Maybe they made some distinction between titles and the title of Emperor of Japan, dunno. "Son of Heaven" would have been removed without fail, for example... And of course, maybe all titles were removed aside from one: the current emperor of Japan... Too many ways to accommodate both ways (retcon and not retcon). Yeah, I was working under the assumption that the Kuge had lost their "nobiliary titles", but retained their power (kinda because it was mentioned before in this thread that they "sold" Japan to YJ to, in sort, keep their power and riches). As for O-12, I just had a look at the RPG, and this is what I gathered that is relevant here: O-12 controls (not owns, but well, 9/10's of owning is controlling after all) the Concilium System. O-12 has 2 ways of getting money: Old "UN funding" from contributions made by the human nations (the bigger, the more), and the Expanded Budget that comes from their achievements: Circulars, comms, patents, etc... Bureau Noir is ANOTHER intelligence organization the Kuge would have need to avoid (they are tasked specifically with controlling those backroom deals). There are three governing elements in O-12: Oberhouse (a senate), Seats last 4 years; Clear majority is required to pass stuff here. Membership is for a wide array of representations... It holds the legislative power in the whole Human Sphere. Petit Assemblée: 30 seats in packs of 5: YJ, PanO, Ariadna, Nomads, Haqq & O-12. They can: Stop the Oberhouse from taking action in some issues by halting debate Impeachement of security council members Control of the senate seats (renovation, creation, extinguish) "the council of kings", O-12 Conclave: 1 representative from the head honcho from YJ, PanO, Haqq, Nomads, Ariadna and Concilium, they act as diplomatic contacts between nations and vote the inclusion or removal of nations in itself and the Security Council, irrelevant for the Uprising (since JSA was inducted as "Non Aligned"). O-12 Security Council: 1 NA2 rep, 1 Aleph, 4 O-12, 1 YJ, PanO, Nomads, Haqq and Ariadna. The RPG group says 12 mebers, but lists only 11 seats... 75% approval is needed to pass whatever the Oberhouse decided as law. Also, the concilium courts of the O-12 that includes the High Court should be involved in the post-Uprising situation, because of "Wartime breaches of the Concilium convention" (human rights charte). So for what I saw on the RPG book, and without having definite proofs on any side's possession at short notice, the Kuge would need, with or without help: Outsmart the ISS and the other intelligence service of YJ, not only to engineer this but to indoctrinate all that people into fanatics during decades. Avoid Bureau Noir's detection or at least get its support... Consider how the Bureau Aegis (tasked with respect for the law) is suspected to be the "shadow king" of O-12... Broker backroom deals with PanO, a nation YJ keeps under surveillance on a lot of levels not only as threat but as a target to beat. Broker backroom deals with the Nomads, which means mostly money, I think (Tunguska and Corregidor being the main participants, with Bakunin not really working with them directly). Tunguska might have commissioned to Bakuninsomething to help the indoctrination... Manage to get the support of another major power, that one having to be Haqquislam since Ariadna is too recent and, in a way, indebted to YJ (because of the decisive vote that included them in the O-12). Also, I think Ariadna's premier power is Rodina, and their tenent is about unity and collaboration, asking them could be tempting fate. This lets them have 15 votes in the Petit Assemblée... but without knowing more I cannot say if the YJ representatives would be recused, only the JSA one(s) o what, or maybe Ariadna voted blank. The Petit Assemblée allows them to block senate discussion until it's too late for anything but concessions or genocide to occur, so... Easier than try to gain hundreds of supports in the Oberhouse. They need 9 affirmative votes in the Security Council to approve whatever decision the Oberhouse took. Obviously the YJ representative would vote no, but this is irrelevant: you need the positive votes of the 4 O-12 representatives, or at least half of them, to succeed. Fine mess we have there. EDIT: Text in blue added
Let's get down to it then... The indoctrination of the population done by the Kuge over the last generation was apparently well known to YJ but was tolerated as it was an indoctrination towards total obedience for the Emperor, whom they controlled like a puppet, so they deemed it alright. It also created strong warriors and keept the population more or less easy to handle, so they let it be......why they did so seems a bit odd to me, it's as if earths history never existed before this...they REALLY should have remembered their history and noticed that this is not a good idea....but maybe they knew that Japan would have rebelled instantly if they hadn't allowed for it, and didn't want that to happen at all.... How the Kuge managed to outsmart the ISS and other Yu Jing Secret Services is frankly beyond me, it has to be assumed that the Ninja Clans, Tatenokai and Kempei are simply WAY better at theit job than the ISS and Secret Service is.....which I mean...I could accept....we're talking about freaking Ninjas here...but it's still a gut punch for YJ as they apparently managed to outsmart ISS and Secret Service on every single area where they fought, with usually the first steps of the uprising being an explosive end to said garrisons or installations, followed by taking control of the area....maybe it had to do with the 100% support by the Japanese Population....its easier to be sneaky when nobody wants to see you or tells anybody about you if they do... It is mentioned that they did in fact broker backroom deals with PanO, Nomads, Haqqislam, some of the other NA2s, and even the Tohaa, apparently most of that was done by a single person who is now deemed a hero...a guy apparently so "boring" and without ambition that nobody ever would suspect him of being of any importance, and who did all this under the guise of a minor company doing some low key trade negotiations, while in realidy making alliances and deals for the Kuge.... It is especially mentioned that Ariadna denied them because Japan wouldn't let go of the Kurage station on Dawn(this will become a problem next Campaign for sure..) It is also mentioned that PanO actually had little choice but to act in Japan's favour, as the documentation about the oppressed japanese done by Candy was apparently so damn popular that all of PanO felt sympathy for Japan and demanded PanO to help them. Which I find hilarious....in a good way! It is worth mentioning that Japan DID offer many deals to those nations, which means now that they "won" there will be a lot of payback and not so favourable trade deals going on for the Japanese, but on the other side it is mentioned that the Kuge's Mega Corporations were on an extremely high tech level and earned about as much as the Chinese mega corporations did, so they DO have quite the financial power apparently. Most of the territory still under their control now is also actually quite valuable economically, many mining areas and stations and the likes...stuff needed to make a young nation flourish and grow to incredible hights....I see Japan actually becoming much stronger in the future as there are hints of extremely high tech secret war projects going on and what not, and Japan on Earth is apparently growing like no other nation in the human sphere at the moment. I also doubt that it'd be hard to get Ariadna to vote for their independance anyways once the Uprising has started, even if they didn't agree to their deals, if only to annoy Yu Jing... The whole Uprising took place within 6 Months, and only succeeded because of military support by PanO, Haqqislam, Nomads, StarCo, Aegis, and a lot of Ikari, who still seem to protect some Japanese Stations. There's mention of a "Steel Wall Protocol" of PanO which basically saved Japan on Earth from getting easily overrun by Yu Jing as they no longer could bring in troops and were thus stranded and slowly ground to death/surrender/escape there. And Once O-12 accepted their independance, Aegis and bigger forces quickly ended most battles. If that hadn't happened, the Uprising would have ended 3-4 months later in utter Japanese Annihilation apparently. Japan is now holding several areas all over the galays, mainly mining stations, fortified cities and the likes, usually close to borders with PanO/Haqq/Nomads or whatnot which allowed them to survive. So should YJ ever consider continuing the attack, and the other nations would no longer help them, if could get pretty ugly pretty fast for Japan, as they would have a very hard time supporting their many small locations all over the galaxy. It is mentioned that they do have a (Space) Navy however, so they are still mobile. On the positive side it is mentioned that their corporations are doing very well now and that they have some very high tech stuff going on, so if left alone for a while Japan could become a very powerful little nation technologically on par with the others if not better, which I hope will manifest itself in some more high tech units in the next 1-2 years... Hope this additional Information will help everyone, as you can see it's a bit more Pro JSA than my previous post, but since many people were wondering how JSA supposedly did it, I decided to show their strengths a little, even if some of them require a lot of Deus Ex Machina in my eyes...
So JSA Deus Ex Machinaed their way into Independence. At least I'm kinda sure not even Gutier could bullshit his way into the Japanese reclaiming Kuiramori.
Speaking of deals with other nations: who else is wondering if the timing of the release of Tanguska, (and their banker brain bots), has anything to do with this. I expect the TAK release will be related to Kurage station as Ariadna never recognized Yu Jing as having a lawful presence there, so the JSA has really just claimed independence of territory which, in the eyes of Ariadna, was stolen. Plus, the location of the island Kurage Station is located next to Kazak territory on the mainland.
Well I don't really know which faction to play if they both are evil and bad. I guess I'll go sit in my corner.
I didn't say he's fed up, did I? I said it is impossible to avoid burnout. It is impossible to maintain the proper passion, focus, and energy required to handle a task that size SOLO for so long. And yet he has. Why? You want to argue that it's because he loves his job. Which is possible. But that doesn't mean he isn't getting creative fatigue. Either way, I don't really care whether he LIKES it or not: it is scientifically BAD PRACTICE to have a single person as the gate through which all stuff must pass! And for someone who thinks they didn't handle these things well, you seem to want to ignore this really clear contributing factor. Why? You'd rather blame someone else?
@Yasashii Fuyu That's a pretty explicit contradiction of @psychoticstorm 's comments saying that nothing important was lost by yj... How was PanO able to stop Yu Jing from operating in Japan... its OWN TERRITORY? Did PanO invade Yu Jing and somehow get away scott-free?
I'm going to guess they basically said "we're closing down this airspace, go to war with us if you dare".
If the US did that to the EU (for example) there would be war... as there should be when your sovereignty is violated like that. The idea that O-12 and PanO havent ensured an interplanetary war by fucking with Yu Jing to this degree is ludicrous.
Didn't Hillary Clinton propose the US do just that on Syria's airspace? That alone makes it a possible answer. And I'm guessing Yu Jing was in no position to start a war with PanO. My guess is Yu Jing sent it to O-12 and someone stalled it and then it got lost in some paperwork.
Apparently the JSA more or less instantly took control of the whole of Japan (about 2-3 days it seems) and only then did significant YJ forces arrive in Japan via airlanding (at least 25.000+ Invincible Army Soldiers were mentioned, with at least 75.000 more incoming). They pretty much steamrolled the Japanese Defenders and quickly made beachheads and estalished air landing fields and took air superiority....then PanO began the Iron Wall Approach by sealing off the airspace completely and shooting down any more YJ reinforcements and supressed the YJ airforce in the area, giving air superiority back to JSA. Now basically stranded on Japan the YJ forces fought quite hard and tried to storm Tokyo, but with high casualties of Domaru and Raiden and so on, JSA prevailed and keept them from entering the city. PanO troops also took part in these fights apparently as at this time 0-12 was sanctioning JSA indipendance, or just about to (not sure anymore about the timeline here), Meanwhile Ryuken and Shikami Units infiltrated in the backfield of the YJ units (talking about landing by sea behind enemy lines or so..) , basically encircling them, and they where thus slowly massacred. At this point YJ apparently negotiated with PanO and a good chunk of their army escaped over the sea (which made JSA angry and they complained to their allies, but nobody cared..) , and the remaining YJ troops were killed or forced to surrender, resulting in Japan 100% under JSA control. I didn't get to read all the theatres of war's timelines yet, there are nicely detailed timelines of how the war went in these areas, it will be an interesting read for sure! Hope this will help!
I'm going to wait until I have the book to comment further. And probably headcanon my own army into some niche subfaction segment of the armies that didn't get involved in the worst atrocities anyway.
If you really have problems considering which one of those is "the good guys", and you really need one of them to be....might as well go with JSA I guess, they are depicted as the oppressed minority who just gained their freedom and are now turning into a better nation (though with a class system and kuge puppetry...) than they thought they were before....the vibe in JSA sure seems way more positive than it is in YJ at the moment :-P
You're glossing over the political context that was previously described. Kuge leadership had already brokered a favorable relationship and deals with other major powers. The indiscriminate cruelty of the ISS and YJ armies putting down the Uprising had turned public opinion of all nations against YJ. PanO stepped forward as a "peacekeeper" and everyone else just nodded in approval. If YJ chose war for such a grievous insult, they would be isolated and contained by all the other powers covertly or overtly supporting PanO.
That's interesting. 100.000 is either a small army or a big Army Corps (depends on division sizes and other bullshit). Are they all stated to be Invincible Army?
Please don't take this too exact here, I'm pretty sure I'm getting things mixed up as far as numbers and army composition is regarded as I have already read a bit of the other threathres, and there was mentionings of invincible army, white and red banner units and whatnot. I also think the 25.000+ troops were not the only ones that landed, I think there were mentions of several divisions as well as Guija regiments and what not, I think it's save to say that YJ sent a serious army out there. If you want exact numbers maybe someone with more time at hand can deliver them, but I'm busy preparing for a game on saturday at the moment, so I have to keep things a bit brief and can't re-read sections to go more in detail atm. Hope it helps anyways!
This is exactly why it's such a head-scratchingly idiotic decision to go full ethnic cleansing for the Imperial Service. It's the dumbest decision possible, and unrealistically incompetent for an organization like that. If France shot down Spanish military aircraft *over Spanish airspace* because they wanted to support Catalonian separatists, do you think Spain should just go along with it? Once you have military fighting military (PanO firing on Yu Jing IA elements) you're talking a full-scale war.
United States and Syria aren't in the same league as far as geopolitical powers go. This is more like the US fucking with China or the EU.
Yep, the Imperial Service screwed up big-time by being violent fascists. Please stop trying to make analogies to contemporary politics. There is no real parallel so you're comparing a hypothetical situation to a fictional one.
