Lightdragon, on 01 October 2012 - 02:14 PM, said:
wrong, he wasnt revealed at all to be a comstar double not publicly, only people that knew were the people doing the audit on the word of blake for acceptance into the star league, and a few select leaders and generals in the fwl
Well, if you mean to the general public, then yes, that's true. I meant that it was already revealed to high-ranking characters (and the readers) by that point.
MegaMasher, on 03 October 2012 - 05:06 PM, said:
Except you miss the point. The thread is questioning why people hate Blakists. It isn't because they were evil, like all the others, it is because they were irredeemably evil. Davions started the NAIS, and tried to return the universe to a better place, for example. Blakists NEVER do anything good. They are like Kali Liao, or a deranged dog, better when put down.
As an aside, I wasn't kidding at all about liking the completely evil part of the Blakists. I find 40k to be only almost dark enough for my liking.
The Word of Blake tried to make the universe a better place just the same as, if not more, than the Federated Suns or anyone else. As Evinthal says, the forces that were used to attack Tharkad and New Avalon were originally gifts, not attack forces. The Blakists genuinely believed that the Second Star League represented the fulfillment of Blake's (alleged) prophecies of the reunification of the Inner Sphere and a new era of peace, and only attacked because the Successor States disbanded it.
Yes, they used weapons of mass destruction and committed numerous war crimes (Collectively, of course. Despite attempts in-universe and out to portray the Wobbies as a group of insane fanatics, there are plenty of Word of Blake personnel who would have none of that), but at least they did so because they thought that was the only way to save the Star League and their vision of an era of peace in the Inner Sphere. Meanwhile, other factions, like the Taurians and Regulans, have comitted similar atrocities (and worse!) for revenge and other such justification. What makes
them more redeemable than the Blakists?
Monsoon, on 03 October 2012 - 10:23 PM, said:
For me, it's the idea that this group can fight off EVERYONE and survive for as long as they do. They use WMD's, have secretly somehow built a giant army and then go and take on anyone and everyone. Seriously the bookkeepers in Comstar must have been the worst to not notice those kind of resources being diverted for decades!
Besides the whole plot just didn't fit in for me and led to the even worse Dark Age storyline. (The mechclixs were fun, but the storyline was ridiculous.)
The Word of Blake could survive as long because their opponents were hardly in a state to fight them. The Lyran Alliance and the Federated Suns were devestated from the FedCom Civil War, the Free Worlds League started their spectacular disintegration as soon as the fake Thomas Marik was revealed, the Draconis Combine was in civil war, and most of these factions were also simultaneously engaged in at least one external war (The Federated Suns with the Capellans and the Taurians, the Lyrans with the FWL and the Jade Falcons and some so forth). Furthermore, communications were heavily disrupted for most of the Word of Blake's opponents thanks to the White-Out, impairing attempts to counter them even more. Even with these factors, and others like besieged capitals and weapons of mass destruction, the Word of Blake could only effectively fight for a few years, and when the offensive into the Protectorate started in 3076 they disintegrated very rapidly.
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