Malazan Empire: Mentalist - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

Finished "Drawing of the Three".

Will be moving onto "The Waste Lands"

Azath Vitr (D, on 07 March 2026 - 02:49 AM, said:

Literally all you need to halt the flow of ships through the Straight is for a bunch of insurance brokers in London to maintain an impression that it's not safe to traverse, b/c vengeful rogue operatives will sink anything they can see. And that's not hard, when all you need for a drone are a cheap guidance kit, a motor, some explosives and some plywood.

Azath Vitr (D, on 06 March 2026 - 07:40 PM, said:

The trick is, you can't unilaterally end the war.

US can stop bombing Iran and take the ships back to the Western hemisphere; but that doesn't mean Iran will stop droning American bases in the Gulf states, or open the Strait of Hormuzfor shipping.

There's really no "win" scenario, unless Iran agrees to back off (or an actual revolution happens, which doesn't feel likely ATM). And inciting invasions to foment ethnic strife won't solve this, b/c it doesn't take much to send drones to the Gulf states, or into tankers in the Strait- you don't need a fully functioning bureaucracy for this, you just need autonomous military cells that can keep functioning even if the whole country plunges into a free-for-all civil war.

to be fair, the reason for fibre spike is the data centre boom, so this isn't China being malicious to the war specifically. It's just another aspect of AI disrupting economy.

Hungary let the 7 bank workers go, but confiscated the money and gold they were transferring from Austria, with accusations of money laundering. I expect the BS from Hungary to continue throughout the next month, as their election tensions build up.

TG is supposed to be shut down by April 1, so the hypothetical mobilization will get on after that.

RN they're trying to recruit as many students as possible, in some cases deliberately flunking them, to make them eligible for the draft, and offering "drone operator contracts" as an alternative. The catch is, it's a standard military contract (with no term limit, as long as the mobilization is ongoing), and the orc MoD can use their discretion to determine the candidate's not eligible for drones- and then transfer them to frontline infantry.


UAF hit the offshore gas mining rig Sivash, destroying the Ka-27 helicopter that brought orcs there.

Geneva talks are bearing fruit: 200 for 200 prisoner swap took place today, with another 300 coming tomorrow, hopefully.

The Gulf States want Ukrainian drone interceptors to deal with Shaheds. Hopefully, they're willing to pony up the cash that'll allow UA to ramp up production.

There's an ongoing confrontation b/w UA and hungary and slovakia. In January, the orcs struck the Brody pumping station on the Druzhba pipeline that supplies the 2 with orc oil. The blaze took 10 DAYS to extinguish. naturally, the pipeline's been shut down, b/c UA doesn't exactly have the free staff to focus on repairing it. But Orban & Fico are accusing UA of purposefully obstructing the repairs, and using this as an excuse to block all pro-UA decisions in the EU.
Naturally, neither blamed putler for actually targeting the pipeline that's crucial to their energy supply.