(09-02-2018, 01:02 PM)Thunderer Wrote: There's a vast array of better ways to retake your tinkertoy-superweapon than manipulating those who have it to kill each other and thus give them a reason to actually use it against you.
The nomads did try a vast array of ways to take or destroy the DKV artifact (it was a DKV artifact not the nomad's artifact, and they never had it so the couldn't "retake" it):
They tracked down the thief who took it to Freeport 7, blew up Freeport 7, tracked it to Manhattan, messed with Lonigan's mind to extract information, killed all Freeport 7 survivors, outlawed artifact trade in liberty, chased it from Manhattan to Willard to Bretonia until they had no way of knowing where it was anymore, tried to kill off all scientists who might know about it.
Also, it wasn't really a weapon. It was a key to open the DKV hyperspace network, which had the "side effect" of messing up the nomad power source. Whether humans activated it with the intention of destroying nomads, did it to activate the network, or did it while playing around with it without knowing what they were doing makes no difference to nomads, the effect is the same. It was extremely dangerous to them either way.