"My training and experience in the area of organizing secret conspiracies was sadly deficient, so for now I'll defer to those more familiar with it," Alaric says. "I do wonder if we need to worry about when these orders and personnel choices originated. It's possible whoever made them intended for us to exceed our orders, knowing what the result may be. Whether or not that's a good thing is orthongonal, of course. It's just something to think about, but not agonize over - we don't want to get stuck thinking about causal loops the same way someone got stuck thinking this was all an elaborate simulation."