Topic: Of Empires and Xenophobes

[Scottish Andy]

So, just trolling for data here based on a non-Dyna friend's proposition. Feel free to go into extraneous detail, I'm investigating what people think Roms are really capable of!

They can be TOS Roms, TNG Roms, Rihannsu, pseudo-Romans, a blend of any or all the previous. YOu can go into what weapons they'd use and how they'd use them. Clean atomics, neutron bombs, biological, bacterial, metagenic (whatever the smeg that means).

Personally, I'm not sure and I really do these polls more to explore the options and focus my own thoughts. At present (and this may change), I'm thinking it depends on their objectives. Assuming their objectives are to use the native population as slave labour to mine their own planet for resources and as cannon fodder in other battles, I'd say to break their spirit the Roms give them two ultimatums. First one says, "We're taking over. You have until this hour to unconditionally surrender and pledge submit to the Empire or we wipe out China." If they do surrender, 1 billion people don't die and they take over. If they don't surrender, 1 billion people die and they take over. Second ultimatum is no acts of terrorism or the country it happens in looses its entire population."

I'd say that would be a pretty convincing argument for complete submission, and would be in keeping with the Romulan belief they're better than everybody and anything alien is inferior.

What do you think? I'm looking for lots of responses!

Additional: I suppose I should have put in another couple of "nos": 'Treaties with major stellar powers forbidding it', and 'Even the Roms are not that callous'. *sigh*

[Czar Mohab]

I would like to think that the Romulans would go Romanesque in their conquering.

Conquer planet with minimal Rom(ul)an losses, efficiently and neatly.

People given the option (well, not really, kind of chosen for them by their own actions): Live as a subject of the Empire, or die.

Unconquerable planets => Why do you think Roms invented things like enveloping plasma and NSM's?

Seriously, though, the Romulan Empire has evolved through the eras from Militant Warmongers to Isolationists to Something Not Really Covered in Canon back to Militants but not exactly Warmongers to Revolutionaries, with a few sidetracks and sidesteps in between.

In their most militant states, they'd most likely go the route I laid out above. I get the feeling that they always kind of had an attitude of "We keeps what we sees", and in the militant phases of their empire, I'd feel that they'd be all about screwing over local populations with some kind of "example" of why they should join the empire. Those that join, live, those that oppose, well, understand only one thing, that it is better to be alive.

I would think that during their self imposed isolationism they wouldn't have "conquered" so much as consolidated what they had, patiently waiting for their time to shine and go after taking over worlds.

It really is the "'tween" years  and post Nemesis years that are, to me, the most speculated over. Well, all I can say is that they did move from one phase to the other, so ... I don't know how they would have handled "new" acquisitions.  Some combination of conquering the populace and nuking it out of existence, perhaps. Or as they slid from one into the next, perhaps they conquered less and killed more; or just gave up on taking over new things one night after a coup at the capitol.

Overall, I think that they would be, like I said, Romanesque. I doubt, however, they'd go down like the Romans did. I foresee Klingons and Humans on the soil of Romulus, scanning the irradiated planet for signs of the former Empire, and asking, "What the frag??"

SFB Romulans, OTOH, seem to me to be more Klingon like, and would probably handle things like they would.

Czar "Then again, I may know nothing," Mohab