Pirating Gang Wiped by Justicar - Humans, Batarians Dead

Pirating Gang Wiped by Justicar - Humans, Batarians Dead

Tjanja Vesir, Thessian Observer

Thessia - An asari-led gang of at least eighteen suspected pirates were executed by an unnamed Justicar in the remote Hamlani System in the Athena Nebula.

After killing each of the gang members, the Justicar called in police officials from Thessia. Upon their arrival, they were presented with a dossier and a debriefing on the criminals and their doings.

The gang of eleven asari, five humans and two batarians was operating what appears to be a major reloading point for pirated goods in the Athena Nebula. Weapons, medication, construction equipment and large quantities of refined raw materials were stockpiled in several subterranean structures. Three armed spacecraft were also discovered on site

Speaker Funira D’Undiis said: “We identified a number of items that can clearly be attributed to incidents over the last year. Here was the place where everything got repacked and whitewashed to be shipped outside the cluster. Having seized this infrastructure is a great achievement. We express our thanks to the Justicar.”

There even seem to be indications that the gang was involved in the Eezo pirating a year ago, D’Undiis said.

Asked about the fact that non-asari were among the dead, Thessia officials pointed out that Justicars are mainly targeting asari inside asari space, but won’t make differences if they encounter non-asari in their way supporting or defending their target.

A human diplomat on Thessia called the event an example of local law enforcement.

And this is why Justicars scare the crap out of me. That fanatical devotion to the Code(®) and the incapability of seeing the world outside of black and white is just scary, man.

Well, they were pirates. In asari space.

As they say on Erszbat and Omega...and a lot of the Terminus systems actually...'gorak nal ibsalis.'

'Their house, their rules.'

They get the job done for no large reward or fame. It's something that I deeply, deeply respect. I have never met or even seen one in person but I have a shitload of respect for what she did there.

Now that is good. Place is full of bad news; kids murdered, fraudulent churches, you get the idea. Good to hear something more upbeat.

... Well, if you class pirates being blown up as 'upbeat'.

Never really studied the Justicars much, not really my thing (too many rules), but anyone who can do that gets a free drink in my book.

Wait, they can't drink, can they? Never mind.

Only the asari, "Equal voice and rights for all, unless we don't like you in which case we'll sic our biotic murder-priestesses on you", beautiful absolutely beautiful.

But, in all seriousness, let us as a group take a moment to step back and appreciate the rank idiocy of what just happened. A band of eighteen pirates is a functionally miniscule group, barely enough to crew a pair of corvettes much less something like a frigate so in all likelihood they weren't executing the vast majority of the raids themselves. An argument substantiated by both the primary nature of their operation (laundering and smuggling) and the raw amount of goods on hand. Not a small crime by any means but hardly one that merits summary execution.

But fine, as Mekan said "gorak nal ibsalis", and I'm certain someone will chip in in a moment with the "asari work in mysterious ways" argument anyway, but even setting aside the hilarious amount of overkill involved and the rather appallingly unprofessional post op "justicar hugbox/gloating session" this is still stupidity of the highest order and another example of a justicar making things worse with their involvement.

As the lovely T'Nara was oh so insistently pointing out in another discussion asari are safe from pirates and the like because they "follow the logistics train". Ignoring how disconnected that argument is from the reality of life in extra-Citadel space I'd like to point out that, for once, the asari officials had a chance to do exactly that and categorically failed.

A smuggling operation like this (because it really really wasn't a pirate one) has clients. They have a ring of people they do business with and a number of groups who they supply and are supplied by in turn.

Shame offers can't be made for those somewhat valuable tidbits because, again, some justicar took it upon herself to blow the brains containing said tidbits across a bulkhead.

Well of course you would, you have consistently demonstrated a near total inability to look past your own cleavage.

Idiot. They should have been extradited at the very least.

It's really somehow fitting that one of the few components of the asari military assets that regularly does something completely botches it up just as often.

Why is the news congratulating this woman? She murdered eighteen people without trial for smuggling.

Absolutely this. The justicar thing is great for fiction, and speak to us in romantic way, but in reality we have laws and judgement for a reason. It's because things are complicated, sometimes people's motivations are complex, and sometimes things are not as they appear to be. What if some of those guys were infiltrated investigators? What if they were patsy used by another, bigger crime lord who knows exactly how to manipulate Justicar because they follow a code to the letter? We won't know that because they're all dead.
Ho, and what if she screwed up and got it wrong, if not this time then the previous or the next one? Nobody's above mistakes.
And you know something else? Putting people in jail has a great advantage : it gives them an opportunity to reform. There are plenty of examples of former criminals who became good people. I don't see why that lady wouldn't give them their chance. If anything they could at least try a non lethal neutralization.


Dear gods Aleksanders! You really need help.

Oh yes you know me, I am positively addicted to the cleavage. Nothing makes me happier than a nice perky set of blue breasts bouncing in the breeze.

It's a problem admittedly but I'm managing.

to the point of online stalking.

nah, you're not.

Such a lovely noise is it not?

And this serves as a perfect example to keep the fuck away from, and to not fuck with Justicars. They certainly rank very high on "let's not fuck with those guys" lists, and if they aren't, they should be.

But it's always good to hear about trash being disposed of. Pirates are something that the galaxy needs far less of.

Justicars are interesting, I think. I mean, the asari are really into community, you know? They're never really alone. They make decisions communally, they have the most intimate form of interaction with other people, they respond to the opinions and feelings of other people. But at the same time they value the individual. That's pretty clear, really, because each person gets to have a say the same as anyone else, their own personal voice. Majority rule, but at the same time everyone directly gets a voice? I don't understand that, myself, but that's how it works. More than that, they follow the advice of Matriarchs - or so I've always heard - because of the individual experience and personal wisdom she's accumulated. They don't even have a unified government or nation!

But Justicars...they're the opposite. I think the average asari is communal but able to hold her own sense of identity. Justicars are alone, but have no identity because they subsume themselves to the Oaths. Dedicated to nothing but the lone pursuit of their version of justice, you know? And rigid - following their code, which has no nuance, no means to be influenced by public opinion or majority feeling or stuff like that. Does this make sense?

They're like a reversal of what the asari usually are, and it fascinates and frightens me.

You make some sense, Bitterskin. Interesting to hear this from a non-asari.

but it's not their version of justice, it is our justice. Every asari in the Republics bows to a Justicar and their code being the most rigid imaginable is part of why. Everyone knows what they are about, there is no doubt. In fact I wonder how many are out there or how many more are preparing to swear the oaths for some reason or another after the war is over.

For all the venom Aleksanders is dripping in his post, he is right. The justicar stopped criminals but also made sure the criminal enterprise behind them cuts the chain and builds a new operation elsewhere.

She delivered the equivalent of chopped finger instead of crushing the head. Smarts but not lethal and makes the target mad.

Gotta say, Nikolai, it's not all that different from a merc or pirate organization knocking down another one out in the Terminus Systems. It may be stupid to just kill them and not bother to find any leads on other operations or activities, but it's not such a huge deal, and in the end, the asari had it set up this way for whatever reason, and are now dealing with the consequences of that decision and the actions taken in accordance with it. The Justicar here may not have been smart about it, but once again, gorak nal ibsalis. Their house, their rules. They may not be good rules, but I'm not about to argue.

Ah, the Justicars, an antiquated piece of asari history that nonetheless persists to this day. Whilst they may make for interesting stories, where matters truly are black and white, they really have no place in today's reality, where things are anything but.

Consider: any who have committed even the slightest crime (as defined by the Code, not the law, I might add) are eligible for execution should a Justicar stumble across them. Now imagine if said Justicar should arrive on Omega, or Cartagena, or even Illium. I would be forfeit. My sisters in Eclipse, my rivals in the Suns, my civilian friends who dabble in the black market, and the people I get contracted to kill would all be forfeit. Most of you people, unless you can claim true innocence, would be forfeit. Entire cities would be slaughtered, and yet that Justicar would still be held up as a paragon of virtue.

Rare they may be, but they're just another reason I'm glad I left the Republics behind.

Justicars are bound so tightly to the strictures that define their life that they are nigh incapable of deviation. Personally powerful? Oh very much so yes. But they are also predictable, understandable, and easily disassembled.

Their binary view of the galaxy awards them no friends among those who traditionally exist in a somewhat grey area. Which, when you get right down to it, includes a great many very powerful people (mercenaries, military organizations, corporations, merchant cartels, etc.) and even more ordinary people who, nonetheless, may be somewhat disinclined to provide passive support or active aid if they think there's a chance the justicar may be obligated to kill them.

They are, in short, bereft of any alliances outside their own insular society, easily manipulated, and, again I cannot overstate this, predictable.

You give them far too much credit, walking apocalypses they are not.

This is rather amusing considering that most justicars would probably take an equally dim view of your...freelancer group.

You mean to say they're essentially an internal hardline conservative faction tasked with maintaining the status to the point of near stagnation.

Really when you need almost a nearly wholly autonomous sect of murderhobos to ensure internal stability something has gone cataclysmically wrong.

Except that the asari Republics have, time and time again, portrayed themselves as being better than that. What you're saying is more or less par for the course in extra-Citadel space but the Terminus and Abyss operate under a different set of rules, a different set of standards which the asari are not permitted to sink to if they want to maintain their whole "holier than thou" aura.

They can't have their cake and eat it too basically. And this, an operation where the non-asari citizens would have been fined and imprisoned for smuggling in their own territories and instead were

well

gunned down

is not only stupid tactically but rude. Which really, when you take into account the asari's rather precarious political is position, is actually doubly stupid. They're not so secure that they can just casually off the citizens of other nations in their borders without a fair trial or sentencing and ignore any backlash.

Why in God's name aren't there more asari like you?

Oh, a Justicar doing her thing. Well, I don't want to be the one she's after now.
Someone's got to bring out the trash.

Also, Justicars run with asari society for millennia. It's interesting that they are perceived as destructive for us. They're really not, obviously.
As for the question if this move was good or not, it seems the head of the organization was cut off and the logistics base and even ships were taken away. What's possibly left is, if it doesn't disband itself, much easier to follow up or finish off than it was.

Also, a detail some seem to have overlooked:

Not at all, the article says this:

The local authorities will most likely find many more leads in the computers of the ships and the station.

This would be adorable in it's hypocrisy if it wasn't borderline sociopathic.

Glad to know that the woman partially responsible for the handling of her nation's interactions with other sovereign states thinks that mowing down eighteen small time smugglers in a completely appropriate reaction if it's a justicar doing it.

Because, say it with me now, "justicars are never wrong".

God help you if you're ever called upon to interact with the Terminus in any way. With tact like that you're bound to provoke an international incident.

Oh obviously. As we all obviously know, saying the work "obviously" at the end of your sentence completely invalidates any arguments to the contrary and renders your, patently obvious, argument untouchable.

Obviously.
And this would be wonderful news if this was the sole smuggling ring in the galaxy. Or, indeed, the sole criminal group operating in asari space.

They were informed based upon what the Justicar knew and generally they don't need much more than a personal cassus belli that satisfies their code in order to conduct a little impromptu slaughter.

This is, of course, on top of the fact that time, skilled technicians, and money must be spent cracking the database encryptions and decoding the logs. An effort that will likely be all for naught now that the story's hit and the associates of the group in question will be enacting personal countermeasures that render the potentially damaging information largely useless. Additionally, this scenario hinges on the fact that there is data to work with and it wasn't flushed in an effort to protect allies or out of sheer spite at their impending demise.

And to round it off, your statement also fails to account for whatever information was not directly recorded by the group and, instead, mentally retained to ensure anonymity across the board or provide a bargaining chip in the event they were brought in.

Bravo.