[[WMG: Humanity will TakeAThirdOption]]
The human race would be most useful to the Umiak as they apparently are resistant to Loroi telepathy, not to mention that two of our worlds are of the type preferred by them. As far as we can tell the Loroi treat their allies and subjects much better than the Umiak do but are not afraid to commit xenocide. The emperor might decide to destroy humanity before the Umiak can enslave them. Then the Barsam and some other Loroi allies will come to humanity's aid, the newly formed alliance will also liberate some of the races subjugated by the Umiak.

[[WMG: Humanity will side with the Umiak at some point.]]
The Umiak are not a nice people, enslaving their "allies" in all but name, committing what would be war crimes on Loroi civilians (if both races weren't both about to exterminate each other), and even treating their own people as literal cogs in the war machine. But the Umiak are [[PragmaticVillainy pragmatic]] in their own [[BlueAndOrangeMorality alien way.]] They have yet to waste precious resources xenociding third parties when they can conquer and add them to the war effort. They're willing to call for a ceasefire even when they outnumber the Loroi. Life under the Umiak would be miserable at best, but Humanity could survive it. The Loroi have already wiped out two species, but the Umiak may be convinced to let Humanity live in servitude rather than spend time and warships killing us all.

[[WMG: The Umiak are using captured humans as their means of evading detection by the Loroi.]]
When Tempo is talking to Jardin on the bridge of the ''Tempest'', she notes that they didn't detect the ''Bellarmine'' until it had been destroyed, remarking that their far-sensing tech should have brought it to their attention long before then. This leads to the discussion about humans apparently being undetectable by Loroi telepathy, which is later enforced by Beryl not being able to sense Jardin mentally even though she's ''in his lap''. Kikitik-27's cryptic comment about a "breakthrough" and, later, the Umiak invasion fleet getting by Loroi long-range detection hints that they may have captured at least one other human scout vessel and have enslaved the crew(s) to use as living cloaking devices for their ships.

[[WMG: The ''Bellarmine'' was destroyed by a third party.]]
Since both sides of the war tell different stories of who fired the first shot, it's possible that someone else started it for them. Humanity's scout ship was destroyed to manipulate them similarly.

* I had the same suspicion. Rather like the Enigmas in [[spoiler:The Lost Fleet]] series.

* Even better when you realize that both sides are particular vulnerable to false flag opperations. The Umiak are paranoid xenophobes making them more then likely to dismiss any claims that the Loroi make about not starting it, while the Loroi are both culturally and physically distant form the concept of lying, add to the fact that the act of speaking is viewed as suspect and you have a perfect brew for some clandestine operations. Personally my moneys on the Loroi's creators

[[WMG:The Loroi are the ones who shot down the human scout ship.]]
We actually get [[https://www.well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider006.html a picture]] of the ship that destroyed the Bellarmine (top right of the page). Now I may be on crazy pills, but that looks a lot more like the profile of a [[https://www.well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider017.html Loroi ship]] than of an [[https://www.well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider084.html Umiak ship]].

[[WMG:Fireblade was ordered to kill Jardin.]]
The events of chapters 2 and 3 seem legit in terms of the Loroi being benevolent with Jardin and wanting to introduce him to their government. However, it's pretty clear in [[https://www.well-of-souls.com/outsider/outsider091.html the last page of ch. 1]] that Fireblade had some kind of telepathic conversation with Stillstorm and that other officer, and given Stillstorm's screamingly obvious distrust and disdain of Jardin, it's very plausible that Fireblade may have been ordered to get rid of him at some point, either by making it look like an accident or disposing of him should he appear untrustworthy at any point.

[[WMG: There ''are'' no "real" (i.e. biological) Historians, just the AI constructs.]]
Judging from the "pocket Historian", they're ''self-reproducing'' sapient AIs (who've presumably been around since at least the Soia era); they just pretend to be representing a reclusive biological species to avoid potential hostility.

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