Most factions have shown some interest in St. James. In particular the Federation has attacked St James repeatedly. Demons have shown an ongoing interest. Goa’uld have a number of bases on worlds in the same universe as St. James and have shown an ongoing interest since ancient times when they were known as gods on St. James. Servants of the Light appear to have a connection to holy persons of various faiths. Servants of the Dark appear to have a hostile interest in St. James. Several members of the Amber royal family have shown an interest in St. James. Spec Ops is headquartered on St. James.
Even if a faction as a whole does not have a specific interest in St. James, individual members of that faction may well have an interest in St. James or in specific individuals on St. James.
In terms of threat assessment and predictive capability you may want to expand this section.
In order for someone or something to be a credible threat generally there must be three components:
Motivation: A desire to gain an object, resource, or ideological goal.
Material: The physical components to achieve an aim.
Knowledge/Tactical: The skills and knowledge necessary to execute the plan.
A threat is graded in terms of how much of any of these three components is present.
As an example, a military member might possess weapons (material) and marksmanship skills (knowledge) but present no current or imminent threat while sitting in their home country in peacetime under ordinary circumstances.
That same individual becomes an active threat when the circumstance includes being given a valid set of orders and objectives.
So when looking at these “factions” it would be helpful to include an assessment regarding their standing on the three elements. This will also help predict what sort of scenario we might need to anticipate, train for and prepare against. The model gains predictive power as we update it to include the other motivations and resource limitations of the faction, because it may help us conclude how likely we are to receive their attention.
I’ll give two examples of how this might look using this model. They are not exhaustive and anyone should feel free to fill in or correct:
Taking Servants of the Light as an example…
Motivation: To combat the forces of Darkness and respond to the collective needs of Mankind.
Material: (This gets trickier as the threat is played out on both a physical and metaphysical level.)
Physical- Virtually limitless resources, these are creatures of Will backed by a power of Will.
Metaphysical- Beyond human levels of assessment. These creatures are capable of seeing, understanding and manipulating reality, time, and impacting the soul.
Knowledge/Tactical: Virtually unlimited historical data, the ability to know across multiple timelines, countless time for observational experience. Limited by rules based system, unable to disobey an order once given or an edict once understood. Limited understanding of human emotional states. No fear of death or final ending, no self protective reflex. Limited jurisdictional procedures.
So essentially a powerful force.
When does it become a threat? Only in the presence of its motivating factor: Darkness. And only where its rules allow it to operate.
There is no competition for food, resources, or temporal power that apply with this threat.
Gap Analysis: One large problem here is a high degree of spiritual insight on the part of the Servant of the Light, and an almost total blindness on the part of normal humans. This makes it difficult to predict when a Servant might take an interest because the human isn’t at all clear whether they have taken on enough darkness to attract attention.
The other problem is that the level of power of the Servants once aroused is off the scale and unaddressable by even powerful humans.
Risk Mitigation Strategies:
Increase awareness of spiritual balance
Increase awareness of practices which generate noticeable quantities of Darkness
Avoidance of provocative behaviors
Avoidance of proximity to agents of the dark
Gou’ald are a different kettle of fish by comparison. Also powerful, but much more immediate and tangible for traditional analysis:
Motivations:
Obtaining suitable material forms as Hosts for their parasitic forms. Corneilians preferred. Corneillians with Pattern, Logrus or Magical abilities highly preferred.
Obtaining slaves to mine Naquata, a mineral necessary for their life process and technology. This is lethal work and turnover is high.
Food, resource, sexual fulfillment, and living requirements similar to and in competition with our own.
Political and physical security for their species.
Material: Realms with military and space faring technology. Advanced technical and magical weapons systems and stealthed devices.
Knowledge/Tactical: Thousands of years of intelligence on the human species and St. James in particular. Recent intelligence on St. James. Combat experience against human opponents. Demonstrated proficiency in combat operations. Physical, sexual and mental domination tactics (able to mentally overpower or seduce with pheromones, high physical endurance in some forms) Multi-generational experiential advantage, one parasite may be thousands of years old outliving its host many times over. Able to survive physical death of host if new host available.
When does it become a threat?
When a supply of hosts, slaves or breeders is threatened.
When its species survival criteria are threatened.
When ego or pride motivates conquest.
Critical Resource: Living human bodies.
Critical Threat: Slaving, abduction.
Gap Analysis: Physical disparities exist in one on one combat with most jafar and many Gou’ald. Mental and sexual domination is successful against humans in nearly all cases. Technical and magical gap closing between humans and Gou’ald but loss of Ani Erikson has jeopardized that progress somewhat. Material advantage Gou’ald in terms of tonnage and number of space faring vessels and ability to openly mass produce weapons relevant to the conflict. Disadvantage humans in terms of manufacturing and production capability of weapons and ability to openly recruit effective intellectual resources to apply to the threat. (We can’t simply tell people there are these bad guys, let’s all think up ways to take them out and come up with some hot plans to make it stick as a group.) Disadvantage humans, political, no political will can be focused against an unacknowledged threat, individual human governments cannot coordinate a response or respond to threats.
Deny critical resource actions: Disadvantage humans, cannot coordinate a response against human harvesting due to unacknowledged threat.
Risk Mitigation Strategies:
Increase public reporting system for disappearances.
Increase aware/Corneillian reporting system for disappearances.
Increase efforts at detecting and monitoring for in-system cloaked Gou’ald surveillance devices.
Inform public of threat!
St. James’ Ruling faction…
From an aware standpoint it is probably a good idea to consider St. James’ actual rulers: Richard, Duke of Worchester and Robert of Sable.
When it comes to metaphysical matters the presence of a Sable Pattern on St. James, and Duke Richard’s and King Robert’s affinity for it, is the most telling and powerful token of authority on world. They determine which outside powers will work on St. James and have set the rules for how ley lines can be used. They also exert political authority among the aware on world.
Duke Richard has been instrumental in assisting Spec Ops teams heal world rifts caused by demons using death magic and particle accelerators to access St. James.
He is also, along with Robert of Sable, the only power on world that King Random of Amber and his family recognize. Duke Richard did champion a St. James complainant to the throne of Amber with some success; however, it should be remembered that the issue was resolved based on feudal law, not on the merits of the complainant’s case. In any dealing with Amber it must be remembered that the person injured can only be Duke Richard or King Robert based on an intrusion against their protectorate. In plain terms, it matters not at all that an outsider was wrong or broke local laws, it only matters that the outsider interfered with Duke Richard or King Robert’s property or tenants without permission. It is more a property damage case. An analogy would be how much concern you might have that a cow was killed for your meal, versus having slaughtered your nephew’s 4H project calf for dinner. You feel bad for hurting the kid’s feelings and eating their pet…but it was delicious. You don’t feel at all bad for the calf.
In the absence of their interest or notice, the governments and people of St. James are not considered real or recognized by any external world to my knowledge as of this writing.
Essentially, we are feudal tenants of the Kingdom of Sable and Duke Richard as our local overlord.
For off world factions that do not recognize Sable or contest their rights, the situation is even more bleak. St. James is considered up for grabs, anything goes, plant your flag first and it could be yours.
SpecOps leadership has historically been determined by King Robert. The decision to remove Liz Lizella as head of SpecOps and replace her with Graeme Helgram was taken by King Robert as a result of his displeasure at the organization’s behavior on world. The events which lead to the departure of Graeme Helgram and the installation of Col. Broyles were orchestrated and facilitated by Duke Richard, elements of the Keys, and select aware members of the US government working at their behest…with the approval of King Robert.
In terms of threat assessment, this situation is both a benefit and a detriment. It does provide a modicum of protection, but it comes at a high cost in terms of ‘acceptable levels of predation’, autonomy, self determination and the ability to meaningfully mount a credible defense.
St. James is very much at the mercy of the ideological whims of its feudal overlords…whims which a Pattern initiate can easily make not just the law of the land but the heartfelt desire of its sham leaders with little effort.
The decision to remain unenlightened comes from Robert of Sable. We will stand or fall based on his prejudices and preferences. How committed he would be to mounting a strong full scale defense of St. James to avoid a repetition of the events in Edwardiana is not demonstrated.
A note on the relationship between Demon’s interest and the actions of Spec Ops personnel:
Duke Richard and King Robert specifically made St. James ley lines inimical to demons. They went to some trouble to do this.
This should have resulted in an overall decrease in the ability of demons to make mischief, tamper with St. James residents and so on.
What has been seen recently is an increase in the efforts by the forces of darkness to use arcane means to knock holes in the boundaries of reality so that demons may enter. Several missions have focused on thwarting these efforts and repairing the damage done.
A caution: The other way demons can get here is if they are summoned. SpecOps personnel have been involved in doing this with some frequency for informational purposes.
It should be noted that every opportunity that a demon has to exist in this world, even briefly, is an opportunity for them to work for their own purposes and against St. James. It would be best if these opportunities for demons were eliminated as much as possible.