The Eldraeverse

…building civilizations with my space elves in space.

Category Archives: Snippet

An Opening

Leave a Comment Posted by on November 10, 2012

Not a fic-a-day – although I’m trying to get back to those now I’m almost done editing and publishing –  just the opening to something I’m working on…

Her Divine Majesty’s Star Station Eádínah’s Bower is built in hell, or as close to it as they could find.

Scuttlebutt says the Naval Intelligence headquarters aerostat floats amid the warm ammonia storm clouds near the dark pole of epistellar Battlefield, in Palaxias with the rest of the IN’s worlds, but no-one knows for sure – since it was built, the only way to get there is to mindcast to the right address in the ISE darknet and hope your mindprint is on the access list. It would certainly suit our sense of institutional paranoia to hide it in some other gas giant altogether, maybe not even in the Empire at all.

It’s in one, though. Fleet Admiral Sarthal has his office right at the apex of the sky-dome so he can give his briefings with continent-spanning lightning bolts in the background - and arcing to the conductor terminal right above the office. It keeps us on edge enough to suit him, I suppose.

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Quote

Leave a Comment Posted by on October 8, 2012

“A gentleman,” Olbria said firmly, “is always polite. Even to his zombies.”

Snippet

Snark of the Day

Leave a Comment Posted by on September 27, 2012

“Yes, the Ley Accords do consider using ecocidal weapons on garden worlds a more serious issue than the self-genocidal use of strategic nucleonic weapons.  That’s because, in the big picture, the sort of chumps who nuke themselves to death are rather less valuable to the galaxy than the ecosystem that might, one day, give rise to a second species blessed with less epic fail.”

Snippet

Technological Catch-22

Leave a Comment Posted by on August 24, 2012

“If we had a translocator, we’d have a mass reactor… which could power a translocator.”

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“Meat-for-brains here…

Leave a Comment Posted by on November 23, 2011

…just tried to hijack a starship that he has no idea how to pilot by pointing a gun at the head of the immortal guy who doesn’t need a body. This is only a very tiny step on the smart side of, say, hyperlocal nuclear brinksmanship with the antideuterium cryocels, and if it’s all the same to you, I’d like him on the outside of the airlock before the sheer density of stupid kills us all.”

- cut from tonight’s piece-of-writing-in-progress

Snippet, Writing

The word which is commonly translated as “Imperials”…

Leave a Comment Posted by on November 23, 2011

… referring to any of the Empire’s citizen-shareholders, is valmiríän in the original Eldraeic; curiously, it is not cognate at all to that nation’s formal name. From its roots, it could have the meaning either of “ordered self” or of “self that sets in order”. When asked if one translation or the other comes closer to the intended meaning, the valmiríän, infuriatingly, always answer “Yes.”

— The Great Powers and Their People, University of Eö Press, 7387

Snippet, Writing

Project Phoenix

1 Comment Posted by on September 10, 2011

“Phoenix Zero, you are blue-lighted across the board and launch commit. The clock is running. Good luck.”

And then the sky was bright with nuclear fire.

- excerpt from a dream I had last night, concerning the Empire’s space program, and more specifically their first orbital shots.
And, yes, they were using Orion drive, even back then
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We Save Your Soul!

Leave a Comment Posted by on August 25, 2011

…for later reloading in the event of accidental death. Backups maintained at 283 separate locations throughout the Associated Worlds. Absolute confidentiality assured. Call today on 1-800-NOT-DEAD.

Snippet

HAPPY FUN PROBE

Leave a Comment Posted by on March 7, 2011

If someone had run the linguistic corpus from the first scout probe, the one that it had derived from the planetary data network, past some competent sophont linguists, they might have pointed out the problem.

Alas, such are scarce in the far reaches of space, and so the contact probe turned its antenna towards the planet and transmitted:

HOW ARE YOU GENTLEMEN. CEILING PROBE IS WATCHING YOU CULTURE. I CAN HAZ DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS? KTHX. OM NOM NOM.

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Nanofic: The (Very) Condensed Guide to the Etiquette of the Court of Courts

Leave a Comment Posted by on February 28, 2011

“Whatever you may do at home, do not, under any circumstances, kneel. It is an insult that will kill you. Also, don’t bow any deeper than forty-five degrees, stand up straight while you talk, do look your interlocutor in the eye, even if it’s the Empress Herself, and while you ought to keep it to a respectful and formal register, speak straight out without stopping to grovel every couple of sentences.”

“And when I say ‘formal register’, I mean to say that there is no formal-register equivalent of ‘motherfucker’.”

Snippet

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