Ah, not related to the character at hand, but this links into a question I've been pondering for some time now.Siege wrote:Which is unbearably stupid, because if he just ditched the spiky armour of deathdoomskulls, combed his hair a bit, and asked nicely, chances are Quartermass, Andrews or Saint (well maybe not Saint) would simply help him along. Out of the goodness of their heart, because they're altruistic suckers for that sort of thing.
OK I've been working on a rewriting of Lord Caleb Belle (I know I've been working on rewriting X Y and Z forever, I am like a poor quality creative writing Penelope who no-one wants to sleep with, that aside...) and it occurs to me, why doesn't he do this? It'd be a blow to his Transingularitan pride, as it would to the rest of his people, but when you're facing imminent death by radiation, sentient area denial weapon and Catastrophic Gravitational Gradient Shift then there comes a time when ones pride has to be swallowed.
I can just imagine the resolution to it all:
Quartermass: See, if you folks wanted a new planet you could ha' just asked fer one, my wife has several billion of them spare, ye know.
Caleb: Excuse me, Professor?
Quartermass: Oh, my wife is the ruler of an intergalactic empire two million years into the distant future, it's a long story.
Caleb: *Eyes widen and left eyebrow shoots up over forehead* I see. Well I am doubly glad we were able to resolve this peacefully then.
The only downside is that Saint Blancat probably wouldn't find him sexy anymore if he wasn't trying to conquer the world.
I can see others on TSE being hell bent on conquest not compromise, but I imagine Lord Caleb as a much more pragmatic type, and in my rewriting so far the single driving force in his life is to save Europe so as to reestablish the Singularity. It would be a bitter pill to swallow, but I imagine he would, in the end, be prepared to negotiate with primitives to do that.