XNA: Sinister motives? An expert analysis...

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February 17th, 830 A.S. | Bretonia's sinister motives? An expert analysis...

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Checked your inbox today? Your spam folder might contain the following message from apparently nothing less than the "Office of the Admiralty, Bretonian Armed Forces".

Message

Now, you'd probably dismiss this as spam, just like your trusty filter suggests. But what if we told you that this is serious? That this is an authentic message from the decorated pencil pushers of the Bretonian military?

You'd be correct to question that. Not just the Lane Hackers are out there doing shenanigans via neural net. However, due to the curious nature of this message, which apparently was sent to all Xenos instead of, well, those that either represent our cause officially like the Xeno Alliance, or those that may or may not have a direct link to Bretonia, we asked our expert of Bretonia-related matters on his opinion of this message.

"Now, first and foremost, I recommend to leave the responsibility of responding to this communiqué to the leadership of the Xeno Alliance. They probably have a better picture of the political environment of Sirius and Gallia than most of us and it would be best to not interfere with them without contacting them first.

This being said, the message in itself is, to put it mildly, unexpected. On one hand, it is not uncommon for a house government or military leadership to have contacts within the underground of other houses. We all need to keep in mind that there is only so much unclaimed space and we are currently living in a time of the houses looking for all resources they can get their hands on to get the edge over each other in any way possible. However, one would definitely assume that for such cases, intel agencies cover this part of the diplomacy rather covert instead of this overt message.

But let us first take a look at the general formalities. Transmissions from the Bretonian Government and government-related public outlets usually follow a certain format with a certain message encryption type which determines who can access a message. In this case, this message was sent to all Xenos - meaning the full spectrum from the leadership of the Xeno Alliance down to any rookie pilot that managed to install a Xeno IFF identifier tag on their Rebel. The message itself is textual, which is regular for formal inquiries between unknown or unspecified entities. In this instance, the message is marked as sent by the "Office of the Admiralty, Bretonian Armed Forces" - meaning that the board of admirals has likely voted on not letting this matter be handled by a singular admiral, yet. This could of course change in case of an established contact, depending on how the Xeno Alliance leadership responds to this message, if at all.

As for why they contacted all Xenos: There are four possibilities:


A: They are desperate.

I'm an avid reader of the various newsletters of the major factions of Sirius, and while all of them are to be taken with a grain of salt when it comes to propagandistic truth-bending, they usually use somewhat reliable source material to work with. Of course it is easy for professionals to fake literally anything - any text message, guncam screenshots and even audio and video footage, the moment the news outlets of rivalling groups share similar footage from different perspectives, the source material seems more and more authentic.

Lately, Bretonia is in the international news blogs quite frequently, with reports about claims and pushes into the Independent Worlds and the Taus, as well as a news article by the LNN and smaller news agencies about this and that. The Liberty News article from June 30th last year actually caught much public attention as it shares a leaked communiqué between Bretonia and Liberty about treaty negotiations regarding the handling of the debt Bretonia owes Liberty regarding the support during the Gallic War.

Again, all these news should be taken with a grain of salt. It is the responsibility of every Libertonian to question their government and their public news agencies - if we could just trust everything our politicians and news say was the universal truth, we wouldn't need to be Xenos.

However, all these various news outlets and blogs and public letters show a pattern when it comes to Bretonia: The war left them in an incredibly weakened state. Leeds, their industrial and economic backbone, is gone, and parts of New London are still in ruins. Stations and entire fleets got destroyed and Bretonia indebted itself with billions if not more. And even with the Gallic War over, the pressure from all sides still stands. So yes, they are desperate. They see threats everywhere, and are likely unable to repay their debts to Liberty. As I see it, a thoughtless attempt was made get in touch with the underground of Liberty to find out if Liberty can enforce the consequences of a treaty broken. One could assume the reason for them to contact all Xenos lies in the hopes for finding someone naive enough to play into their cards and use one of us as pawn in their chess play.

Now ask yourself: You are a Xeno because you do not wish to be a pawn of Liberty. Why would you want to be a pawn of Bretonia? Any self-respecting Xeno would dismiss this inquiry. We mean nothing to Bretonia and their cheap promises mean nothing.


B: A mistake in the comm handler.

A more amusing thought is that they simply tried to address this only to the Xeno Alliance leadership but did not specify it. After all, Bretonia does not have the best insight when it comes to the organisations that oppose the "law". Maybe they don't even know who is in charge of the Xenos or represents the wide majority of us. This is indicated by them referring to the public representative(s) of the Xeno movement - meaning they either don't know about the Xeno Alliance leadership or assuming there are more active groups. In that case: What the hell are their intel agencies doing? Not only don't they have intel on Liberty's fleet movements but also nothing on us. Now ask yourself what is more difficult to have an eye on.

So, with that on one hand, and a possibly simple mistake with the comm handler on the other, one thing is for sure: Someone was incompetent.


C: Psy-Ops.

The fabrication of messages like these could be the result of a psy-ops attempting to go for a bigger play here. While this is, due to the generally low quality of the message, most unlikely, let us just assume for a moment what this could be about.

Psy-Ops have the goal to sow distrust and confusion among the enemy, preferably using faked audio and video recordings to be as convincing as possible. They make sure they have a good insight on the enemy's personality and background information. It is the details that make such fakes authentic enough to be considered authentic.

But this message lacks any kind of detail. It is unspecific. No face, no voice, no names. There is nothing convincing us from believing that this message is not a spam message. Hell, I've read spam mails from Rheinlandian princesses that need to transfer a few million credits to a foreign account to avoid taxes, more convincing than this.


And finally, D: Human error.

It is no secret that Bretonia lost billions of people during the war with Gallia. It is safe to assume that among those people were many of the more suitable officers of the Bretonia Armed Forces. All those ranks need replacements, and obviously, this goes up as high as to the rank of Admiral, too. So, as a result of the competent personnel no longer being available, the incompetent personnel takes those slots. You heard me. As amusing as the thought of Admiral Stupid is, this is exactly how it works. The Armed Forces are now staffed with Second Fiddles, and this naive attempt to get our attention and support against what could be considered a common enemy could be what those monkeys considered to be the best idea at their latest board meeting. And that just assumes that the entire Office of the Admiralty stands behind this message.


Whatever is behind this, I can not stress enough that this should be handled by the Xeno Alliance leadership or in cooperation with the Xeno Alliance leadership. Bretonia has no interest in us and giving in to any shiny - and I want to point out how unspecified the promises are - modern technology or any other kind of support from Bretonia would play directly into their plans. Do not let yourself get fooled. We are strong as we are now, independent and at nobody's mercy.

My personal recommendation is to simply ignore the transmission. Keep it archived somewhere. Whenever you need a good chuckle, take a look at it and remember the day when the so called Office of the Admiralty embarrassed themselves with this hilariously desperate and thoughtless attempt to get someone they don't care about to work for them. It should be obvious that we have a bit more brain matter than those that happily jump at the offer of becoming Bretonia's lap dogs.

- Vaughn Pitt, Fort Ramsey Consultant for Foreign Houses

With all this being said and explained, what is your opinion on this matter? Send a transmission to the XNA today, or partake in the poll: What do you believe is the background of this transmission?

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