Trope-a-Day: Make an Example of Them

Make an Example of Them: An occasional aspect of Imperial foreign policy (whose most flagrant example is, of course, the Burning of Litash, in which the entire continent on which the Tortuga in question was located ended up as an extremely large caldera with volcano-studded margins and the entire atmosphere was set ablaze, making for an extremely graphic example of what would happen to any other worlds that decided to support mass piracy of the brutal and stupid form in the future, not to mention a general “Pirates, Ye Be Warned”).

But it’s far from the only example.  The mass execution of the mercenaries who assisted in the overthrow of the government of Liir (Plavian Quarter) as “paid agents of a capital conspiracy” (the Liirian Coup being very much not a standard military operation, and more a case of, ah, Really Grand Theft) is also commonly noted in history textbooks, as is the Bombardment of Firital (let it be noted for the record that however justified they felt in doing certain things to each other, they really should have thought more before trying to apply local religious law to Imperial citizen-shareholders); and likewise, reaching back into history, the Drowning of the People.