandering around looking for people to hurt, and the ones that are generally don't have "hurt people" as their primary goal, but rather they'll have some goal which has a side effect of hurting people.

Siembieda never said they were DIRECTLY harmed by magic, or targeted for harm, so indirect harm (pain and suffering) is a perfectly plausible explanation.

the latter is ludicrously stupid because officially the CS has no real organized opposition (there are organized forces that *could* oppose them, but none that actually do anything meaningful)

Forces do not need to oppose you or be organized to harm you. A randomly summoned Devilkin for example, may not oppose the CS, and may not organize with others, but they could still just randomly go around setting houses on fire and cause many people (CS Citizen or not) to suffer.

and millions of soldiers with millions of power armours, robot vehicles, presumably artillery, and who knows how many medium and long range missile launch sites, are not something you can kill massive numbers of without organized opposition.

Killing them isn't what it states, only that they felt pain or suffering. Also: people do spend time outside of armor, or know people who don't have MDC body armor.

or, alternately, maybe if we're talking about dog boys, which are frequently sent to deal with supernatural threats armed with a few vibro-blades and maybe some silver-plated knuckle spikes or something. they might actually suffer pretty heavy losses

We're not, pretty sure Dog Boys can't be Citizens.

tomorrow it feels good for the CS to be threatened by like a million demons primarily of varieties that have no ranged attacks whatsoever (and, to be honest, many of them barely even have any particularly interesting abilities beyond supernatural PS and MDC)

I actually think this is going to happen. DB10 (Hades) pg 64
*1 action to do a restrained bite, if 4D6 damage reduces at least 1 HP, can inflict Undeath, 14 or higher means 1-13 is a failure. That is 65% of the time for those without bonuses. If they made their save, you will know within 5 days (the fever passes) and can try biting them a second time. It takes 3-9 months (average 6) to turn someone once they fail.

There are no limits here. A single death demon which comes and bites 100 villagers will produce 100 greater demons in less than a year. They can Shadow Meld at will so it would be incredibly easy for them to sneak up on victims to do this. All of them can Dimensional Teleport at over 40% so they can rejoin their masters easily.

Page 65 mentions strict controls on how many there can be, but that could easily change if the war goes south.

So how many are there? well...

p129: 1,500 in Shek'Ra
p134: 2,500 in Glaciers
p139: 1,000 in Gamora
p158: 200 in Zaglore
p165: 300 in City of the Ancients
+ unknown amount in Bazal's tower

So that's at least 5,500 communities of mortals you can seed with these creatures and infect and get a huge increase in 6 months if you need to.

Much less time than it takes a minor demon to regenerate from being killed.

During the final siege SoT the CS military launched a scorched earth campaign where they slowly approached Tolkeen destroying all towns and killing every one in them.

Interesting. But how close to Tolkeen were they when this campaign began? I'm curious about the radius here so I can know whether Hogswaller made it out.

- no, it isn't better safe than sorry. here's a scenario: i give you a gun. there's a toddler across the street. i tell you that 9,999 times out of 10,000 (or probably even a lower rate), that baby is not a robot disgused as a baby that intends to murder someone. the other 1 out of 10,000 times, it is. is it better to shoot the baby just in case? personally, if i ever find a person who says *yes* to that question, i'd rather see that person get shot than the baby.

- what extremely high levels of casualties with such precautions? do we, in fact, have any solid numbers? and again, if they do somehow manage to suffer major casualties even with those kinds of numbers they must be the most incompetent morons to have ever disgraced the military by being in it. US soldiers, in situations where similarly anyone could be a threat while looking completely innocent and being restricted in many ways that CS soldiers aren't, don't suffer major losses (again, this may sound callous, but no... the losses the US military suffered in afghanistan were not major losses in terms of numbers dead. the US could have sustained those kinds of losses more or less indefinitely, if the people in the US felt it was worth it). furthermore, even if the psi-stalkers detect magic or psionics... ok? sure? what's your point? psionics could mean that they have the power to sense that you're about to murder them before they die, and in fact is vastly more likely to mean that than it is to mean that they can do anything to meaningfully harm you in the slightest. even if they have super psionics, probably close to half of those aren't particularly useful for hurting you either. same with magic. ok, so they have magic. could be TW nightvision goggles, or the ability to fly, or any number of other things which, practically speaking, are no threat to you at all. murdering anyone on sight unless you can definitively prove they are not a threat to you is repulsive and evil behaviour.

emotionally, how do people react to losing thousands of their own soldiers in a year? well, why don't you go study the american civil war. out of a much *smaller* number of people, both sides lost a much *larger* number of troops (not just percentage-wise either. the US lost more soldiers in most major battles on each side of the fighting during the civil war than the US lost in the entire time they were in afghanistan. or perhaps you might look at the first and second world wars, where, once again, had you come crying to them about losing a couple thousand in a year, they would have thought you were telling a joke... in incredibly poor taste, at that. yes, it's callous. but militarily, losing less than half a percent of your troops when you're engaging in combat on a regular basis is tiny. if you come out of a fight with those kinds of losses, it's barely even worth calling it a fight, because you must have just completely and utterly routed your enemies with them barely even taking a single shot by comparison, never mind over the course of a year.

- and no. the "vast majority" having felt the painful scorch of magic is still stupid, and we know it isn't talking about having people you care about harmed because that very next paragraph you quoted says that even more people know people who were harmed by magic. the larger group cannot be a subset of the smaller group. that isn't possible. and it still reads as complete bullcrap that somehow the vast majority (as in, a lot more than half) have suffered at the hands of magic users. how? are there door-to-door purveyors of magical suffering that travel around finding people who haven't suffered from magic and then inflicting suffering upon them or something? i mean, seriously, who is even causing this supposed suffering? even in places where magic users are common, most of them are doing things like running a shop or dealing with their guild's politics or something, so how are all of these people supposed to have suffered at the hands of magic? it is completely moronic. there just aren't enough mages traveling around causing suffering for that to sound remotely reasonable, unless those people are whining about the fact that when they tried to stone a traveling wizard to death, the wizard responded by trying to kill them or something, in which case, well, suck it up buttercup, it isn't the wizard's fault that you tried to murder them.

- indirect harm from what? did they stub their poor little toes on a chair that *must* have been made using magically conjured wood or something, because a natural piece of wood could never have made them stub their toe?

- if you are REMOTELY competent as a military, yes it does take some sort of organized opponent to inflict harm on a scale that will register when you have multiple millions of soldiers. you see, that quote was referring to the *military* forces of the CS dying in droves. not just people. the soldiers. you know, the ones who have some of the heaviest body armour in north america? the ones who are so well supplied that the regular grunts can ask for a suit of power armour and *actually* have a chance of getting it assigned to them for a mission? not just pilots or special forces, mind you, but regular front-line soldiers. if they're suffering significant losses from some random devilkin wandering around in the wilderness, that requires a special level of incompetence that i'm just not willing to assume. their training would have to be designed to make them worse in a fight rather than better to suffer significant losses from those kinds of things.

- practically speaking, the war is only going south if the demons are getting actually killed. in massive numbers. but in any event, 5,500 greater demons is still pretty much a joke. apparently, you have the same problem with numbers as kevin siembieda. 5,500 is a miniscule number. the notion that it would cause the CS military any genuine distress is laughable. the CS simply has vastly superior numbers. it isn't even close. it wasn't even close *before* they recruited an extra several million soldiers. the moment the CS finds out where to point their millions of soldiers, they just need to do the equivalent of an attack-move command in an RTS and the demons are going to be crushed, and the CS has millions of slave-soldiers that can tell them where to point. the demons aren't going to *have* 6-9 months to recruit more. those extra recruits just mean that they'll have an extra 5,500 greater demons to spend time coming up with excuses for why they got facerolled by a bunch of mortals.

[dreicunan]

also, this may sound somewhat callous, but... thousands of soldiers dying in a year to attacks? that's peanuts to the CS. that's probably somewhere between 0.1% and 0.5% of their troops. they probably lose more people to food poisoning and accounting errors than that.

Numbers-wise, you are correct.
Emotions-wise, you are also correct; that does sound callous.
Again, look at how any real-world nation would handle the loss of thousands of soldiers per year. Even if they had plenty more soldiers, it's not about percentages--it's about your nation's brave men and women being killed by the enemy.

Is it the CS citizens that are dying or the drags they scoop out of the burbs by the 10s of thousands?\
I would think the CS high command would tend to assign people with connections inside the city state safer assignments while the missions with higher casualty risk are the drags from the burbs. Send a few thousand families in chi town their kids home dead some one might speak out, kill a few thousand burbs trash to save those who matter and no one would care.

People in the Burbs still might have friends and family inside the cities, or elsewhere.
Regardless, it's official that the majority of the CS population have "felt the scorch" of magic. So whatever answer we want to make up, it should be one that works in accordance with that piece of canon, instead of one that conflicts with canon.

Just a quick clarification that the quote for feeling the scorch is specific to CS citizens, so residents of the Burbs would only count if they were also CS citizens who for some reason decided to live there instead of in one of the fortress cities.

[Axelmania]

Shark your 1:10,000 odds simply do not match the reality. More than likely 1 in 2 toddlers you meet on the road to is a magical being out to kill you.

Getting back to original topic, I think CJ gave the CS a rough classification that KS did not agree with.

Looking at the Kreeghor and the Splugorth how can we possibly conflate either with the CS? They are empires ruler by alien intelligences who conquer alien planets and enslave their native inhabitants. The CS are simply trying to reclaim a portion of their home planet and repel invaders.

[Blue_Lion]

Shark your 1:10,000 odds simply do not match the reality. More than likely 1 in 2 toddlers you meet on the road to is a magical being out to kill you.

Getting back to original topic, I think CJ gave the CS a rough classification that KS did not agree with.

Looking at the Kreeghor and the Splugorth how can we possibly conflate either with the CS? They are empires ruler by alien intelligences who conquer alien planets and enslave their native inhabitants. The CS are simply trying to reclaim a portion of their home planet and repel invaders.

I call utter BS and this is an example of blaming the victim for your evil in your logic. The CS has the ability to detect magical beast even when they are in disguise. They have a whole unit dedicated to it and in SoT dog boys where stationed in every grunt unit for that very reason. It also claims that there where no almost no human families living in the area you are destroying.

This apologist logic is like saying well every one can be a terrorist so lets shoot every one on sight.

Good confirms the threat evil makes up an accuse and blames it on their victims.

Shooting an unarmed child taking no threating actions on sight is evil, it is not just being safe it is indiscriminate killing of unarmed foes an evil act.

(I would say your 1 in to odds does not match reality it requires that their is a massive conspiracy and lack normal people. It also means that unless every one has mdc they would all be dead, as the monsters would eat all the normal people if 1 in 2 toddlers was a monster that wants to kill people. Rifts is dangerous but it is not that dangerous.)

[Blue_Lion]

also, this may sound somewhat callous, but... thousands of soldiers dying in a year to attacks? that's peanuts to the CS. that's probably somewhere between 0.1% and 0.5% of their troops. they probably lose more people to food poisoning and accounting errors than that.

Numbers-wise, you are correct.
Emotions-wise, you are also correct; that does sound callous.
Again, look at how any real-world nation would handle the loss of thousands of soldiers per year. Even if they had plenty more soldiers, it's not about percentages--it's about your nation's brave men and women being killed by the enemy.

Is it the CS citizens that are dying or the drags they scoop out of the burbs by the 10s of thousands?\
I would think the CS high command would tend to assign people with connections inside the city state safer assignments while the missions with higher casualty risk are the drags from the burbs. Send a few thousand families in chi town their kids home dead some one might speak out, kill a few thousand burbs trash to save those who matter and no one would care.

People in the Burbs still might have friends and family inside the cities, or elsewhere.
Regardless, it's official that the majority of the CS population have "felt the scorch" of magic. So whatever answer we want to make up, it should be one that works in accordance with that piece of canon, instead of one that conflicts with canon.

The reason I assume most the ones lost are from the burbs, is partially do to ability of the population to maintain the losses. The CS has what about 10 million people loosing a few thousand a year would be hard to maintain. They likely loose more in major actions like war on tolkeen, war with Free Quebec ext. (and CS references that show a dedicated effort to enlist from the burbs.)

[Killer Cyborg]

also, this may sound somewhat callous, but... thousands of soldiers dying in a year to attacks? that's peanuts to the CS. that's probably somewhere between 0.1% and 0.5% of their troops. they probably lose more people to food poisoning and accounting errors than that.

Numbers-wise, you are correct.
Emotions-wise, you are also correct; that does sound callous.
Again, look at how any real-world nation would handle the loss of thousands of soldiers per year. Even if they had plenty more soldiers, it's not about percentages--it's about your nation's brave men and women being killed by the enemy.

Is it the CS citizens that are dying or the drags they scoop out of the burbs by the 10s of thousands?\
I would think the CS high command would tend to assign people with connections inside the city state safer assignments while the missions with higher casualty risk are the drags from the burbs. Send a few thousand families in chi town their kids home dead some one might speak out, kill a few thousand burbs trash to save those who matter and no one would care.

People in the Burbs still might have friends and family inside the cities, or elsewhere.
Regardless, it's official that the majority of the CS population have "felt the scorch" of magic. So whatever answer we want to make up, it should be one that works in accordance with that piece of canon, instead of one that conflicts with canon.

The reason I assume most the ones lost are from the burbs, is partially do to ability of the population to maintain the losses. The CS has what about 10 million people loosing a few thousand a year would be hard to maintain. They likely loose more in major actions like war on tolkeen, war with Free Quebec ext. (and CS references that show a dedicated effort to enlist from the burbs.)

I'd assume that they lose soldiers from their borders, troops that they send outside of their borders, troops that they send to dangerous areas like Old Chicago, troops in the Burbs, troops in the lower levels of Chi-Town, troops in other dangerous areas within their borders, and so forth.
I don't assume that they--as a rule--put together many units composed entirely or primarily of Burbites, outside of cases like Tolkeen where the majority of their troops are new recruits sent into a warzone.
We don't know the CS' current population.
We don't know how quickly this population grows from new citizens being accepted; the wait time in the Burbs is pretty long and slow, but that's not the only path to citizenship.

Again, though, our personal or collective suppositions can't negate a canon statement.

[Killer Cyborg]

if you are REMOTELY competent as a military, yes it does take some sort of organized opponent to inflict harm on a scale that will register when you have multiple millions of soldiers. you see, that quote was referring to the *military* forces of the CS dying in droves. not just people. the soldiers. you know, the ones who have some of the heaviest body armour in north america? the ones who are so well supplied that the regular grunts can ask for a suit of power armour and *actually* have a chance of getting it assigned to them for a mission? not just pilots or special forces, mind you, but regular front-line soldiers. if they're suffering significant losses from some random devilkin wandering around in the wilderness, that requires a special level of incompetence that i'm just not willing to assume. their training would have to be designed to make them worse in a fight rather than better to suffer significant losses from those kinds of things.

If "some random devilkin wandering around in the wilderness" is the most threatening non-military thing that you know of in the world of Rifts, all I can do is to suggest that you review the books some more.
Read up on what kind of monsters and dangers are out there.
Read up on all the threads where people talk about how easy it is (or how easy people think it is) for mages to kill CS soldiers.
Read up on ley line storms and other dangerous magical events.
Read up on CS unit size, and what they do.
Ask around, and see if you can find any Rifts players who have ever run adventures where they managed to kill CS soldiers, and find out how tough it was for them to do so. Ask around to get estimates on how many CS soldiers they kill in an average adventure or campaign.

[Shark_Force]

i don't consider PCs killing CS soldiers to be in any way representative of anything, because the PCs are a rather rare combination of factors including "fate" (the DM) frequently being kind to them and often overlooking (or forgetting) consequences that should happen as well as providing opportunities where they may not normally be found, and a drastically reduced survival instinct (largely caused by the relatively low personal stake the PCs have). a typical wilderness scout would consider you an idiot if you proposed just ambushing CS soldiers without a really good reason, because a typical wilderness scout doesn't consider a 90% or even 95% survival rate to be good enough to opt into when there are perfectly good 99.999999% survival rate activities to do instead.

so sure, PC groups kill CS soldiers fairly often. NPC mages? yeah, they're mostly busy with other things. particularly pre-SoT (after SoT, we know there are tolkeen revenge squads. on the other hand, those are caused primarily by the CS marching into tolkeen and murdering everyone they could, so pretty much caused by their own decisions, and not exactly something that can be blamed on magic so much as it can be blamed on them being a bunch of murderers). but apart from that, most of them are busy doing other things; running shops,

"some random devilkin wandering around in the wilderness" was not *my* scenario, so don't come whining to me about it. it was someone else's explanation for how the CS soldiers were dying in droves when i said that CS soldiers dying in droves was stupid and nonsensical. if you think the notion of random devilkin being the cause of CS soldiers dying in any significant numbers, well, join the club, i'm apparently a founding member.

i *have* read up on what kind of monsters and dangers are out there. the kind that are going to present a meaningful threat to the CS are very rare. by which i pretty much mean, they are called the xiticix, and the CS hasn't really interacted with them in any major way yet such that it might cause them major casualties.

also, i find it hard to blame *magic* for the deaths of your soldiers that you send out in murder squads to slaughter everything in sight. again, if this is the source of the typical CS citizen's hatred for magic is that they blame magic, d-bees, etc for not letting CS soldiers murder them without putting up a fight, then again, this is not something showing how good the CS really are. if you go out to murder someone and they fight back, and you feel that *they* have committed some sort of injustice against *you*, then no you aren't even remotely trying to ask yourself any questions about right or wrong, and you have become extremely comfortable with murder to the point where you think it is *wrong* for other people to resist being murdered. so, once again... evil. just like it would be if almost nobody was doing it. the fact that lots of people are doing it (and have done it in the past) does not somehow change it to be not evil.

[Killer Cyborg]

i don't consider PCs killing CS soldiers to be in any way representative of anything, because the PCs are a rather rare combination of factors including "fate" (the DM) frequently being kind to them and often overlooking (or forgetting) consequences that should happen as well as providing opportunities where they may not normally be found, and a drastically reduced survival instinct (largely caused by the relatively low personal stake the PCs have). a typical wilderness scout would consider you an idiot if you proposed just ambushing CS soldiers without a really good reason, because a typical wilderness scout doesn't consider a 90% or even 95% survival rate to be good enough to opt into when there are perfectly good 99.999999% survival rate activities to do instead.

Fate isn't only kind to PCs.

NPC mages? yeah, they're mostly busy with other things.

Source?

"some random devilkin wandering around in the wilderness" was not *my* scenario

Huh.
In that case, my bad.

i *have* read up on what kind of monsters and dangers are out there. the kind that are going to present a meaningful threat to the CS are very rare. by which i pretty much mean, they are called the xiticix, and the CS hasn't really interacted with them in any major way yet such that it might cause them major casualties.

We don't know how often the CS clashes with the xiticix.
We do know (XI 141) that they have 1400-2200 field troops operating in and around the Hivelands at any given time.
We also know that random encounters happen as often as every 1d4 hours in Xiticix territory (RAB 14)
I don't find it implausible that they're losing troops to the Xiticix.

But I was thinking more about ambushes by shapeshifters (including dragons), mind-controllers, demons, and other critters that kill more by stealth rather than direct firefights.

also, i find it hard to blame *magic* for the deaths of your soldiers that you send out in murder squads to slaughter everything in sight.

Well, the CS would find it hard to blame them for the deaths of mages & magic critters, after the CS has suffered attacks from magic.
Flip sides of the same coin.

again, if this is the source of the typical CS citizen's hatred for magic is that they blame magic, d-bees, etc for not letting CS soldiers murder them without putting up a fight, then again, this is not something showing how good the CS really are. if you go out to murder someone and they fight back, and you feel that *they* have committed some sort of injustice against *you*, then no you aren't even remotely trying to ask yourself any questions about right or wrong, and you have become extremely comfortable with murder to the point where you think it is *wrong* for other people to resist being murdered. so, once again... evil. just like it would be if almost nobody was doing it. the fact that lots of people are doing it (and have done it in the past) does not somehow change it to be not evil.

I'm sure the CS feels the same way, and consequently they keep fighting back against the forces trying to kill them.

[Shark_Force]

sure, you *can* blame almost anything on whoever you want. but if you want to avoid being a horrible evil person by using your own murderous actions as an excuse to commit more murderous actions, then you can't really complain that while you were in someone else's home murdering them they tried to defend themselves.

and NPCs that "fate" (or, as i pointed out i actually meant, the GM) favours are generally called mary sues. they don't generally exist in the default setting. and since we're not all in a shared universe where the stuff that happens in my game is canon for your game, they're still a pretty minor and mostly irrelevant impact, because they still represent a tiny number.

for everyone else, well, in my experience fate tends to favour people who don't make stupid decisions on a regular basis. for example, people who pick deadly fights just because there's a fight to be had have a much higher tendency to *not* be favoured by fate than they do to be favoured by fate.

1400-2200 troops (who are not attempting to bring on any sort of general war, because they don't want to make the xiticix recognize them as a particularly dangerous enemy) are peanuts to the CS. even if they suffered 100% casualties per year (which i doubt, if they had that kind of loss rate they probably would rethink how they do things. or at the very least, use skelebots instead of dead boys), that would be peanuts. again, i get that's a very callous attitude, but the simple fact is, if death rates around half a percent or less per year are an insurmountable problem for you, then you probably shouldn't be in a military that is ever remotely likely to be used. it is certainly unfortunate for those who are directly affected, but it is an unfortunate fact that when you send a soldier to do their job, death is a very real possibility. just like smoke inhalation is an unfortunate but known risk associated with being a firefighter, for example. you certainly don't celebrate when it happens, but that risk is part of the job.

[Killer Cyborg]

sure, you *can* blame almost anything on whoever you want. but if you want to avoid being a horrible evil person by using your own murderous actions as an excuse to commit more murderous actions, then you can't really complain that while you were in someone else's home murdering them they tried to defend themselves.

You talking about the CS, or about magical forces here?
I've lost track.

and NPCs that "fate" (or, as i pointed out i actually meant, the GM) favours are generally called mary sues.

That's not what a Mary Sue is.

they don't generally exist in the default setting. and since we're not all in a shared universe where the stuff that happens in my game is canon for your game, they're still a pretty minor and mostly irrelevant impact, because they still represent a tiny number.

Unless the PCs are Mary Sues, then they're not incredible statistical outliers. They're not the only ones to come up with certain kinds of attacks, and not the only ones who attack.
In any game-world that isn't a 2d cutout, there are presumed NPCs offscreen all the time, doing things on their own. Having their own adventures, and that includes tangling with the CS.

1400-2200 troops (who are not attempting to bring on any sort of general war, because they don't want to make the xiticix recognize them as a particularly dangerous enemy) are peanuts to the CS.

Right.
The issues whether the CS is losing any of those peanuts.
Do you see any reason to believe that they're not?

[Axelmania]

Blue Lion you are right about dog boys and psi hounds being able to tell which kids aren't shapechangers...

But did you miss where I brought up how Tolkeen prioritizes killing the hounds/stalkers?

Killing kids is probably only happening with panicked squads after their sensitive are sniped.

Any evidence of squads with a hound or stalker engaging in this?

[Shark_Force]

when you have 3 million soldiers, a couple thousand are not significant losses. when you have dramatically more than that, even more so. it's terrible for the people who are directly involved, but enough to be a significant problem for the CS? no. enough to make the majority of CS citizens to have personally suffered at the hands of magic? not even close. a lot of small numbers will eventually add up, but the thing is, there needs to be a *really* ridiculous amount of small numbers before they add up to the vast majority having suffered. like, crazy stupid large amounts. particuarly when we're talking citizens... as in the people who probably live inside the fortress cities in most cases. it's just ridiculous.

and yes. there are plenty of NPCs doing other stuff in the world. the great majority of them, whether they're magic users or not, are busy not getting into random fights that could get them killed. the ones that aren't avoiding those potentially dangerous confrontations will tend to die off, and no, that isn't nearly as true for PCs as it should be in most peoples' games.

[Killer Cyborg]

when you have 3 million soldiers, a couple thousand are not significant losses.

It's not about percentage of total losses. It's about how many people are affected negatively by magic.
Lose a couple thousand troops, who each know only 100 people, that's a couple hundred thousand people who are affected by the deaths.
Significantly wound a couple thousand more troops, who each know only 100 people, and that's a couple hundred thousand more people affected.
Starts adding up really quick, especially if its' something that happens year after year.

particuarly when we're talking citizens... as in the people who probably live inside the fortress cities in most cases.

When your guesswork conflicts with canon, guess which one wins?

and yes. there are plenty of NPCs doing other stuff in the world. the great majority of them, whether they're magic users or not, are busy not getting into random fights that could get them killed. the ones that aren't avoiding those potentially dangerous confrontations will tend to die off, and no, that isn't nearly as true for PCs as it should be in most peoples' games.

When you're as vast as the CS, and as confrontational, you don't always get to avoid those potentially dangerous confrontations.
So yeah... they tend to die off here or there, apparently in droves.

[dreicunan]

when you have 3 million soldiers, a couple thousand are not significant losses. when you have dramatically more than that, even more so. it's terrible for the people who are directly involved, but enough to be a significant problem for the CS? no. enough to make the majority of CS citizens to have personally suffered at the hands of magic? not even close. a lot of small numbers will eventually add up, but the thing is, there needs to be a *really* ridiculous amount of small numbers before they add up to the vast majority having suffered. like, crazy stupid large amounts. particuarly when we're talking citizens... as in the people who probably live inside the fortress cities in most cases. it's just ridiculous.

and yes. there are plenty of NPCs doing other stuff in the world. the great majority of them, whether they're magic users or not, are busy not getting into random fights that could get them killed. the ones that aren't avoiding those potentially dangerous confrontations will tend to die off, and no, that isn't nearly as true for PCs as it should be in most peoples' games.

Someone dying is not the only way for a CS citizen to suffer due to magic.

[Shark_Force]

there's an entirely separate statistic for knowing people who were harmed by magic (right next to the claim that the vast majority have been harmed. how have the vast majority been harmed, meaning well over 50%, while only almost everyone knows one of those people? well, like i said, kevin isn't very good with concepts relating to numbers in my experience. or i suppose maybe there's one coalition citizen somewhere who somehow has managed to avoid knowing any of the other citizens or something). which means we must presume the vast majority have *personally* been harmed by magic. so no, it isn't one person who knows hundreds, and that one person got killed and now the hundreds are all harmed, that just counts as one person.

again, the claim is just laughably absurd.

[Killer Cyborg]

there's an entirely separate statistic for knowing people who were harmed by magic

Okay.
What is it?

[Alrik Vas]

again, the claim is just laughably absurd.

So you assert that the number of people adversely affected by magic (or even simply the supernatural) cannot be as high as the author claims?

Before I respond further, I just want that as clear as possible.

[boring7]

again, the claim is just laughably absurd.

So you assert that the number of people adversely affected by magic (or even simply the supernatural) cannot be as high as the author claims?

Before I respond further, I just want that as clear as possible.

Might be a more general, "the numbers don't make any sense and are contradictory." I still love that when we added up all the percentages of the population of the City of Brass it made ~300%.

[Alrik Vas]

Well, I'm just going with what I know here, in any case.

I live in a city with a little less than 1.5 million population. It's a military city, a marine corps air station, a very large naval base, military hospitals, another marine base further north, an air force instillation about 90 mins away by car, a national guard armory, an army base only a little bit further than the Air Force base, but in a different direction.

My point is there is a lot of military in this town, and I can't say I know anyone who doesn't know, work with, or is a friend or family related to someone in the service. Two of my immediate family were navy, an uncle was navy, my sister's husband was army. All of them served during war, I have friends who were injured badly, some i never got to see again.

We all know these people where I live.

The CS has a much, much, much bigger military than the US, and astoundingly so when you consider the population split. With the amount of casualties that came from the campaign against the FoM during Old Joe's days, and then later against Tolkeen, experience tells me it's impossible to not harbor negative feelings toward magic, magic users, and supernatural creatures if you were raised in the CS. And i would believe entirely that reason is because the effects were felt by the overwhelming majority, due to relations with soldiers. You don't even have to be a rural citizen to be attacked personally, anyway.

[The Beast]

again, the claim is just laughably absurd.

So you assert that the number of people adversely affected by magic (or even simply the supernatural) cannot be as high as the author claims?

Before I respond further, I just want that as clear as possible.

Might be a more general, "the numbers don't make any sense and are contradictory." I still love that when we added up all the percentages of the population of the City of Brass it made ~300%.

How did you get the 300%?

[Shark_Force]

there's an entirely separate statistic for knowing people who were harmed by magic

Okay.
What is it?

it's part of the exact same quote, immediately following the statement about people harmed by magic, already mentioned several times in this thread. if you weren't paying attention earlier, you feel free to look it up... i don't feel like doing your reading for you when it's already been found and posted multiple times right here.

@ alrik: sure. most people knowing someone who's had a bad time with magic (particularly if you include "they tried to fight back when i was murdering them" situations) is potentially reasonable, if the military is in fact losing a significant portion of their troops (but remember, it isn't just "knows someone in the military", it's "knows someone who has personally suffered", which seems pretty implausible to me given the CS has no enemies that are actually doing anything and possess the ability to inflict losses to a large enough portion of the CS military. but that's not the claim. the claim is that the vast majority have *personally* suffered, followed by a separate statement that almost everybody knows someone who has suffered. as in, more people know someone who has suffered than there are people who have suffered, so having suffered from magic cannot possibly mean knowing someone who has.

[Axelmania]

when you have 3 million soldiers, a couple thousand are not significant losses. when you have dramatically more than that, even more so. it's terrible for the people who are directly involved, but enough to be a significant problem for the CS? no. enough to make the majority of CS citizens to have personally suffered at the hands of magic? not even close.

lot of small numbers will eventually add up, but the thing is, there needs to be a *really* ridiculous amount of small numbers before they add up to the vast majority having suffered. like, crazy stupid large amounts. particuarly when we're talking citizens... as in the people who probably live inside the fortress cities in most cases.

Reminder of quotes from Sedition 13..

the vast majority of Coalition citizens have experienced the painful scorch of magic first-hand
..
Virtually every citizen of the Coalition States has lost a loved one or suffered in some way by magic, or knows someone who has.

This is the canon. You must use your imagination to think of the most plausible way it could be true.

First hand experience of the painful scorch of magic may simply mean you have seen with your own eyes someone harmed by magic.

This doesn't mean a mage does this directly. There are magic items which non mages can use.

There.are hundreds of necromancers in Dunscon. Mystic Russia introduced a necro spell which makes a magic weapon that can shoot fireballs. There is no permanent cost to making them and anyone can use them. They do not require gems like TW devices nor do you need to be psychic to use thrm.

There is also the talisman spell which could make a simple coin a concealed fireball launcher. Or the super long duration Fire Globe.

These are not as hard to sneak in as people may think if you accept the possibility that no: psi bounds and psi stalkers cannot tell the difference between magic and psi smells via their free ability. They need to had the sense magic or sense psi powers and expend ISP to make the distinction.

I know if I was a selfish mage who knew either spell and short on cash that I would be selling stuff like that.

Mages can also lay defensive Wards which attack people who come near. It only takes a minority of evil mages to lay those about for the lulz.

Being killed by roaming Boschala summoned by a shifter would also qualify as suffering from magic. In theory any harm suffered from anything from the Rifts could be perceived as suffering from magic.

[Blue_Lion]

Blue Lion you are right about dog boys and psi hounds being able to tell which kids aren't shapechangers...

But did you miss where I brought up how Tolkeen prioritizes killing the hounds/stalkers?

Killing kids is probably only happening with panicked squads after their sensitive are sniped.

Any evidence of squads with a hound or stalker engaging in this?

The evil of one does not justify the evil of another. If you loose the ability to tell hidden hostiles using gurilla tactics while on patrol good would either A- avoid close contact with people they see but where unsure of, or B- return to camp and wait for a replacement.

And no killing kids did not only happen when CS lost dog boys, it happened as matter of SoP during the final siege. The CS raised towns killing every one in side in Tolkeens territory. The CS bombed refugee camps (people that had fled to what they thought was safety from the CS razing their towns) as part of their assault on Tolkeen.

Note: even without the ability to detect hidden things like dragon, being safe would be keeping your distance from strangers. (Same thing modern military uses to keep safe from insurgents.) Even if a dragon was to attack by surprise it will not kill even 1 dead boy before the whole squad could react.

A good person in PB system would never attack a foe they could not confirm was armed or an threat do to naturally being armed(like dragons). A evil person would make excuses like you have been doing for the CS doing.

[Nightmartree]

there's an entirely separate statistic for knowing people who were harmed by magic

Okay.
What is it?

it's part of the exact same quote, immediately following the statement about people harmed by magic, already mentioned several times in this thread. if you weren't paying attention earlier, you feel free to look it up... i don't feel like doing your reading for you when it's already been found and posted multiple times right here.

@ alrik: sure. most people knowing someone who's had a bad time with magic (particularly if you include "they tried to fight back when i was murdering them" situations) is potentially reasonable, if the military is in fact losing a significant portion of their troops (but remember, it isn't just "knows someone in the military", it's "knows someone who has personally suffered", which seems pretty implausible to me given the CS has no enemies that are actually doing anything and possess the ability to inflict losses to a large enough portion of the CS military. but that's not the claim. the claim is that the vast majority have *personally* suffered, followed by a separate statement that almost everybody knows someone who has suffered. as in, more people know someone who has suffered than there are people who have suffered, so having suffered from magic cannot possibly mean knowing someone who has.

i'd written up this big thing I was gonna say but I somehow managed to delete it all so, *sigh* you get the summary (turned into we need the spell Detect Incoming Missile, and an expansion of why the CS isn't invaded by ravening hordes but can still lose hundreds of people)

but basically I think your underestimating the damage that magic users, psychics and supernatural monster can inflict if they get inside a place the CS is reluctant or can't bring to bear its giant robots and power armor. And i'm pretty sure that by NOT deploying armies for the CS to fight head on they're actually doing more harm in the long term, the CS's have the biggest and best tech based army in north America, this means that if they actually do get to come to grips with an enemy force of magic they have better maneuverability in most cases, more fire power, and more range. Magic can do some big things, and some things tech can't but a major army of magic wielders, demons and friends are going to take a pounding the moment a barrage of long and medium range missiles say hello, heck any missile tends to outrange most magic, and I only know of 1 magic spell that can take an infinite amount of MDC, and that for an army on the move would require multiple mages working together and time to cast it, which I have yet to find the spell "Detect incoming missile" so that would likely mean death by artillery barrage for anything short of dragons, gods, greater demons and similar powerhouses.

They can kill hundreds if they get an elemental or greater demon into a coalition city (remember most people inside consider it "safe" no MD armors needed) or wipe out patrols, outposts, and isolated garrisons by supporting mercs and lone mages/psychics on the edge or inside of CS territory but a straight up war is likely to go worse for the magic users if they go on the offensive. Magic however has the edge in certain situations and can be brought to bear relatively easily on softer targets. The dogboys and stalkers are there to stop it, but they aren't infallible, all it takes is one suicidal shifter some sleep time gas and a knife and suddenly you have a portal to hell in a cafeteria,he doesn't even need his own PPE, just to understand and be able to channel the spell, he has plenty of sacrifices handy.

and this was originally gonna be a 2 or 3 sentence summary, I swear, honest

[Killer Cyborg]

when you have 3 million soldiers, a couple thousand are not significant losses. when you have dramatically more than that, even more so. it's terrible for the people who are directly involved, but enough to be a significant problem for the CS? no. enough to make the majority of CS citizens to have personally suffered at the hands of magic? not even close.

lot of small numbers will eventually add up, but the thing is, there needs to be a *really* ridiculous amount of small numbers before they add up to the vast majority having suffered. like, crazy stupid large amounts. particuarly when we're talking citizens... as in the people who probably live inside the fortress cities in most cases.

Reminder of quotes from Sedition 13..

the vast majority of Coalition citizens have experienced the painful scorch of magic first-hand
..
Virtually every citizen of the Coalition States has lost a loved one or suffered in some way by magic, or knows someone who has.

I can't find my copy of the book, so I can't check, but just quoted like that it looks like an expansion on the first part.

This is the canon. You must use your imagination to think of the most plausible way it could be true.

Bingo.

[Axelmania]

Blue Lion proof that human kids were killed when psi hounds or stalkers were present to vet them?

Do not agree it is evil to kill when you do not know. The CS would lose if they did that. Heck, watch The Last Ship's new season. You don't even need to use magic. Fusion Block in a backpack.

CS were ambushed in ground they already took. Using child suicide bombers could be part of how Tolkeen accomplished this.

Unless you have overwhelming numbers and cover and control of an area it would be too difficult to secure these random wandering kids every anti-CS person seems to think exist.

At some point you gotta accept that the fault of the death of children is on KOT parents who keep them there instead of going somewhere safer.

[dreicunan]

@Shark_Force "vast majority" is a smaller relative set than "virtually everyone". I'm not sure why you think it is incongruent that the vast majority have personally while virtually everyone either has lost someone or suffered or knows someone who has either lost someone or suffered. The "vast majority set" would of course be included in the "virtually everyone" set, as would members of the minority set of citizens who have not experienced the painful scorch of magic firsthand but have lost someone, or who have not experienced either but know someone who has. There is nothing contradictory here.

[Shark_Force]

@Shark_Force "vast majority" is a smaller relative set than "virtually everyone". I'm not sure why you think it is incongruent that the vast majority have personally while virtually everyone either has lost someone or suffered or knows someone who has either lost someone or suffered. The "vast majority set" would of course be included in the "virtually everyone" set, as would members of the minority set of citizens who have not experienced the painful scorch of magic firsthand but have lost someone, or who have not experienced either but know someone who has. There is nothing contradictory here.

i don't think it's unusual that more people know someone who has experienced suffering as the result of magic than have personally suffered. that's exactly my point, though... the claim that the vast majority have suffered CANNOT include knowing people who suffered. therefore, the "vast majority" must have PERSONALLY experienced that suffering. the two cannot be equivalent, which is exactly what i've been saying the whole time.

[Killer Cyborg]

@Shark_Force "vast majority" is a smaller relative set than "virtually everyone". I'm not sure why you think it is incongruent that the vast majority have personally while virtually everyone either has lost someone or suffered or knows someone who has either lost someone or suffered. The "vast majority set" would of course be included in the "virtually everyone" set, as would members of the minority set of citizens who have not experienced the painful scorch of magic firsthand but have lost someone, or who have not experienced either but know someone who has. There is nothing contradictory here.

i don't think it's unusual that more people know someone who has experienced suffering as the result of magic than have personally suffered. that's exactly my point, though... the claim that the vast majority have suffered CANNOT include knowing people who suffered. therefore, the "vast majority" must have PERSONALLY experienced that suffering. the two cannot be equivalent, which is exactly what i've been saying the whole time.

If magic kills one of your friends or loved ones, then you have personally experienced suffering because of magic.

Edit:
Found my copy of CW: Sedition.
Here's what p. 12-13 has to say:

(End of the final paragraph on p. 12)
Anybody who uses magic, even if their intentions are good, is dabbling with an unnatural force that is unpredictable and more dangerous than juggling nuclear bombs. Therefore it goes to reason that those monsters who ignore this danger must be evil, self-serving monsters themselves, driven and corrupted by power and/or the supernatural forces that seem to be associated with magic.

(First paragraph on p. 13. Note that the bolded refers to the previous sentence, quoted above)
That's exactly how the CS sees magic, and it is a belief powered by an entrenched fear that permeates every level of society. This is not the result of a carefully executed propaganda campaign either, for while Emperor Prosek, his son, and other CS leaders have used the fear of magic and monsters to motivate and galvanize their people, the vast majority of Coalition citizens have felt the painful scorch of magic first-hand. The Great Cataclysm was caused by the unwitting release of magic energy. Since that day forward, humans have suffered from magic-wielding monsters, gods, demons, dragons, and aliens as well as their fellow humans. Virtually every citizen of the Coalition States has lost a loved one or suffered in some way by magic, or knows someone who has. Ever since the Dark Ages, people have suffered at the hands of practitioners of magic--some inhuman monsters, others mortal men and women who dared to call upon elemental forces and supernatural beings they could not control or who used the power of magic to become conquerors, invaders, criminals, avengers, and madmen.

Paragraphs are used to express complete thoughts, and this paragraph is no different from the norm.
The thought here is that the CS sees magic in the ways expressed in the previous paragraph for some fairly legitimate reasons: the majority of CS citizens (in fact, virtually every one of them) has suffered due to magic in some way, either by losing a loved one, by being more directly harmed, or by knowing somebody who has, due to a centuries-long pattern of magic-users causing trouble.

"The vast majority of Coalition citizens have felt the painful scorch of magic first-hand" is not contradicted by the text that follows it.
The text that follows it explains and expands on it.