LibriumArcana.Games

Now, it's a foregone conclusion that the Culture itself would go ahead and annihilate practically anything in Trek short of Q-like beings (and even then it's iffy) if given a chance. However, that's not the question I'm asking here, not at all.

You have been given complete control of a typical Culture GSV (you become a Culture Mind in a sense, but you keep your own knowledge and personality), and you are given two years to convert the majority of the Trek races for each quadrant to Culture membership (that's two years in each quadrant, if the wording is unclear). You are given the following conditions to meet, or your mission fails and you suffer spontaneous existence failure;

• No one dies as a result of your actions. Full stop. You are not allowed to either kill anyone or indirectly cause any deaths as a result of your actions.
• You must neutralise the Borg as a threat preferably by converting them into something less violent. Use whatever means neccessary unless they violate one of the rules.
• No using effectors to affect free, sentient minds. That's cheating.
• No gridfire for any reason whatsoever.
• No creating any more than one smaller vessel for each quadrant, and that vessel cannot be a typical ROU or any other type of combat vessel.
• You must find a way to overcome typical Culture speed limitations, which allow one to travel at a typical speed of around 10-20 thousand c

The Borg are easy, just fly to Unimatrix Zero and the Queen through one of the known Trans-warp hubs and effectorize the bastards, rewriting the network.
They aren't free minds, and a colony of ant's in its individuals isn't sentient only as a whole

The Grim Squeaker wrote:The Borg are easy, just fly to Unimatrix Zero and the Queen through one of the known Trans-warp hubs and effectorize the bastards, rewriting the network.
They aren't free minds, and a colony of ant's in its individuals isn't sentient only as a whole

Of course.

Now convert all of the people who are free willed. I'm not sure how I'd go about it myself, but I would use the pacification of the Borg as leverage.

Narsil wrote:Now convert all of the people who are free willed. I'm not sure how I'd go about it myself, but I would use the pacification of the Borg as leverage.

I would think "marketing" the whole Culture lifestyle would win a few planets over, at least, especially seeing how they make the Federation's "utopian lifestyle" look like child's play. Some of the brass in Starfleet Command might blow a fuse over a sentient starship "ZOMG the M5!!!", but the average joe might like what they have to offer, as might some of the less conservative alien races within the UFP.

The Federation, the Borg and the Cardassians are all ridiculously easy to convert. (The Cardassians at least have pragmatism, from what I see of most of their appearances in DS9; and quite a few of them would join the Culture due to the insane benefits involved.) But, as I see it; the biggest hurdle would be people like the bloody Klingons, Romulans, Ferengi and the Dominion.

Some people and planets from those would join, but the the majority of the Klingons wouldn't see the honour in it, the majority of the Romulans would think 'So when are you going to stab us in the backs?', the majority of the Ferengi would see the big post-scarcety economy and get scared off by the distinct lack of capitalism, and the majority of the Jem Hadar/Vorta are always too busy masturbating into the Great Link to switch to the Culture's point of view overnight.

Those are the most challenging ones, I think. Especially the Dominion.