...I just wanted to write that subject-title, really. :)
Voss was that? ;) Could be the new guy is a Voss of a different color?
The quickest way I can think of to counter the Continuum threat would be to let go of the Ring Drive secret. Give it to all the other sapient species so they can build as many ships as they can to fight.
Did you choose the Tesskan rank to make that subject-title possible?
For that matter, are you going to give us a more detailed description of (what's left of) modern Tesskan social structure, say in the podcast (when's that going to happen, by the way)?
Could be a stupid question, but I'm asking anyway.
Why bother having a new Voss? What does that have to do with the Continuum getting closer to us. They can't blame the Voss for anything...can they?
And as long as I'm asking stupid questions, why doesn't the Continuum say exactly what they want returned? Seems like kind of a big oversight for such an advanced species.
Going back to lurking...
Re: Why the new Voss: Consider that the previous Voss distrusted humans to the extent that he refused an evacuation order in the face of a gigantic UFO. Nobody likes having an outsider dictate changes to your own governmental structure, but the Tesskans would probably react even more poorly. Much simpler to maintain the illusion that they're relatively autonomous, with their own "leader."
Re: Why the Continuum doesn't communicate better: First, consider that the Continuum don't really consider a significant portion of their population to be particularly sapient, and are likely to assume the same of other species unless given reason to question that assumption (and they might not care even if the evidence does contradict them). The message they send is for the benefit of the human equivalent to the Collegium. Second, it's quite probable that they assume their message to be very straightforward. After all, thieves must know what they stole, right? Even if the large number of "drones" they kill don't, the leadership must.
Since every living Tesskan was stated to have been vaulted 30 meters into the air, I doubt many survived the pinch. Only those working off-planet are assumed to have survived. That leaves the Filipods more or less in charge of the planet, although how long they'll survive their world being cracked in half (with all the other attendant catastrophes that sort of thing will bring on), I dunno.
