Phantom Empire Faction Feedback

[Blighter]

I dont know what PM's Virus or Kane sent, but I'm <strike>not sure</strike> unconvinced that we've forced diplomacy on anybody proactively. That said, your next paragraph answers the question as to why diplomacy hasn't changed, because we're invisible. People don't know how to treat a force of people that exist in hush tones and bed time stories to children who misbehave. Whether that's an actual problem or another aspect of the Phantoms as a faction and a force is debatable. You conclude that it is not acceptable, but I can find reasons as to why it would be.

Regarding your example of the Corsairs, that actually happened to me. I got jumped by three HAF a good while ago, ultimatums were issued and apologies recieved. The same thing also happened with the XA, which was sorted out ingame by roleplay, Ench to be exact, when Gloom was a Phantom. As is her style, its not documented on the forums following the school of thought that roleplay should not be forum based.

That reminded me of something that might need to be looked into detail a bit.
Now while I'm no longer a member of that faction, I'm only speaking for myself here as usual.

At one side there's the Phantoms, an official faction, with its diplomacy chart there.
Now while one can say that it's appropriate, if not even required, for any faction with official status to actively maintain its diplomacy and do the talk and all, on the other side one has to take into account the roleplay aspect of that task.

The way I always saw it, the Phantoms were seen, in-RP, as McNeo put it there in a way.
Ghosts, legends, parts of scary bed-time stories, a piece of Sirius lore that is more myth than anything else.

Phantoms operating in the shadows, decieving others, plotting their destructive plots, never leaving any trace of their existence, that kind of thing.
Invisible aside from the Phantom Slayers, Terminator Lords, the Eidolon and Revenant if and when they operated in the open.

Hypothetically speaking from an in-RP perspective, would a group like that, one that is based on stealth, deciet, manipulation and so on, one about which you don't know where they come from, where they go, what their goals are, openly conduct some large-scale diplomacy?

Would you ever have a Phantom Ambassador set foot on Crete for example, to conduct talks with the Corsair Elders over some rum and cigars?
Hell, for that matter, would anyone expose himself willingly to some shadowy being of myth and legend, with only those myths and legends forming as good as the entire knowledge about the Phantoms there is, in-RP?

You see, due to the nature of the Phantoms as they are in Sirius, namely that shadowy organization, with little need for resources, for that matter, with no desire to control any resources or territory, no desire to expand and build bases in every corner of Sirius, there's not much of a need for any large-scale political babble diplomacy thing.

Now before any one goes "Wtf, no need for resources?" I'll just say that it doesn't matter what justification gets pulled out of whose rear-end.
Portal to Crathygtan space on the Revenant, some shady web of secret agents and contacts scattered throughout Sirius, doesn't matter.
The Phantoms have no goals in mind related to control of specific space or wealth of any kind.
There is, aside from maybe docking rights on a specific base, -nothing- I can think of at the time of writing this post that could warrant a diplomatic discussion,
and that one thing can be done with the individual Phantom when there is an encounter or something.

For whatever it's worth, whichever person encountered the ones that fly in space, in the open, would at best know one thing, aside from whatever they got to know about the individual Phantom they encountered:

They fight the "lawful" axis, they don't fight the "unlawful" axis as it's not a part of their agenda, whatever that really may be.
For Joe McUnlawful, that's one set of guns less pointed at him, one more set of guns pointed at whoever is or may be/will be/was in his way.
Any other thing related to diplomacy depends not on them, but on the factions and players they encounter.

[That Xeno incident McNeo mentioned, it didn't come as a result of Phantoms shooting the Xenos, as they've got no interest in them whatsoever.
Instead it went the other way around, and as it was only minor I took it upon myself to solve the "issue", mostly in-game and in-RP.]

As Lohingren said:

in my opinion Reavengitair the BD should be unfriendly if not hostile to their cause.

If not just for the fact they are Gaijin.

From my point of view, that's a good enough reason, and perfectly fine, in-line with whatever little I know about the Blood Dragons as a whole.

Afterall, aside from the "The enemy of my enemy..." etc. thing, the various small encounters with Phantoms and stuff like the Cambrdige MOX-bomb thing, what is it one can base his/her "diplomacy" on?
One's own character, or way one's faction would treat those shady figures, about whom as good as no facts are known.
Nothing substantial about their actual strengths and weaknesses as a whole.
So really, aside from that stuff above, what's left?

Myth and legend.

Now, "they" shoot whoever Joe McUnlawful shoots, and I'm sure Joe McUnlawful doesn't want to wake up one day to have a man clad in a suit of Power Armor standing at his doorstep, pointing at the corpses of Joe's family hanging from the ceiling before he rips out Joe's spine.
Then that man'd head back to the Hellbound, Vulcan, Temple of the Revenant, whatever, and create a painting of that scene with Joe's blood, using Joe's torn-off skin as a canvas.
Shiny.

Ain't that one kind of rumor that'd be around about the Ghosties?