Originally posted by alanb:
The problem is: who _does_ know it exists? The Archdukes? The Core Sector Dukes? The Palace bureaucrats? The executives of Tukera Lines? The Council of Righteous Elvis Impersonators?
My guess would be (upon thinking about it) that the most likely people to know about it are non-noble senior members of the armed services, senior bureaucrats, etc. People who don't have a feudal linkage to the Emperor and who have (as a tacit part of their job) the care and maintenance of the Empire.
The CIA isn't a secret agency. Everyone knows it exists. Its director gets appointed by the government. Its funding even gets scrutinised to an extent.
It's not a rogue agency hanging around from Lincoln's time that Dubya doesn't even know about, but which has the right to overturn disputed elections. That's what IRIS is.
You've got a point, though I <if it didn't strike me as a fireball waiting to explode> could argue about how much of a rogue agency the CIA is or has been at different historical times. I'm also sure there are aspects of it that the presidents have not been aware of.
Nobody was disputing that funding can be laundered.
The problem is that it needs to be close to the centres of power to be effective.
That isn't impossible. It could be that many senior bureaucrats are involved with this. It could be others are involved without knowing it.
In addition, it needs to be trusted/respected enough for its decisions to have an impact. That is, it has to have the ear of the Moot, which is unlikely to listen to anonymous "friends" given that every faction in the Moot has its own set of anonymous "friends".
To my mind, it has one role: To assist in resolving problematic successions (be that removing dangerous emperors or preventing them from getting to the throne). Whether this is done by lobbying the moot obviously, inobviously, or just by convincing them, or whether it is done by other means such as finding other valid heirs, etc. is sort of irrelevant. All that they need to do is act in a small number of circumstances and most of those actions can be covert. People lobbyied by them might never know they were actually IRIS agents at all.
Only in extremis (Rebellion case) do they enter a situation so bad they must become overt, and in that case, despite the legitemacy (perhaps) of their mandate, the Emperor Protem still had the agent shot down like a dog. This is not how they were meant to operate (out in the open) and the Rebellion was just beyond their ability to cope with.
Either that, or it has the ability to eliminate unsuitable pretenders to the throne by more direct means, which simply means that it is yet another bunch of factional thugs.
Yeah, just like the Imperial Navy and the Imperial Marines. Except unlike the latter two, they may actually be trying to do the right thing for the Empire and its people, not just for their boss.
Everyone in the Rebellion period (almost without exception) devolves into either a victim or a factional thug.
IRIS could be said to be a faction... in much the same way the Brotherhood of Varian is or Margaret, Craig or Norris is. They aren't interested in power for themselves as much as in preventing someone unsuitable from coming into it.
And yes, sometimes they get their hands dirty. Take a look at the list of Emperors and their lifespans. Many didn't make old age. I assume the same is true of Archdukes, etc. So one suspects there is a lot of this Thuggery going about. Wanna bet Brzrk was killed by Lucan's agents? or Dulinor's?
I hardly think IRIS has anything to be ashamed of (at least relative to the other powers) even if it does get its hands dirty once and a while.
Good? No. Stable? Well, it lasted for 1100+ years... That's pretty stable.
And in that period, how many major wars, rebellions, etc? And how many millions and billions and trillions of Imperial citizens either died because of them, had their livelihoods affected by them, or were denied the progress they might otherwise have achieved by them?
Taken in one sense, the Imperium is stable. Taken in another, it isn't very stable. Many of the successions are the results of wars, premature deaths, or assassinations. They've had multiple wars with their various neighbours. They aren't exactly the poster children for begnign stability.
You want to end the thread. Well, fair enough.
Not necessarily. I think it devolves from being a discussion of Scouts as Spies, though... don't you? Don't you think a new thread a more appropriate place?
I still think that IRIS can not be seen as some kind of anonymous neutral arbiters of the Imperial succession.
No, they couldn't be. But then, Civil Servants never are. Nor are lobby groups. Nor are normal civilians, really. Nor is the military. Nor, by any means, is the moot.
IRIS will have its own organizational interests, it will have members who may have their own opinions, and it will have concerns about which heir is likely to be an outright disaster and which has the most legal or precedential claim. And it will worry about what any public revelation of its role will result in.
It can't work like that, simply because it is making political decisions. If it tried to act on those decisions, it would inevitably end up taking sides with one or other more powerful faction, and either stand or fall with that faction.
Once the decisions become overt and publicly known, yes, you are correct. And note, this is, as you say, what happened.
Unlike yourself however, I take this to be a case where the situation got away from IRIS. But note, similarly, it got away from every heir as most of them eventually died! A few lived, but the Empire was badly shattered. This suggests that many Imperial institutions failed to perform their traditional roles well - the nobles, the military, the intelligence services, and the various checks and balances on the succession. Even Strephon proved that he wasn't sharp enough to see things coming. Real or not, he did a crappy job.
So, what this says to me is that IRIS did its job fine for many years (note the Empire doesn't totally collapse until quite late on... an argument that the Regency may very well be good at what they do). The Rebellion was a place where they putzed their job, but they were hardly alone in that.
Heck, maybe IRIS did think that it was what it claimed to be. This is yet another interesting possible alternative. It gave itself airs of being something critical to the survival of the Imperium, and proved itself to be just another bunch of bureaucrats. Serves them right.
Well, maybe it was more useful/critical in other periods and worked better then. Maybe only latterly did it become ineffective. But then, as I've suggested, so did any other attempt at controlling the situation end in gross failure. I think the Rebellion showed many cracks in the Imperium and perhaps IRIS was a flawed setup.
But then, perhaps all structures atrophy and die, and thus the Imperium was no different. So I'm not putting too big of a lodestone around the IRIS factions neck... they tried to do their job and failed. Welcome the the Club.... we've got all of the heirs and faction leaders as members. And many others to boot.
Now, it would be interesting to know something about the spies Strephon actually _did_ know about - the ones whose activities actually mattered!
What would be really fascinating is to know what insanity required him to journey off into the middle of nowhere leaving his family without appropriate protection.... but that has been raised elsewhere. And was a result of him not initially being real. The retcon that was applied to make him real and wash away IRIS and a number of other things was rather tragically weak....
regardless of how poor an idea/execution IRIS represented.
