It's possible Draak should agree to a war crimes treaty. We would likely use everything we possibly could if we were desperately defending, but I could perhaps see such disastrous tactics in wars of aggression banned, and even possibly any perpetrators handed over to an international court.

"It often becomes - ambiguous in situations of warfare who's defending and who's attacking, in any given moment and in narratives about who started the fight to begin with."

...Hmm, I can see the concern.

I was trying to frame a potential concession because I don't want our technology to be developed into weapons of war by Amentan countries. This is possibly a lot to ask and a bit hypocritical of me since it's not like Draak are going to stop making weapons.

"Is there a reason this is coming up right now -"

It's because I'm considering active technology sharing. Some of the technology I'm considering sharing could - eventually - lead to weapons whose use has a humanitarian cost out of proportion to their strategic value, as you put it.

"If you have a more specific vision of how that could work we could draft legislation about it. ...most war-related treaties only apply to signatories even if they have informal normative force in other contexts."

There is a particular class of weapons I am worried about. If those, specifically, were internationally recognized as war crimes to use, and if treaty signatories agreed not to attempt to develop them, much of my concern that sharing technology might eventually lead to these weapons being used would be assuaged. I think I could detect anyone trying to develop them. I could certainly detect anyone testing one.

"- do you imagine your people also signing such a treaty?"

Possibly with some affordance for the fact that all four Elders and one other know these secrets - we could agree not to stockpile them excessively, to keep them only in certain places, to not use them except in retaliation against similar weapons. I can't see us agreeing to dismantle them entirely.

"But you'd object to any Amentans developing them at all."

Right now, yes. Giving others even the remote potential for such weapons is- Terrifying.

"...you have a lot of leverage but I don't think you'll find this sits well enough to drive an international war crimes treaty that doesn't apply to Draak unless you apply it very heavily."

I should have said nothing, then.

Onesong curse him for his impatience and lack of foresight! You cannot unsay anything, cannot put the secret back in the box!

"There may be some way to get at least part of what you're aiming at, but I'm not immediately thinking of anything that doesn't make it look like you expect the Draak to provoke Amenta, perhaps all of Amenta, and like you expect that to go fine for you if and only if we don't have whatever this weapon is. That's really very much what it looks like to propose a treaty like you describe without anything else going on to complicate it."

-You can't hurt us without starships. The weapon is just terrible. Five people knowing it is five too many. And the Guardian almost never gives up her weapons, is why I can't just agree to destroy ours.

"Even if you're privately skeptical that we'll ever invent our own starships and plan to keep the details from us forever that doesn't come through in the structure of the proposal."

I approached this badly and I'm in no state to discuss important political things any further right now.

"...all right."

He turns to go back to his ship, then stops and stares at the sky instead.

I don't understand your caste sometimes.

"I'm... sorry to hear that. Is there something I can explain -?"

I wish the last half hour had not happened. But that's impossible. So I will try to learn from it instead. Freedom to provoke Amenta and get away with it is not what I was getting at. Why was it understood that way?

"That's - a fairly typical reason to want to reduce someone else's military capabilities without commensurate cost to your own. The exceptions tend to come with some kind of protectorate arrangement - we demilitarized Shi Alassei, for instance, but at the same time we arranged to let their greys join our own army, pledged to defend their interests and fulfill their commitments on the international stage, and took over all the routine patrols of their waters. If we - told, uh, Calado, that we'd invented a terrifying bioweapon, that we didn't want them to invent it, that we were going to propose a treaty forbidding their scientists to look into some applications of virology, but that we were keeping it, just couldn't convince our universities to all destroy what they'd made and pension off the researchers but it was definitely a very scary weapon, one they shouldn't even want because of how bad it was..." She trails off. Calado would be bewildered that they were so clumsy, actually, but if you factor that out it looks like Tapa is about to annex half their territory or starve them out with trade sanctions or dump criminals into their borders and refuse to take them back and threaten retaliation if Calado doesn't house them.

This is frustrating and I don't like it. I'll solve this by inventing something that makes them not work and sharing that with everyone. I am just hubristic enough to think that it is probably possible.

"I'd hate to divert your attention from your other projects if there is a diplomatic solution to be had but you might be right in thinking there is none. When I say you have leverage I mostly mean everyone still hopes that any season now we'll have planets or at least the ability to scale up Amentan-controlled projects to look for them."

That was supposed to be my goal in coming months but then I was reminded the weapon exists and didn't handle that well.

Sigh.

I'm not actually sure how Amenta could make finding more planets our top priority.