Curses

[Atarlost]

The Iocrym are sophonts, not dumb animals. The Iocrym leadership pretty much has to be involved in the decision making process in at least a nonvoting observer role. If they were docile enough to accept not having even the possibility of having their voice heard directly they wouldn't be aggressive enough to do their job. Having an observer in the decision making process means knowing where the suggestions came from unless they're anonomized, in which case the AI wouldn't know.

The Iocrym are said to abhor chaos, and are bred for serving as the perfect guardians. Both of these would make it highly unlikely for them to be curious or willful about their task(indeed, even modern human armies are rarely allowed a seat at the political table). There's also the fact that the core minds are several orders of magnitude greater than the Iocrym, and that the Ares have also been called upon by an entity that claims to be Domina.

I'm certainly not an expert in this area, so if anything I've said has been proven untrue I'd like a link. I've been looking through all the lore I could find but I'm sure I haven't yet seen all of it.

Of course modern armies have a seat at the table. The uniformed heads are just below cabinet level in America and I think the lords of the admirality actually sit in parliament in Britain. And, of course, in democracies important political debates like war are public and almost everyone in the army is a voter (In some countries resident aliens can serve but not vote). In non-democratic systems the military leadership usually has even more influence while the rank and file has less.

[JohnBWatson]

The reference was meant to explain that even in the advanced modern age, where soldiers are generally held in high regard and are typically stronger and more knowledgable than the average citizen, they rarely receive much more status than the average person politically.

Regardless, hadn't George or someone else with advanced knowledge of the story referred to the Iocrym as a sort of 'bottom feeder' race with little power in the scale of things? After all, they're servants to the ancient races, who are themselves quite a bit below the Core Minds.

[Jeoshua]

As far as I understand it, the Iocrym are to the Ancients what the Zoanthropes are to the Dwarg. But they're still leaps and bounds more intelligent than the smartest human.

[Dragonz]

So are the Iocrym protecting humans from Domina or Oracus? The way I see it, I think they might be protecting us from an unknown enemy. Possibly themselves?

Who would want an alien meddling in their own races affairs? Do you think that the Iocrym race is really in a civil war and trying to protect other races from the mass destruction that they are bestowing upon themselves?

Or is there a deity that is over Domina and Oracus (they could be siblings quarreling with one another) that is their father that created the Iocrym to protect other races from the true nature of his children?

The next extension (hopefully) will clear all of this up.