58 KiB
[RT][Q] r!Animorphs: request for crowdbraining re: Esplin/V3
-
Author: u/TK17Studios Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning*
-
URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4npgnf/rtq_ranimorphs_request_for_crowdbraining_re/
-
Score: 24
-
Created: 2016-06-12T08:24:21
Post:
Hi, everybody,
[WARNING: THIS THREAD WILL UNDOUBTEDLY CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR THE LATEST R!ANIMORPHS CHAPTERS]
Stuff is ramping up. I do this thing where I make general plans, but then in filling specific chapters with consistent/concrete detail, I sometimes invalidate those general plans. This latest chapter messed up Esplin/V3's next update.
I was wondering if r/rational readers would be interested/willing to play the villain for a bit, since he's smarter than me but maybe not smarter than all of us. As V3, you were last seen running some doombots, which seemed to be the result of secret side experiments with the Arn (biologists) and the Naharans (engineers). More recently, you gave the kill order that sent a meteor hurtling toward Ventura County. You can be assumed to have done smart things like evacuated the other half-shield, and you can be assumed to be answerable in some way, shape, or form to some kind of oversight in the Yeerk empire.
Where are you? What are you up to? What's happening that's beyond your control? What are you planning, and what are the branches in your decision tree?
Specifically interested in whether or not you bother to continue with slow infiltration (which will net you ~7bil hosts if it works, as well as a planet with intact infrastructure), or whether you're now ready to turn this war hot (despite the fact that your reinforcements are at least 5months out). Also curious what, specifically, you're doing under each of those broad strategies. Finally, I'm wondering what munchkining you're working on, both based on what's already been seen in the text and not.
If it turns out people like helping with stuff like this, I'll have opportunities in the future as well; if this is generally seen as lame, I'll update accordingly.
Comments:
u/KerbalFactorioLeague [+11] (3 hours later)
Does V3 have any idea how the war with the Andalites is going? That's going to be an important factor on whether not we should wait for reinforcements or just cut our losses now to gain a still-sizeable number of capable hosts.
Also, we only have a single pool available right? Can we use the skills of the Naharan hosts to build more? Or if not, turn some of the Human scientists/engineers so that we can build more? Multiple infiltration points would be a lot more useful since we wouldn't be restricted to a single country. Alternatively, switching to somewhere like Europe where there are a lot of densely-packed countries that are easy to travel across, or a country like China or India with a much larger population, may be more useful
u/CouteauBleu [+10] We are the Empire. (10 hours later)
Let's, see, what should Visser 3 do?
Well, that depends on what he's concerned about. I see five obvious sources of concern for him:
How is the war with Andalites going?
When is his next report to his superiors due? They might not be impressed by the whole "killed the immense majority of his hosts plus however many yeerks" thing.
What is the american military up to? His safest move is to assume they're either informed of the alien invasion or soon will be. From there, nothing prevents them from contacting every world-leader/military force/intelligence agency in the world and inform them of the situation. The meteor strike means they won't even have to provide any proof to get those militaries to prepare hard. Taking this into account, Visser 3 should probably start planning an open invasion, with the assumption that every military in the world will start mobilizing at most a week from now.
Did some Animorphs survive the asteroid? If he has a few biologists left (or if one of his mooks knows the ancient skill of looking things up on wikipedia), he could learn about the snipe morph, and decide that some of them survived.
How is the morale of the troops? That one strikes me as extremely important. Visser 3 just killed most of his underlings for a tactical advantage. If I were a controller, this would be the point my host starts asking me questions like "Why are you follwing his orders again?", and I wouldn't have very good answers. The coalescions themselves probably aren't very happy with the Visser either. And as FMA taught us, officers in the field aren't immune to the mysterious "three bullets in your back while you're sleeping" disease. Visser 3 should start preparing against potential coups, assassination attempts and coat turning.
As for munchkining:
- Take a disposable yet sentient subject (probably an uncontrolled human, or a clone, or a nothlit visserbot). Lock it in a room with everyone whose loyalty you want to test. Expose everyone in the room to a visserbot morphed into a nothlit leeran (one with no sensitive intel). Isolate the disposable subject, morph into a leeran next to it, then dispose of it. Congratulations, you have bypassed the restrictions of the leeran morph!
u/MagicWeasel [+4] Cheela Astronaut (4 days later)
From there, nothing prevents them from contacting every world-leader/military force/intelligence agency in the world and inform them of the situation.
To add to this, he can easily make it look like he's a beneficial alien visitor who wants to give them medicine and weapons. He gives them medicine and weapons, uses China, Russia, France, UK, hell North Korea to subdue the US government with diplomacy, war, etc. He could get the world tame enough that he can slowly chuck slugs into world leaders and then get to the point where it's too late.
u/CouteauBleu [+5] We are the Empire. (5 days later)
No he could not. The USA aren't the only country with anti-espionage protocols, and "Aliens show up with gifts but they're secretly planning to take everything from you" is not a concept foreign to world leaders (or to anyone with any knowledge of colonisation history, for that matter).
Winning a propaganda war is nowhere near an easy task when you show up right after a suspicious meteor strike that killed 600'000+ people, and you're LITERAL SLUGS that take control of people's brains. Lie, okay, people as large groups can be fickle and all. But, again, sentient slugs that control people's brains. There's a difference between "fickle" and "The-Simpsons-level-stupid".
u/MagicWeasel [+4] Cheela Astronaut (5 days later)
Ehh... I think it's feasible; the juicy andalite brain is possibly so much beyond our own wetware that it could come up with a better way to manipulate.
I'd also add that they'd leave the "brain controlling slug" part out of the first contact materials. Maybe have hork bajir controllers pose as the visitors.
There's plenty of good ideas in this thread so this one may not be the best, but I think it's not quite as pathetic as you make it out to be.
u/CouteauBleu [+6] We are the Empire. (5 days later)
The thing is, they maybe could afford to lie about this stuff if they didn't already have enemies who know the truth, and if the lies weren't so easy to disprove. As is, proving that the yeerks are out to get us is trivial.
Like, let's say the yeerks want to only show Hork Bajiirs as their public side. They leave out the whole "mind-control slug" part, and say they're a bunch or tree dwellers who escaped to space when the Andalites destroyed their homeworld with a quantum virus. Everyone is a bit suspicious, but a priori believes them.
The very next thing that will happen is the american president will show up and say "No, the aliens are trying to fool us. They're actually mind-control slugs who are nested in the brains of the tree-dwellers, against their will." Even if the "against their will" part is hard to prove, the "mind-control slug" part is super-easy: just demand that the yeerks send, let's say, twenty hork-bajiirs, and keep them in secure containment for three days, the watch what happens. The yeerks will probably refuse, and cite some reasons, like, maybe the tree dwellers need to feed in conditions only available in the mothership.
So the world leaders say, "Fine, this is somewhat suspicious, but then just let us send our own investigators in your mothership to follow randomly selected Hork-Bajiirs around, and observe their feeding process". The yeerks might invent something, like the ship is not hospitable to humans, and the authorities might ask them to submit to other tests (like putting non-reproducible seals around the hork-bajiir's ears, or asking for human probes to be allowed in the mothership), but my point is that the world leaders would ask those questions, and would never trust the aliens until they had disproved those claims, and they would look for threachery in the answers the aliens give and the tests they would accept.
Because, again, the concept of aliens pretending to be friendly but actually being hostile is super obvious and basically as old as the concept of aliens and everyone would be thinking about it. If the yeerks went public and tried to appear friendly, everyone would be looking for signs of deception and betrayal, especially after the meteor strike, and especially since the yeerks would refuse falsifications tests like quarantine or MRI scans.
u/MagicWeasel [+4] Cheela Astronaut (5 days later)
You're right, I didn't think of that. I stand corrected! Thank you for your thoughtful response.
u/nathanwe [+3] (a day later)
On the subject of troop morale, V3 controls access to the pool, and will meteor strike it out of spite if things go to badly. I cant see a rebellion working without a non-centralized kandrona source, and that poses its own problems to the narrative.
u/Alphanos [+10] The Bright Powers (17 hours later)
Let's try to infer the goals of both the Yeerks in general and Visser Three specifically, and then see what he might do to further those goals.
Firstly, from the Yeerk perspective, they've won the war with Earth. This isn't a true military conflict. It's a covert mission to preserve idiots from accidentally destroying resources that are rightfully already theirs. If the Yeerks were losing the war with the Andalites badly and just wanted to rapidly take as many hosts as possible off-world, it would be trivial for them to do so. Even disregarding the Pool ship's weapons or shields, the asteroid incident demonstrates the overwhelming military power that a spacefaring race holds over the Earth. The Yeerks could easily destroy Earth's militaries, satellites, roads, and other infrastructure. Then they could land cloaked ships and forcibly conquer many isolated small towns to gather however many hosts they needed with no organized resistance.
But they haven't done this. Their chosen approach demonstrates that they aren't seeking a quick snatch-and-grab. Rather, they want to take the earth's population, infrastructure, and military organization largely intact. Earth will be their ultimate secret weapon. Think of the classic example of America rapidly converting its economy during World War II to massively produce a new military superpower - the Yeerks will do this to the whole planet, under unified governance. They will convert the industrial base and infrastructure to take advantage of their advanced alien technology on their new incredibly-populous controller world, and develop a military-industrial machine without known equal. Then they will crush the Andalites under an unstoppable tide of new mass-produced Yeerk military forces.
As far as the Yeerks know, the Andalite military in general either doesn't know about, or doesn't consider seriously the threat of the Yeerk operations on Earth. If the Yeerks thought otherwise, their approach would be very different. Meanwhile, to the Yeerks, this is potentially a strategic masterstroke that will win them the war. Assuming that this much from canon remains accurate, the operations on Leera are under the command of Visser Four. That means that the operations on Earth are considered their single most important theatre of war at present - Earth is their best bet for the industrial powerhouse they want.
So Visser Three certainly cannot turn the war hot. If that was ever on the table, there would have been little point in wiping the evidence of the infiltration with the asteroid. The only circumstances under which he will turn the war hot is if he believes that directly striking earth's militaries will cause the least damage to infrastructure - i.e. if he believes that a global scale nuclear war is unavoidably imminent without his direct intervention.
I'll guess that if this operation went well, perhaps a promotion to Visser Two might have been on the table. But he always wanted more, and thought it was within his grasp when he deduced the morphing cube was still available. He made the choice to prioritize the overall mission over his personal goal, knowing the cube might be destroyed by the asteroid. Without the cube, his asteroid strike would have solved almost all of his problems. He might have gotten chewed out for the delay involved from it being necessary, but he'd probably retain command of the invasion due to his foresight in having the contingency ready. He could resume infiltrating almost anywhere else in the world. If any of the morph-capable resistance survived, it would have been a handful at most, and it would have been vanishingly unlikely that they could even find the new invasion point. His mission could proceed as planned, with the unfortunate setback of time and his secret displeasure at losing the chance at the cube.
But the cube did survive. Once Visser Three realizes what is happening, he is actually in quite the bind. Because now there is a new budding resistance, multiplying the morph-capable opposition, and as he knows, that tool comes with both infiltration and counter-infiltration tools that rival the Yeerks' own. He would really like to keep the continued existence of the cube secret, even once he realizes it survived the asteroid. He also wants to keep secret the fact that morphing can be used to read the memories of the person you morph into. This secret gives him a great deal of hidden personal power of his own, since the other Yeerks in high command don't realize how he can gather some of his info. It's also a strategic military secret of great importance, since he doesn't want it to leak to the Andalite forces, who apparently largely don't realize that capability exists due to their taboo of morphing sentient beings.
He is going to have to weigh things very carefully. How likely to succeed is his strategy of pursuing the cube in secret? How likely is it that he would get caught by Vissers One or Two checking up on him, which would likely mean his death sentence for hiding something that important? Is it even possible for him to orchestrate his military forces against the budding morph-capable resistance without revealing the key details that only he knows among the Yeerks?
So that's mostly about the goals and considerations of both the Yeerks in general and Visser Three specifically. What he presumably planned to do was restart the infiltration in a backup location, annoyed at the setbacks and the difficulty in accounting for himself to his higher-ups. The backup location won't be somewhere completely isolated like North Korea or deep in Africa, because they still want to prepare to take over the infrastructure of the major nations. Depending on his paranoia, he could conceivably move operations to a similar town in Russia or China though, rather than staying in America.
He might also hedge his bets about possible survivors by spreading rumours in human news media about some new drug known to cause crazy paranoid hallucinations. Or maybe the Yeerks can just create such a drug and get its recipe spread around a little to help cover their tracks. Depending on his estimation of human psychology, he might even have considered trying something from the storyline of Stargate SG-1 with "Wormhole Extreme" - using some infiltrators to launch a TV series with roughly similar plot to the actual invasion as another means of dismissing any rumours that do manage to get out there.
But now the Bug Fighter crashes in Washington. This alone doesn't reveal the new budding resistance, but covering it up will be very hard, and suspicious. He doesn't have enough people in Washington to do something like successfully cover it up as a failed military test plane. Most likely he'll need to incinerate the area with other Bug Fighters and try to cover it up as a gas leak/explosion, and then hope that nothing escaped onto YouTube or got radioed in to the Pentagon. In such close temporal proximity to the asteroid, an event like this would certainly be treated as highly suspicious, and thoroughly investigated as a possible covert attack by a foreign power. Trying to prevent any evidence from leaking will be a problem. He'll likely infest Jeremiah during the cover-up process and discover the real extent of his problems. The Animorphs are recruiting.
Now they're in a spy-counterspy situation, where both sides want to uncover the other without being discovered themselves. The Yeerks are in a better position to try to use advanced scanners or similar for detection, but it's still very risky. The only thing Visser Three might be more worried about than exposure is if he misjudged and there are one or more real Andalites still on the ground. If they can manage to call in their own reinforcements and turn Earth into a hot war, the Yeerk high command will be extremely displeased. He may have concerns about scanning for communications signals or trying to jam them.
Munchkining: Depending how much he was able to pick up from telepathic contact with the Chee, he may attempt to capture and forcibly subvert them and their technology, realizing that they cannot violently resist him. Since they can see active morphs plain as day, this would be a huge boon to his efforts, though no longer a decisive one with morphing now proliferating.
u/FTL_wishes [+5] superluminal (22 hours later)
The backup location won't be somewhere completely isolated like North Korea or deep in Africa, because they still want to prepare to take over the infrastructure of the major nations. Depending on his paranoia, he could conceivably move operations to a similar town in Russia or China though, rather than staying in America.
Agreed on the isolated takeover part. A town or even a country that's cut off and a pariah at that is of little use to Esplin, except as a distraction - which would still be a good thing.
If you use controllers to spark major conflicts across the world, that would also help to distract the US military and the US government from taking action on their own soil. It'll also draw the attention of the Animorphs away from their primary goals. A few controllers in, say, North Korea could order them to fire their nukes or invade the South. Given that Saddam is still around, he could also be used to screw around in the Middle East. I'm actually surprised that the Visser hasn't been doing this - using rogue nations and terrorist organizations to stir up the world.
u/Alphanos [+6] The Bright Powers (a day later)
I think you're on the right track there. Originally it's better for the Yeerks to be infiltrating under peace to reduce the extent to which the humans' guards are up. But if they're going to suspect something anyway, better for them to suspect the wrong thing. Even a comparatively large-scale war is acceptable to the Yeerks so long as they can avoid a major nuclear exchange. If it's feasible with Yeerk technology, they would definitely like to locate and disable Earth's nuclear arsenal to avoid damage to their desired infrastructure.
Regarding the crashed Bug Fighter cover-up, misinformation and misdirection are the way to go, likely with a layered approach. Trying to prevent any evidence from leaking may now be impossible, but planting misleading evidence could be almost as good.
The explosion was a gas leak.
The explosion was a botched Russian attack on Jeremiah, likely for whatever secret information he was bringing to President Tyegi.
The crashed fighter was an ultra-secret Russian prototype, at least 2 generations beyond anything previously suspected to exist. Its capabilities threaten to overturn MAD doctrine, making it paramount to avoid nuclear exchanges and focus all intelligence resources on Russia.
The crashed Russian fighter is based on reverse-engineered alien tech from an old crash on Russian soil, ala folk tales of Roswell.
The alien tech also provides select Russian spies the capability to shapeshift! Fortunately this tech has the side effect of inducing crazed paranoid delusions, making it easier to identify the "Russian" spies (Animorphs spreading word of the Yeerks).
A "blood test" to detect the Russian shapeshifters is discovered, making it mandatory for senior military and intelligence officials to be "tested" (infested). This might be too risky…
The Russians have actually received the tech from their allies, the evil space-communist Andalites who have already tried to destroy the Earth at least once. The valiant freedom-loving democratic Yeerks oppose them however.
Combining a number of ideas from the thread for this. The goal of course would be to actually enact as few layers as possible, but to prepare for all eventualities. If necessary, attacks on one country by another can be staged via cloaked Bug Fighters to escalate matters.
u/CoolGuy54 [+2] (14 days later)
He also wants to keep secret the fact that morphing can be used to read the memories of the person you morph into.
Does he know this?
u/Alphanos [+2] The Bright Powers (14 days later)
Yup. From chapter 6, when he was pondering the reported advances in morphing technology from Cassie's escape from the vehicle:
Esplin scanned the report again, taking separate note of each development.
One—the Andalites had successfully replaced a human girl, with mimicry on par with that of a Yeerk. Conclusion: someone else in the Andalite chain of command had discovered Alloran's little back door.
The implication being that Visser Three's host Alloran, an Andalite genius, knew of this prior to being taken as a host. However he apparently didn't widely spread the information. Presumably because of the Andalite taboo on the subject. Or, if Alloran kept such an incredibly valuable military secret to himself just for personal gain, then perhaps that would tell us unexpected things about his character.
u/CouteauBleu [+8] We are the Empire. (10 hours later)
"Do the yeerks continue their secret invasion when discovered by enemies that are willing to work in secret?" is something I've been wondering about for years (did I mention I really wish there were more good Animorphs fanfiction out there?).
Basically the invasion is a negative sum game with a sum very close to zero. For every human on earth, there are three outcomes: free (bad for yeerks, good for humans), controlled (the opposite), or dead. The last one is bad for humans, but slightly better than controlled, and bad for yeerks but slightly better than free since they're somewhat spiteful.
So yeerks and human cannot expect to cooperate, and in the absence of a common threat (like Andalites about to purge everything), everything that's good for humans is roughly as bad for yeerks. Which means that, one side can only decide to keep the secrecy if they are highly confident it will benefit them more than their enemy. But if they're confident it benefits them, then the other side can deduce from this confidence that the secrecy harms them, and so will break the secrecy themselves. This is especially true because, even if each side decides they can profit from the secrecy, both can deduce from the other's silence that they might have advantages they don't know about, which means the safe path is to go public anyway.
To summarize, both sides can only maintain secrecy if, [A], they're really confident that the secrecy doesn't benefit one side more than the other AND that the other side will have come to the same conclusion (and are reasonably confident the other side doesn't have secret weapons), [B], they're both really confident they secret advantages are stronger than their opponent's secret advantage. Not sure how B would work, actually, since if you're super confident then your enemy should be super worried, and if they're confident anyway then you should be super super worried, etc... Then again, having a good model of these problems is hard.
Anyway, not sure any of this is relevant. It only takes one person with a phone camera getting a good look of the spaceship for everything to snowball. I don't think the crash could reliably be covered up from the public.
u/Nighzmarquls [+10] (13 hours later)
This suggests that maybe the yeerks going public and 'transparently benevolent' might actually be a very very effective strategy.
Effectively completely switch gears, be completely open and give the human scientists around the globe some distant astronomical object/event to confirm stuff.
The yeerks are symbiotic, they are stuck in a war of attrition, their enemies the andalites have already made at least ONE attempt in destroying the earth.
Hell maybe even swing the asteroid impact as an andalite attack.
For bonus points spin some press that andalite bandits may be subverting other earth countries now that their space war has been lost.
Yeerks come off as magnanimous, also being OPEN about the fact yeerks need hosts, being polite, asking for volunteers, opening up borders and trade with any nations.
Essentially if visser 3 swings the effort to be completely the good guy and can win over or at the very least destabalize the unity of humanity he will go a long way. Focusing on reinforcing and supporting the nations with the greatest suffering/need with 'miracle technology'.
those nations also happen to be the largest populations on earth too.
u/CouteauBleu [+8] We are the Empire. (14 hours later)
"Excuse me, mister yeerk/person? Would you mind leaving the head of your host, just for a five-minutes conversation? We'll just ask some very basic questions, then let you both be on your way".
But yeah, going public as soon they arrived on Earth might have been a better strategy, with lower risks and lower payoff. But the only way Visser 3 was leaving with the millions/billions of soldiers he needed for his Unstoppable Evil Army was with a hostile takeover, and that's a lot harder if people know you're here.
u/callmebrotherg [+7] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (20 hours later)
"Excuse me, mister yeerk/person? Would you mind leaving the head of your host, just for a five-minutes conversation? We'll just ask some very basic questions, then let you both be on your way".
There have to be collaborators. They could be the public face of the Yeerk Empire.
u/chaosmosis [+5] and with strange aeons, even death may die (a day later)
Or claim that they can't leave their hosts at all once accepted, or claim that leaving causes both constant agony. Go public, maybe, but no need to reveal only truth.
u/CouteauBleu [+6] We are the Empire. (a day later)
Yeah, but all you have to do to disprove that claim is follow a Controller around to a pool. The thing is, even is a government believes the yeerks (different countries may have different reactions, after all), they still won't be allowed to walk around without massive oversight.
And there are already people who know they're there, who witnessed the invasion, and can give their own negative account of the invasion. The word of an animorph or an ex-controller isn't proof of anything, but will certainly give wordwide governments cause to distrust.
u/CCC_037 [+6] (a day later)
Yeah, but all you have to do to disprove that claim is follow a Controller around to a pool.
"I'm sorry, sir, this is a private swimming pool. Do you have a membership card? No? Well, sir, if you'd like to join our club, you can fill in this membership card, and complete an interview in the back room..."
u/callmebrotherg [+3] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (a day later)
It would be too easy for the truth about the Pools to come out, and then everything goes to Hell. Better to find some collaborators to be the public face of operations.
u/KnickersInAKnit [+4] (a day later)
I've always enjoyed stories that explore this alternative method of invasion. I don't feel it works in this story, though, for a few reasons:
Andalite arrogance, Alloran would never think of it, and V3 does rely on his host to do a fair amount of scheming.
V3 is also probably equally arrogant. I'd say this idea would be more in line with V1's style of thinking, as an alternative to The Sharing.
u/Nighzmarquls [+3] (3 days later)
I could see it coming up as an attempt by alloran to create an intentionally faulty plan that actually is ingenius on reflection.
u/CCC_037 [+5] (a day later)
So, in short, you keep secrecy only if you predict that you will win by keeping secrecy.
I can't help but notice the parallel with the Crayak/Ellimist conflict; they only agreed to their current arrangement because each of them was certain they would win...
u/CouteauBleu [+5] We are the Empire. (a day later)
Well, more like you keep secrecy only if you predict that you will win by keeping secrecy, taking into account that the other made the same analysis and predicted they would win, even though they took your analysis into account, etc. Kind of like the "blue-eyed islanders" problem (google it).
Game theory and infinite recursion aside, the keeping the invasion secret probably advantages the yeerks, so the government will go public; the only interest in keeping the public in the dark about the yeerks was to lure Visser 3 into a false sense of security (as opposed to scanning the planets for xenotech labs and hidden military bases). That ship has now sailed, and keeping the public in the dark will only make yeerk operations easier.
u/CCC_037 [+4] (a day later)
Game theory and infinite recursion aside, the keeping the invasion secret probably advantages the yeerks, so the government will go public; the only interest in keeping the public in the dark about the yeerks was to lure Visser 3 into a false sense of security (as opposed to scanning the planets for xenotech labs and hidden military bases). That ship has now sailed, and keeping the public in the dark will only make yeerk operations easier.
Unless the Yeerk response to the secret being out is (expected to be) a scorched-earth "flatten half the humans and Control the rest" operation using overwhelming force. This would be second prize for the Yeerks (getting all the human hosts with an intact infrastructure is by far the best result for them) but an absolutely terrible result for the humans; if we assume that that is the Yeerk backup plan, then there is good reason for humans in the know to at least maintain most of the masquerade.
u/KnickersInAKnit [+13] (5 hours later)
Let's see. If I were V3...I would go with a change up to the slow infiltration, because V1 is probably breathing down my neck. From my analysis of human society, I'd move international and pick a highly populated location such as Hong Kong. Why?
Island of huge economic importance.
Tons of hosts (according to wiki, 7.03 million in 2009)
A subway system, already underground, that would allow me to bring in hosts literally by the trainful.
Due to the size of the island, every human is in very short range of the pool and doesn't even require a car to get there, due to public transit.
Extremely defensible, I'd just have to park a perimeter of Bug fighters around the coast and laugh. Nuking the island would create tidal waves that would threaten every single coast connected to the Pacific, not to mention that I could hold that entire island at ransom at risk of destabilizing the global economy.
u/FeepingCreature [+15] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (6 hours later)
- If there's an existing resistance, they'll be hampered by cultural and political barriers.
u/KnickersInAKnit [+12] (6 hours later)
Red-tailed hawk and other US wildlife would stick out like a sore thumb, yep.
u/Dwood15 [+7] (14 hours later)
Hong Kong would be harder to go without noticing, because it's not under as much control by the communist government of China, therefore I would suggest NK or mainlaind China. North Korea would give a good start for sheer numbers, good control of information. In modern america, (even 1990's) it would be extremely difficult to keep things quiet forever without launching into some kind of war.
If you can land in China or other communist countries, they would make the best places, IMO.
Additionally, If you can build a second pool, you could be keeping the kids in America occupied with a residual force there, but focusing on other countries.
The kids wouldn't be able to infiltrate as easily due to the 2 hour limits of transformations, and when they de-morph, they would stick out like sore thumbs.
I can see few downsides to going to more controlled countries.
u/KnickersInAKnit [+9] (15 hours later)
You know what, NK would be absolutely insane if V3 targeted that. Infest Kim Jong-il (who was leading NK at the time) and have him tell every NK citizen to stick their heads in this lovely pool over here. And they'd probably do it without question.
Not to mention, V3 would be able to do so many things out in the open behind NK's borders...Screw HK, go NK! Bonus is that all those conspiracy theories about what really goes on in NK just gets that much crazier.
u/None [+11] (15 hours later)
[deleted]
u/CoolGuy54 [+1] (14 days later)
The problem is that a controlled NK isn't much more dangerous than status-quo NK. If they started industrialising, that would show up on satellite, and
the whole country could be nuked.I'm sure the Yeerks have ballistic missile defences....Hmm.... Still hard for the Yeerks to get the rest of the world from that base without open war depleting a lot of population and infrastructure. It's a step they could definitely achieve, but it leads nowhere.
u/ZeroNihilist [+6] (14 hours later)
Supply lines are the biggest concern. Yeerks are kandrona-limited. The system of rotating through Yeerks in stasis is clever, but limited by the need to restock.
That necessitates bi-directional transfer, which is by no means easy (try getting 10 stasis tubes through airport security). If you have a way to facilitate that process you can more easily decouple your controllers from the pool.
Spread out enough and no resistance, however numerous, would be able to stop the Yeerks covertly. Even if they made 100 new Animorphs a day and each Animorph checked 100 unique Yeerk candidates a day, they'd only be able to vet ~56,000,000 people before the backup fleet arrived. There's no way that the scale would be anywhere near that without some tech breakthrough for the resistance, yet even that figure wouldn't be enough.
Unfortunately I don't have any great ideas on that front. Perhaps convert people in charge of some real-world supply lines (e.g. freight, airlines) and use them to assist in shipping Yeerks. Seems vulnerable, however; even one controller being morphed that had a memory of opening a package labelled "Ye. Erk Shipping Co." would tear down the whole enterprise.
Second issue: for the Animorphs, being able to mass produce the Andalite ear condoms is crucial. V3 should expect them to attempt to push that process along, which means that he may need to prioritise capturing people with such implants alive in order to potentially subvert them (or simply preventing the research, though that is a less desirable outcome). If he manages that, then the Animorphs essentially have no win condition short of utterly obliterating the Yeerks too quickly for them to bombard the planet; destroying the pools then may save humanity from enslavement, but there's always meteors. By contrast, with uncompromised Yeerk-protection the devices can be distributed to operatives who can hand them out as soon as the mass destruction threat is neutralised.
Does V3 know the Animorphs can read the minds of their morphs? If so, he's aware that every high-profile controller is at risk of discovery. It may not be likely, but it's a possibility that increases with their apparent strategic importance. So he would probably devote some of his Yeerks to roles that don't appear quite as important, but could get close to key targets.
Ideas for hosts:
- Famous journalists, of the sort that might be able to get a meeting with an eminent politician or CEO if needed.
- Surgeons at world-class hospitals (or at a local hospital; if a particular target is needed, you could always just stage an assault to injure them).
- Escorts for the rich and powerful, who additionally may know crucial secrets (or have ordinary human leverage over their clients; you don't need a Yeerk if all you need is to partially control somebody).
- Intelligent but not world-famous scientists and engineers, because being able to apply their minds to Yeerk tech could make up for the low number of Naharan hosts.
- The intelligence operation in some random country with no other connection to the invasion. Leverage their connections and spying capabilities to pinpoint the resistance. May even be impossible for the Animorphs to know, though the question of how to turn these people into controllers with no infrastructure and without leaving a trail is harder.
Obviously these are most useful if the supply problem can be solved, but could retain some utility even with a more clumsy solution (like flying a private plane loaded with stasis tubes once every month).
u/russxbox [+4] (3 days later)
Dedicate a Bug fighter or two to stasis tube transport. No mess, no fuss, curbside pickup and drop off, even. With a bit of cleverness on the timing and significant backend effort you could probably cover most major cities that way.
u/CCC_037 [+3] (a day later)
(try getting 10 stasis tubes through airport security)
Easy. Just make the people running said security Yeerk hosts, and then you can carry anything you want through there.
u/ZeroNihilist [+3] (2 days later)
You'd need a lot of controllers at arrival and departure for every country that you intend to expand to.
u/CCC_037 [+3] (2 days later)
Enough to run one gate, I'm guessing?
u/ZeroNihilist [+5] (2 days later)
Probably. You may be able to manage it by making sure people are on duty at the right time for the arrivals, but then it becomes a logistical exercise in and of itself.
u/Nighzmarquls [+6] (14 hours later)
So far there are a lot of things suggesting that Visser 3 should go hot. But I still think that it would be a disaster, giving humans a unifying force would be terrible, he needs to divide humanity. Some suggested operational strategies are good but I think the most destabilizing action to his enemies would be the overt peace route along side covert invasion.
Good press will prevent his enemies from acting directly against him.
Naturally this means he needs to scape goat the andalites hard for everything they are worth.
Or judging by the psych profile of humans, maybe scape goat one of the less 'photogenic' populations of controllers, such as the taxxons?
u/TK17Studios [+7] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (a day later)
In this thread: Everyone is awesome and helpful.
u/FTL_wishes [+4] superluminal (17 hours later)
Esplin knows the bug fighter was brought down by enemy action (it was cut in half), so Esplin also knows that at least one of the animorphs is in Washington, and so escaped the blast.
I'd first try and deal with the immediate problem of the crashed bug fighter. At this point, too many people have seen it to cover up the crash, so the best thing to do would be to disguise it. Blowing up the house with another bug fighter would be the first step, then mobilizing the controllers in Washington for damage control. These are all temporary solutions though, the leakage of information's been too great. The bug fighter's the immediate problem, and unfortunately Esplin has already used up one asteroid and it would be highly suspicious if another one just flattened Washington DC.
I agree with some of the other posters here - I'd start planning for an open invasion. Turning a lot more asteroids into kinetic kill vehicles to add to my existing stock (there's no way I would have turned just one asteroid into a kill vehicle, and you did say I've been busy), for a start. I'd be conservative with my remaining bug fighters, because I'm not sure what brought it down. This would hamper me greatly. Depending on how strong the shield on my pool ship is I would decloak and start glassing human Capitals and military installations, then broadcast a demand for surrender. If I can overawe the humans with my military might I could get collaborators who I would infest and start to expand ground operations with. With no need for secrecy I could demand humans either get infested or die, and given the human desire for self-preservation I think many humans would take infestation over death.
u/CCC_037 [+3] (a day later)
Esplin knows the bug fighter was brought down by enemy action (it was cut in half), so Esplin also knows that at least one of the animorphs is in Washington, and so escaped the blast.
No... Esplin knows that at least one dracon beam is in Washington. For all he knows, it could have been mailed to the military all on its own; the bug fighter could have picked up Jeremiah, and then he paniced and shot it down before he was infested.
Esplin will no doubt plan for the idea that an Animorph is out there, but he can't be certain of even that much.
u/CoolGuy54 [+2] (14 days later)
A moderately clever Esplin would have the fighter live-streaming video of its abductions in case of any potential funny business.
u/CCC_037 [+2] (14 days later)
Leaving a highly traceable wireless data signal? Doesn't that break the purpose of the cloaking field?
(Having said that, having the fighter record abductions and keeping the recording in a well-hidden on-board black-box may very well have been done - it might even have been set to broadcast immediately if the cloaking field were ever bought down).
u/CoolGuy54 [+1] (14 days later)
highly traceable
Communication laser that re-transmits through a series of cloaked high-altitude drones or satellites? Or use some zero-space bullshit?
u/CCC_037 [+2] (15 days later)
Makes it harder to trace, but pushes the cost up. And harder to trace is not impossible to trace - especially if it's a passing Andalite ship that's doing the listening. Yes, it's terribly unlikely to be traced; but it's also terribly unlikely that a victim the Yeerks intend to assimilate - that they know will be there, that they are prepared for - will ever manage to damage the ship to the point where it can't even send a distress call.
The question is, which of the two outcomes is more unlikely, and if the signal trace is more unlikely, then is the minor difference in probability sufficient to justify the cost of the stealth data sensor?
u/CoolGuy54 [+1] (14 days later)
how strong the shield on my pool ship is
Who needs shields? All we have that could hit it is missiles, and most ICBMs couldn't make it as far as the moon. Even if he just hung out in LEO intercepting missiles by beam weapon should be child's play for them.
u/chaosmosis [+5] and with strange aeons, even death may die (a day later)
I think the importance of the human population is dwarfed by the importance of the Escafil device, and that everything he does should be aimed at the latter. Yeerks munchkining morphing en masse would be ludicrously OP.
Although, I am confused how Visser has clones without also allowing similar OP consequences to result.
I think the conflict feels a little artificial given that the Yeerks have so much more power still. You should give the Animorphs access to Visser's brain somehow so they can start doing bold important things.
u/TK17Studios [+4] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (a day later)
Visser Three has clones, but the clones can't morph. Also, they're clones of his Yeerk, not of the Yeerk-Andalite combo, and they're not even properly clones of his Yeerk so much as blank templates that respond to Z-space signals a la the morphing tech.
The way this played in my mind is, V3's been doing as much research as he could into reverse engineering the morphing. He hasn't managed to recreate the nanotech, nor has he been able to figure out what kind of processing is going on behind the scenes in Seerow's version. What he has been able to do is isolate external, visible things, like registering that there is Yeerk tissue inside of a morph, and that there is a unique Z-space frequency involved in the connection between the real body and the construct.
Based off that, he's been able to get blank template Yeerks that'll respond to his own thoughts. He doesn't have any processors to run them, so he brute-forces it using Alloran's attention-splitting Andalite brain.
u/chaosmosis [+3] and with strange aeons, even death may die (a day later)
Random unassociated thought: I think Yeerks should have a Dunbar number of either infinity or like two, based on their hive mind nature.
u/Evan_Th [+3] Sunshine Regiment (2 days later)
Given what the interlude with Aftran showed about Yeerk socializing, I'm dubious that Dunbar's Number is even a relevant concept to Yeerks in the ancestral environment.
u/CoolGuy54 [+1] (14 days later)
a unique Z-space frequency involved in the connection between the real body and the construct.
He should probably be working on how to detect or jam this, not just use it himself.
u/creatureofthewood [+3] (a day later)
I'd be manufacturing those portable yeerk emergency infestation thingies as quickly as possible and doing a blitz infestation of as much of the population as possible while still keeping it a secret. Infestation is a pretty perfect crime, literally all you need is no witnesses for the actual infestation. I don't see how the humans would figure it out quickly.
After that...depending on the degree to which human military resistance is a threat, I guess the Europe, UK, USA population is too low to be worth the effort of putting up with their more technologically advanced warfare. So... you might just do away with them from space once the secret is out - Asia and Africa alone will yield a cool 5 billion hosts.
The human population has historically been able to double in 20 years even without actively trying to reproduce quickly. The world record for most children birthed is 69, I'm sure technological assistance could increase that. So I don't see it as crucial to grab all 7 billion hosts.
Yeerks have superior technology and don't suffer from coordination problems the way humanity, I'm not sure I see the use of saving Earth's tech infrastructure.
u/TK17Studios [+3] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (a day later)
Good points, with one caveat—
This hasn't been made clear in r!Animorphs yet, but it's true in canon and probably true here: the Yeerk homeworld is fully blockaded, and most of the other planets they've taken or attacked are embroiled in open warfare. They don't have any strongholds where materiel is being produced en masse, and much of their technology is stolen and not well-understood by the Yeerk population as a whole.
In general, the Yeerks are something like a medieval town that got transplanted into the space age three years ago. They've updated and they're learning, and they benefit from being able to easily share expertise, but they've still got a ways to go.
u/creatureofthewood [+3] (a day later)
Hmm, I mean even without the high-tech stasis devices and weapons, if you are willing to work with the 3 day constraint I imagine a taser and a yeerk in a tupperware box would accomplish much the same thing in terms of blitz infestations. You could easily get families and roommates and such while they are sleeping, any close friends you spend one on one time with, ambush people who are walking alone at night, break into houses and infest everyone and if anyone asks questions it was a robbery, arrange one on one meetings with every member of an organization / school / work / prison etc. Anyone who ever goes to the hospital. Infestations can spread through the social network very, very rapidly if you remove the "get them to the pool" constraint.
Hmm...well I imagine that even given nothing but human technological know-how and human resources, rebuilding human-level infrastructure is a cinch if you don't have to worry about human coordination problems, but this should not necessarily be assumed. (And I guess I'm assuming the Yeerk hivemind is excused from coordination problems due to being a hivemind but this may also not be true)
not well-understood by the Yeerk population as a whole.
Oh, I thought they had a hivemind where they shared experience and knowledge from their hosts?
u/TK17Studios [+2] Author of r!Animorphs: The Reckoning (a day later)
Multiple hiveminds. Information transfer isn't perfect or complete. Each pool is its own hivemind, and cross-pollination between pools handles both genetic and info exchange, but not everything can be carried over.
u/chaos-engine [+4] (a day later)
Ask the andalites rebels politely if they can share the morph technology if the yerks promise to only morph into their hosts, get stuck in that morph, and then have the chee destroy the yerk-like controls bringing the body back to life...oh wait.
u/royishere [+4] (2 days later)
If there's any way to pass the meteor strike off as NOT HIS ORDER/FAULT, he's going to want to do it, as I doubt the higher-ups would approve of (a) killing a whole bunch of his own soldiers and (b) letting things get to the point that it was necessary.
A story like "pool was attacked by Andalite resistance, we subdued them, they called an asteroid down as a last-ditch suicidal measure", if plausible, might work. Visser Three values his freedom, and if an investigation results in something as minor as increased oversight, that's probably a loss for him considering his secret goals. On top of the continued invasion, he's going to make keeping his autonomy privileges a priority.
u/LieGroupE8 [+7] ** (11 hours later)
For the record, I think crowdsourcing should be used sparingly, if at all, on stories like this. Something we think of might completely derail your story, even if it's over a small detail that we wouldn't have noticed if you'd just written the story as you envision it. I also enjoy not knowing what's going to happen, so I probably won't participate in future threads of this type.
THAT SAID, here are my immediate thoughts on Visser Three's possible strategies.
V3 is facing a constrained optimization problem in an uncertain environment. He faces a trade-off between slow invasion, which could get him more hosts but leaves time for things to go wrong, and rapid invasion, which could get him fewer hosts but perhaps too fast for anyone to stop him completely. His decision will depend on whether he believes there is any significant resistance remaining. Based on what happened in the last chapter, he will conclude that some of the resistance likely survived, and is possibly attempting to mobilize the United States against an invasion. Slow invasion is not likely to work a second time - it will probably just end up being open war anyway. So V3 will cut his losses and get bolder. Even if he just gets 1 or 2 billion out of the 7 billion humans and kills the rest, he might consider that a victory. (After all, he can just breed more people).
If V3 was OK with killing thousands of yeerks, he should be perfectly OK with killing thousands more by sending them on potentially suicidal missions. For example, he could get together the 12 remaining bug fighters and attempt a rapid hostile takeover of an entire town in a single day (I say "town" rather than "city" because a city has too many people to infest that quickly, and utter chaos would ensue). Now, these yeerks will all die unless they build a pool, so they would use the temporary surge of manpower to rapidly construct a pool over the next three days. If it takes longer, let the yeerks die or take them back to the mother ship, and swap in others.
During this time, the outside world would notice something wrong, but if V3 acts strategically, it won't matter. The bug fighters and the mothership should be able to repel any initial force that people send against the town. V3 can buy himself more time by sending yeerks on suicide missions to infest world leaders, who can then divert external help from the town, at least for a day or two. (He can infest news stations too, and spread confusion and lies about what is happening). If V3 takes a bigger risk and invades a town with a military base, he can use the might of a human military to take nearby towns by force and construct pools in them as well. If he also strategically does this on the soil of a country not so friendly with the United States, like Russia, it will be rather awkward and difficult for the U.S. to mobilize an immediate strike response, for fear of sparking a war.
With any luck, this strategy will allow V3 to establish a sizeable presence on earth while all the human governments are too confused to do anything about it. If he can maintain this presence for five months, the other pool ships will arrive and solidify his victory.
Problems with this plan. 1) If a yeerk pool cannot be constructed in anything close to 3 days, even with a whole town of workers, then this plan will fail from the very beginning. 2) If yeerks are not willing to go on suicide missions, this could hamper the plans significantly. 3) V3 would need to find a way to stop humans from using nuclear weapons once they realize what's happening. 4) V3 might not have the resources to do a rapid take-over of a whole town. The requirements might exceed the limits of how many yeerks can be brought down from the mothership in a short period of time. 5) The plan is a gamble that humans cannot effectively mobilize in a short period of time.
If V3 decides that immediate hostile takeover is too risky, he can fall back on a slightly slower strategy, though still faster than before. Infest a rich person and purchase a location on which a pool can be covertly constructed. Once it's done, bring a bunch of yeerks down from the mothership into the pool, and then do a rapid takeover of a town - or city, this time.
Anyway, this is getting long, so I'll end my stream of thoughts here.
u/Dwood15 [+3] (15 hours later)
In V3's shoes, I would go the KGB and psychological route... Open war would be avoided at all costs. Certainly flattening a country with plausible denial wouldn't be out of the question, but it's still a last resort. Get into influential organizations and roles, as well as numerous people on the ground.
Reduce the number of controllers in America specifically, leaving specialized task forces to counter the efforts of the kids, but move the base of operations to North Korea. America is still under the effects of the 'drug war' during this time, and the majority of the public agrees with the stance. V3, by taking over organizations like SWAT or NatGuard, can take kids out via bureacracy and some 'accidents' during 'drug raids'. No need to make everyone a controller to fight the Animorphs.
Then, while using the 'drug war' as pretense for fighting the kids, I would begin focusing on NK, and once again, no need to get EVERYONE as a controller. Just enough people, say 1/3-2/3 to keep the rest under control until more resources become available.
From NK, I would begin moving to China and South Korea. V3 could even start playing the fool in America so the Animorphs are distracted while his main focus becomes communist and socialist countries. Even instigating a war between NK and SK would not be out of the question.
u/CoolGuy54 [+1] (14 days later)
So it's occurred to me that he must already have a response protocol in place for Bug fighter crashes or similar displays of alien tech in a semi-populated area without a big controller presence.
My first thought was send a bunch of other cloaked fighters to drop off a team of infested cops or soldiers dressed in the uniforms of the most important and intimidating agency that could plausibly be on site, quickly set up a hologram over the site, and infest any witnesses/ first responders as necessary.
Now with the pool lost, they've got no particular attachment to any geographical location, and they want to step up the pace of things.
Why not use the crashed fighter as an opportunity to make a bold roll of the dice, and respond to the potential contact between the resistance and the USGOV?
Say the crash was a Russian (or alien possibly, as per the other comments here, but this is even higher stakes) aircraft or similar, and start infesting everyone who comes to investigate. Get them to put the word up the chain of command, and you'll soon have serious inroads into all sorts of Washington power structures, move fast, take a few more risks, and he can own the government in weeks or less.