[b]Redana![/b]

A blink of violet eyes. Then she gets up - suddenly, awkwardly, bizarrely, like someone learning how to move one muscle group at a time. She rolls her head and her deep, amethyst eyes. Her head spins three hundred and sixty degrees around on her neck and you'd forgotten that the Ikarani are based off Kaeri genetics so it's frankly the worst surprise.

As spooky as this is, it's also somehow hot as hell. She's fucking [i]Beautiful[/i], after all.

Then, as her control over her body starts to settle, shivering up through her shoulders, down to her elbows, discharging in her fingers with a set of rapid fire finger snaps, she speaks. "No ritual," she said. "No target. No incantations of targeting and awakening. You," she points a rapid-fire snapping finger set at you, "must be a threat. A criminal, looking to defile a sleeping bride of Artemis."

She winks at you. "Well, you've got good taste," she said. 

A silver energy runs through her. She reaches and flexes, wiry strength visible animating her slender body. She falls back into a simple combat posture right leg back, primed for kicking. "So, I could murder you so bloody that even [i]I'd[/i] remember it," she said, "or I could transform you into a deergirl and hunt you all over the -" she sniffed the air. "Bunker? Spaceship? Really large industrial plant? - Cuter ending, that way. How cute you feeling, cutie?"

[b]Alexa![/b]

"It doesn't feel hollow, though," said Lacedo quietly. "It feels good. It feels better than sex. Even now I'm shivering with joy just thinking about it. You described all of that like you wanted it to sound bad but," she shifted uncomfortably, "all it did was make me want to pin you down and fuck your brains out."

She looks at you, a strange burning, haunted look in her eyes. "You know that humans don't get that feeling? They get to make the decision about who rises and who falls, but even then it's not really their decision. It's ours. We earn the win and they [i]have[/i] to acknowledge it. When you think about it, they're the real slaves. What are they even living for? What is the meaning of [i]human[/i] life?"

[b]Dolce![/b]

Ramses looked at you like she was resisting the urge to lean across the table and pat your head. "Listen, Captain," she said gingerly. "The crew was [i]never[/i] going to come to you with their troubles. You could be the friendliest sheep in the stars but you're in the senior executive branch and they're grunts. You might as well be the Imperial Princess. Worse, actually, because the Princess works as an Initiate and they know how they relate to that."

[b]Bella![/b]

The Tides of Poseidon are often billed as unknowable horrors from beyond the stars. Unreasoning monsters that serve as the armed wing of the earthquakes they accompany. The punishment issued by Poseidon for those who have grown safe and complacent. The peril they represent is existential. If Odoacer had not defeated the Eater of Worlds - which was by every history lesson a precarious and narrow thing - then Tellus would have been broken and humanity ended.

But the Empire's leadership has long known that these are not gibbering monsters of myth and film. They have their own societies that exist in strange reflections of the societies they are sent to destroy. These can be subverted with assassination, suborned through gifts and broken with politics - and they will engage in the same in exchange. Far from being bloodthirsty beasts, perhaps the single most consistent driver of conflict with the Tides is that their relationship with Poseidon is so strong that they know exactly where and when to strike in order to take advantage of the chaos sown by the Rainbow Lord, and are ruthless about exploiting disaster for their own ends. 

The end result of this is that the process isn't nearly as alien as it seems from a distance.

The chief problem, as you can swiftly identify, is that the Assistant Secretary of Fear and Doubt is well suited for his role. He has a military mind, and a paranoid one. He has directed all of his available resources to the production and maintenance of a battlecrab legion while also avoiding promoting any subordinates more than he strictly has to. He actually has the younger cadre of bureaucrats locked in an all-against-all struggle and minor armed conflict in an attempt to draw insight into which of them are the most capable, but he continuously dithers over actually promoting them, usually well after the point where the young officer in question has been killed by a rival. 

The result, then, is a militarized society that can only support a comparatively small military due to its weak economy, and an ambitious officer corps only kept in check by its internal conflict. And this is actually the most interesting Imperial test you've faced so far, because what you are seeing here is actually [i]ideal[/i]. The Tides, so long as the Assistant Secretary is in charge, are weak, divided and pliant. They are categorically incapable of posing any threat to you, Redana or the ship in this state. They will be a single mediocre battlecrab legion and nothing more.

You could fix these problems almost trivially - promote capable young brainsquid, devote resources towards economic and industrial growth, undo the paranoid security state. But that will start the ball rolling on them becoming a serious power player aboard the Plousios. The example of Odoacer as a powerful military commander is all the example you need to know what the consequences of [i]that[/i] might be. 

[i]In the opera theatre, Nero's carmine fan sweeps under your neck - then under Redana's. "The riddle of Empire!" she said with a showwoman's glittering smile. "For the nation to be strong, the Empress must be weak. For the Empress to be strong the nation must be weak! So she must walk between the Scylla of a coup and the Charybdis of invasion!"[/i]

You might want to take some time to think it over.