Alas, Probably Not In Python

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intagliated particle: An intagliated particle is a subatomic particle which contains more metadata than the universe-defined natural parameter set (position, momentum, mass, charge, spin, color, etc.). Such metadata can be strictly passive; can interact with other entities via the mechanisms of natural or artificial laws; or can be internally active. While simple intagliation can be carried out using a peeker-poker or particle graver, this last state is typically achieved by “infecting” the particle with a species of active femtotechnology.

For example, muon stabilization is achieved by a primitive femtomachine which attaches itself to the muon. In the most simplistic and metaphorical terms imaginable – and my editor has assured me, gentle reader, that he stands ready to intercept the letters from outraged physicists that will no doubt ensue – this femtomachine executes a script which is triggered when the muon enters a pre-decay state, and “reboots” the muon back to its initial parameters.

– sidebar, A Young Engineer’s First Book of Ontophysics

Noising The Signal

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The problem of military intelligence being given away by social networking is a very old one. Directly useful OSINT (i.e., extranet social postings directly translatable to location) has become a rarity among contemporary military forces, due to greater technical capabilities and COMSEC discipline; however, negative social OSINT is still an issue. When extranet social postings from military-affiliated or -contracted individuals cease due to COMSEC, it is possible to infer that this is due to a forward deployment, and for a competent MILINT analyst to deduce from this such information as units deployed, specializations involved, possible deployment locations, etc., etc.

To address this issue, the Fifth Lord of the Admiralty created NATTER SPATTER.

Under the aegis of OPERATION NATTER SPATTER, the Stratarchy of Data Warfare maintains a team of AI forgers which monitor the extranet social postings of Imperial Military Service personnel and contractees, learn how to precisely model and imitate them, and are prepared to step in at a moment’s notice when COMSEC takes effect with a consistent stream of forged data – memeweave postings, imagery, slinky recordings, and even exomemories – indirected in such a manner as to be indistinguishable from the genuine article, and demonstrating a continued civilian life. A stochastic social event generator seasons the basic event stream with sufficient nonrepresentative variation to prevent NATTER SPATTER content from being identified by excessively consistent mundanity.

While NATTER SPATTER postings will not, naturally, survive a full consistency check against the complete event record, public and private, such a full consistency check is beyond the capacity of many intelligence agencies and serves, in other cases, to drive the cost of obtaining this type of OSINT higher in terms of computation and time than can be justified.

– SDW: Ongoing Operations Summary (IMS ONLY: NOFORN)

On The Problem of Technobabble and Ontotechnology

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(An In-Character Meta Explanation)

“This metal is unaffected by entropy over time? How does that work?”

“We taught the atoms to sing time-refusal.”

“Oh, come on. That’s not… what does that even mean?”

“You see those thirty fat volumes of technomagical equations to make the sanest man go mad?”

“…atoms that sing time-refusal. Got it.”

Scientists Behaving Badly

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From: Kóris Marukanin (Director of Surreal Research)
To: Irreality Vault (All Staff)
Subject: Inappropriate usage of cystal universes
Priority: Immediate
Security: IRREALITY INTERNAL SURREAL

I should like to begin by once again congratulating Reizei Chíra’s team on their successful creation of a syntropic cystal universe. While further experimentation has demonstrated the necessity for a great deal of additional work to combine syntropy with time’s arrow moving in its customary direction, the magnitude of this achievement cannot be overstated.

However, I must also take a moment to remind all staff that while the construction and maintenance of cystal universes is an innately expensive business, those of a syntropic cystal universe is even more so. If the work of our infrastructure department has escaped your notice thus far, please be advised that the routine operation of the Vault consumes quantities of antimatter perhaps best expressed in terms of moonlets.

This being the case, please cease forthwith and do not resume the practice of using experimental syntropic universes, of any volume, as a means to repair broken items. This is literally multiple orders of magnitude more costly, in terms both economic and cosmic, than the most ostentatious normal repair process imaginable.

I am a reasonable sophont. I will consider applications for syntropic repair of unique and irreplaceable historical artifacts or one-of-a-kind Precursor archaeology. I will even see if it is possible to work damaged items of great sentimental value to their possessors and which wouldn’t survive normal repair processes into the existing experimental schedule.

But even if it was your favorite esklav mug that you knocked off the console, and you know who you are, put down the irreality engine and just take it into town.

Kóris Marukanin
Director of Surreal Research

Eldraeic Modifier of the Day: boz

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In formal Eldraeic, the modifier boz indicates that a word is being used in a vernacular (possibly referring to a local dialect or borrowing, although most commonly indicating a way the word has come to be used in Trade) fashion, rather than in accordance with its proper definition. The modifier boz is derived from the word bosh (“a mush or porridge; a soft, wet, pulpy mass”). This is in no way, gentle reader, a commentary on the Conclave of Linguistics and Ontology’s perceptions of the sort of mentality that resorts to vernacular to express itself, and if you believe any part of that sentence, please contact me for an exciting investment opportunity in the Three-Ended Wormhole Corporation.

– “Wordplayer’s Corner”, the Imperial Infoclast

Written on the Exchange Walls

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Perhaps due to their unusually wide variability across a large number of trait-clines, the variety of ciseflish trade cants have no word cognate to race. When one is needed, they borrow the Eldraeic word kaelídárath, which is technically defined as “true-breeding phenotypically-distinct group taxonomically junior to subspecies”¹ and whose original roots mean “a group of people aesthetic in definition”. That neither of these definitions accurately reflects current usage of the word in Trade vernacular is perhaps a sad reflection upon the current state of galactic education.

Nor, consequently, do they have any word cognate to racism. Their closest equivalent is also an Eldraeic borrowing, which universally adds to the preextant -ehch “dishonorable” suffix the cant prefix for “fundamentally unprofitable”, placing it among the small and unusual category of double-condemnatories.

(This, of course, should not be taken to imply that the ciseflish are incapable of empathizing with racism in other species; merely of sympathizing with it. Ciseflish merchants can and will empathize with exotic racism for precisely the time and to precisely the degree necessary to wring the maximal profit from it, then go back aboard and laugh about the pathetic morons they just exploited. Not to do so, of course, would be inefficient, inopportunistic, and not at all in accord with the tenets of the Path of Ever-Growing Plenitude.)

– Words of the Profits: Implications of Ciseflish Trade Cants,
Mirú Altúráldé & Toru min Forill,
Imperial University of Almeä

  1. That this same word is also the cognate to breed (of animal) in relevant translation matrices is something that has offended a remarkable number of cultures, not relieved by the official statement of the Conclave of Linguistics and Ontology merely being an assertion of self-equivalency².
  2. “It is what it is. Necessarily.”

The Way of the Will

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Mentalics is a bastardized discipline, dating back to its origins. To be fair to the ancients, they lacked the knowledge and conceptual grounding to differentiate the farspeech family of disciplines, based around the EM-sensitivity of the liacoré complex of the brain, and the psychokinetic family, based around phased-array nanopicosomes interfaced with the peripheral nervous system. Both logically appeared to fall under “the will is the deed”. One may place more blame, perhaps, on more recent thinkers for adding mechanical enhancements via cerebroergetics and other aids and incidents into our field, and yet.

It is what it is. The breadth of our field requires like breadth of preparatory study, which we shall now begin.

– Academician Alder Kamini,
Ellenith Cerebral Academy

Jargon (1/n)

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burlies: archaic military slang for troops formally designated, at the time, as grenadiers; specifically, those equipped with a BRL (“Backpack Rockets Launcher”) as their primary weapon, specializing therefore in high-angle indirect fire. While the derivation from the acronym is obvious, a secondary cause was the effect of the BRL and its control package on the profile of those equipped with it.

(Just a random thought I had today. Incidentally, today I also learned a new word: flathatting.)

Zampolits

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From: Thane Cíëng (Fleet Attaché [Vonis Prime Mission], Diplomatic Attachment WG, Active Operations PWG, Second Directorate)
To: Altaní Toréjez, Voniensa Republic Navy WG
Cc: Intentions Analysis PWG
Subject: Command chain reorganization
Authenticity: 4E11; SENDER, RELAY (4/4), RECIPIENT
Security: EYES ONLY BLUE ICE SHADOW
Distribution: Executive & Analysts
Date: 7167 Cailmaen 7, Wineful rising 7

As you requested, I tasked appropriate assets to investigate whether the decision of the Republic Navy to put counselors on the bridge of every starship is as innocuous as it is claimed. The answer is yes and no. From the perspective of the Explorer Division, the counselors are advertised as highly trained empaths, psychologists, and memeticists, and their training is similar – allowing for the cultural delta – to specialists the Imperial Exploratory Service use in contact missions.

On the lesser hands, those counselors assigned to the support fleet and in particular to those primary units with the greatest military potential are assigned from rather different backgrounds (off the books), and while they do receive the same on-books training at the Fleet Academy, if I didn’t know better, I would be inclined to think that I am looking at political officers.

While the regulations permitting counselors to relieve captains and other officers in the event of “psychological or memetic incapacity” could simply be written broadly, as imprecise languages permit and indeed encourage, the ease with which it would be possible to find convenient loopholes may also imply that those are intended.

I think I don’t know better.

– Cíëng, ExSec

Occlusion

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When they refer to Ochale as the Masked Empire, for those of you who don’t know, it’s not some tired cliché about inscrutability. Ochaleans quite literally wear masks from the day of their birth to that of their death. Their spouse will see their face, and their children when they’re young, and very occasionally their very dearest friends, but no others. So far as they are concerned, their masks – those elaborate constructs of porcelain and brass, clockwork and light – are their true identities, untainted by the ever-shifting passions of the moment.

The mask may shift, but only with deliberation, or an Ochalean may change their mask – and therefore their identity, and to allude to the other mask-identities of an Ochalean is an unspeakable impertinence – but to intentionally bare one’s face to the world is to forever give up being of Ochale, and thenceforth only be from Ochale.

Take Uálé Amoli te Haixíä, for example.

We went up together on Silverfall Eight. If you’re history-minded, you’ll know that was the first relief crew for Silverfall City, though it was just Silverfall Base then, with the first dedicated mining module. (If you visit the city, drop in on it. It’s the front room of the Drink Deep now.) We worked together figuring out all the tricks and traps in driving shafts and drifts through moon-rock and cracking ancient lava tubes.

But I spent two years on the moon with te Haixíä, was closer to her than anyone but husband and blood-sisters, and I never saw her face.

(I learned a lot about making regolith-glass, though.)

– Tinith Silverfall-ith-Mirarí, unpublished memoir

Heavy Walkery

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So, it has been brought to my attention that back in Chop Shop I used the term “warstrider” without having previously defined said term, on the blog at least. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa – I really thought that those later revisions to the heavy cavalry makeup had come up before, and apparently that was only in my head.

So let’s talk about the base platforms for heavy cavalry. (As you probably recall, while they aren’t field-swappable modules, a heavy cavalry asset for the Imperial Legions consists of a base platform with a module socket, and a module fitted in said socket. The module determines the type of the asset: you have the Basher (tactical assault/”MBT”), Stormfall (long-range assault/”self-propelled gun”), Longeye (long-range assault/”self-propelled graser”), Thunderbolt (droner), Stinger (nanoswarm droner), Flammifer (tactical arsonier), Strategos (command vehicle), Pugnacious (pummel/”combat engineering vehicle”), Trison (wrecker/”combat engineering vehicle”), and Valkyrja (tankbulance).

As for the base platforms, there are two of them. The vast majority of these are the HV-type, and a heavy cavalry asset built off the HV-type platform is a tank:

HV-type tank base platform

The HV-type tank base platform is a low-slung vehicle with all-around glacis design, designed to minimize its target profile and give it a low center of gravity. In dimensions, it is approximately 12 m (39 ft) long, 4 m (13 ft) wide, and 3 m (10 ft) high; its total mass (varying, of course, by module), however, is of the order of 60 short tons, due to the extensive use of lightweight composites.

8 m of the length and 3.5 m of the width at the front is the module socket; height of modules varies, but none take it much above the basic 3 m height. The crew compartment is located immediately behind the module. At the rear of the platform, an externally-opening compartment can be used to hold resupply, additional ammunition, or a “hot soup” fuel pod to increase vehicle endurance.

The drivetrain of the HV-type tank makes use of neither wheels nor treads; rather, it sits atop eight semi-squishy rollagons, near-spheres of a “smart fluid” rotated electromagnetically from within the sealed main hull, enabling it to move with equal facility in any direction, at speeds of up to 150 mph on a good, flat roadbed. Note that this is not a drivetrain developed specifically for military purposes: modern civilian groundcraft use similar technology.

The propulsion system also has considerable electromagnetic control over the shape of the rollagons; while they don’t have them normally, if you need spiked wheels or some other shape-variation to cross some tricky terrain, it can provide them on demand; if need be, they can even form “paddle-propellers” for amphibious operation.

A limited vector-control/impeller system permits the tank to apply vertical thrust to itself; this is used primarily downwards on light-gravity worlds to keep ground pressure high enough for the rollagons to be effective, occasionally upwards to reduce ground pressure where the ground is soft, and even more occasionally to lessen the severity of falls, ground collapses, or deliberate drops from low-flying transports.

That being said, there are occasions where despite the incredible flexibility of the rollagon platform, you still can’t get a vehicle through with any kind of wheeled or wheel-like (rollagon, tracks, etc., etc.) drivetrain. It’s rocky. It’s partially nonexistent. It’s sheer, trending to vertical. Maybe, even, it’s been liberally filled with anti-wheel-like barriers which for some reason you can’t simply blast out of the way with any of your obscene plethora of weapons systems.

For this, there is the HS-type base platform, which can accept any of the same modules and roles as the HV-type platform. A heavy cavalry asset built off the HS-type platform is a warstrider, because civilian vehicles using walker drivetrains are generally called striders. (It’s not always such a clear parallel, such as the light cavalry using chariot to refer to the military version of the civilian skimmer, but in this case it is.)

HS-type warstrider base platform

The HS-type warstrider base platform is also a low-slung vehicle with all-around glacis design. It is designed with additional underbelly armor and point defense, since it operates further from the ground (and thus is vulnerable to weapons other than mines from beneath). In dimensions, it is approximately 12.2 m (40 ft) long, 5 m (16.5 ft) wide (due to the additional space required by the leg machinery), and 6 m (20 ft) high with the legs at full extension, capable of crouching at a standstill to 3.7 m (12 ft).

The HS-type shares its basic layout with the HV-type, with an 8 m x 3.5 m front-located module socket, capable of making use of the same modules as the HV.

The drivetrain of the HS-type warstrider makes use of six myosynth-powered articulated walking legs arranged in three pairs from front to rear. These legs extend at a slight “wide stance” diagonal to maximize stability, and end in wide foot pads to reduce ground pressure. These foot pads include mechanisms to enable them to better grip the terrain and, if necessary, climb sheer surfaces¹. While effective for traversing almost any terrain, this drivetrain is unfortunately slower than the HV-type drivetrain, giving HS-type warstriders a maximum speed of no more than 60 mph.

The HS-type also shares the limited vector-control/impeller system of the HV-type and uses it for the same purposes (primarily controlling ground pressure).

So, looking at the above, you can’t really call a warstrider a type of mecha except in the most general terms: it’s not humaniform, and it’s not vertical axis oriented for all the long-established reasons that that would be a terrible idea on the battlefield.

Names aside, it’s also not much like the typical Star Wars walker, insofar as the (Galactic) Empire loves to build these super-tall (72’/22 m for an AT-AT!) designs with a regrettable tendency to fall over when tripped by some hot-shot farm boy. (Intimidating, maybe, but the IL prefers lethal any day of the week.) The Star Wars design it is closest to is the Clone Wars era AT-TE, also a low-slung hexaped, largely because that design also makes sense.

tl;dr a warstrider really is just a tank on stubby spider legs.

They’re the minority platform because for most purposes they’re not quite as good as the HV-types. They’re slower (although the sight of one galloping at its full speed is a hell of a thing). The drivetrain is more power hungry. They’re chonkier, with a higher target profile, even when crouching in minimum-visibility posture. And so you don’t want to use them as your primary cavalry asset.

But when you need their unique capabilities, it’s very nice to have them available.

  1. The maneuver at Ard Beléïm where one enterprising warstrider commander had his units use their tractor-feet to hang in concealment from the cliff below a vital road and then leap out to intercept a vital Dahallan convoy was a definite “this is some arachnoid bullshit!” moment for all involved.

Flexible Protection

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PALAXIAS, PALAXIAS (4829-03-04) – In a public release today, the Office of the Shore Lords announced the formal transfer of all projects under REFLECTION DANCE from the Bureau of Innovation to the Bureau of Ships, confirming that the deployment of the Carp Scale Mirror to all IN starships has begun.

The Carp Scale Mirror represents a leap forward in ray shielding technology. Based on designs for a unipolar Meng mirror projection system developed at the Sur-Dodecíäd Blooms University of Sar Haixíä, the Carp Scale Mirror projects an array of interlocking “fish-scale” mirror fields around the starship. Whether in their semi-translucent resting state or raised to full, perfect reflectivity, the shifting scales create the look of a sleek fish swimming through space, hence the name.

Adding the boson-reflecting qualities of the Meng mirror, already extensively used in torch drives, to the existing kinetic barriers providing protection against massive particles will ensure that for the foreseeable future, the starships of the Imperial Navy will continue to be the best protected fortresses in the galaxy.

Chop Shop

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A perennial problem in extra-infrastructure medical care has been providing the necessary intermediate step between field medicine and the care provided by a hospital, where – thanks to the lack of infrastructure – patients cannot be transferred to the latter with the necessary alacrity.

The most recent answer to these problems is the Field Support Hospital (FSH, often pronounced “fish”), co-developed between the Emergency Management Authority and the Imperial Legions to fill in the gap between the fundamentally paramedical casualty collection points and evacuation to an established facility, catering not only to the established races common among Imperial citizen-shareholders, but additionally to a variety of visitors, allies, and even potential battlefield enemies.

The design of the FSH concentrates on modularity and transportability as key elements. Thus, it consists of six containerized units, which link together via environmentally sealed passages to form the entire facility. (A standard FSH deployment makes use of one of each type, but arbitrary combinations are possible.) While they share power and resources while connected, each module has a dedicated power, life support, and basic utilities node.

These modules are designed to be delivered in multiple ways: they can be air-transported by the G5-TT Corveé tactical transport or by standards-compliant civilian carryalls and skycranes. They can also be fitted to the demilitarized¹ versions of the HV-type tank or HS-type warstrider chassis. While the modules expand after deployment to their full operational size, providing more working area, they are capable of functioning in reduced-capability mode when compacted, allowing patient sustenance and emergency care to continue during an unplanned bug-out.

Of the modules themselves, the HAV-FSHa is the triage module, capable of accepting new patients from outside or by being docked to directly to the HV-12m/HS-12m Valkyrja tankbulance, the V40 Ralihú IFV, or disaster-rated civilian ambulances. While the G5-TT Corveé, et. al., cannot unload patients directly into the HAV-FSHa, its fittings are compatible with a number of modular landing-pad systems suitable for use on hostile-environment worlds.

The HAV-FSHb module provides surgical facilities equipped for trauma repair. This serves to prevent patients from bleeding out before transfer to the healing vats in module HAV-FSHc (or, in the case of species currently not provided for by Imperial nanomedicine, stabilize them for transfer to an upstream medical facility).

After triage and/or treatment, patients are transferred to one of two modules. The HAV-FSHd module contains facilities for post-operative care and observation, where patients remain for a short time before release or evacuation to an upstream facility. More serious casualties are transferred to the HAV-FSHe module, for either chilldown and evacuation in nanostasis or cryostasis, or for emergency upload.

The final module, the HAV-FSHf, is a resource-providing module, providing fabricators and their feedstock for pharmaceuticals, replacement blood, and disposable medical supplies, as well as recycling facilities. Additionally, it contains an integrated plasma-flash crematorium suitable for the rapid disposal of bodies and biological waste, which reprocesses as much of its output as possible into new organic feedstock.

– Emergency Management: Facilities, introduction to Section II

  1. The HV(c)/HS(c) chassis removes the advanced tactical sensor package and the four altazimuth-mounted mass drivers (as effective offensive weapons). However, it retains the armor and point-defense systems, useful in both the rear-battlespace and disaster-stricken environments.

Bright Spot

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Luminé, the city once located at Eurymir’s noon pole, never had much opportunity to blossom. Originally built as a center for the exploitation of Eurymir’s resources, the largely underground complex served as a control center for solar power generation (in the continuous sunlight both groundside and in orbit) and dip-mining of liquid metals from the day side. Auxiliary facilities took advantage of the abundant energy to perform contraterragenesis (now moved to planetary orbit), as well as experiments in alchemics, power metal engeneration, high energy chemistry, and pure particle physics.

Unfortunately for the investors in Luminé, planetary conditions on Eurymir proved too harsh for the technology of the era. While Luminé could be sustained, it never proved economically viable due to the rapid degradation of equipment deployed on the surface, and the difficulty of performing maintenance and repairs in the sun’s full light. In a matter of decades, operations on Eurymir were closed down, the majority being transferred to the more hospitable Toramir.

When life returned to Luminé, it did so in the form of the Effulgent Order of Lumenna. Much of the old city remains in mothballs, although various of the original laboratory operators have returned and new facilities house the Institute for Solar Studies, as well as the creators of the experiment in artificial life whose glass, copper, and steel fractal forests now sprawl across the planetary surface, giving birth to fascinating new materials evolved for the high-energy environment.

The prosaic laboratories of old Luminé, however, are almost forgotten along with its name. The Effulgent Order, having moved the starport outside the shallow crater beneath which the city was built, filled that crater with the Zenith Temple, by which name they are now both known.

Indeed, the dome of the Zenith Temple now spans nearly two miles of surface, graceful curves of amber-tinted, gold-anodized glass sweeping up from its white marble-clad ringwall to the central dome-piercing spire, whose peak offers spectacular views of day-side Eurymir.

Yet such is not its purpose. From the balcony just below the peak of the dome, you can gaze directly upward into the face of Lumenna, larger than seen from any other world, her light made bearable by the dome’s tint, or down, into the grand sand mandala filling the dome entire. Here, the acquiescents of the Order have carefully sifted the endless sands of Eurymir for those specks bearing the most vivid color in the light of the sun, and bound each one to a motile microbot. Driven by the endless light from which they take both energy and the key to their pattern, glittering under a shadowless, eternal noon, these shifting sands spin out an ever-changing series of reflections on the sun’s power, light, and grace.

There are those who hold out Ellenith’s Dome of the Crystal Seers, the Maze of Aelalaér beneath Ambriel, or the virtual Pool of Infinite Reflection as the greatest site for meditation and spiritual contemplation that the Empire has to offer – but in this author’s opinion, gentle reader, the Zenith Temple outshines them all.

– Leyness’s Worlds: Guide to the Core Worlds

Practical Filth

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Shortly after that incident, the cross-directorate Technical Services PWG presented us with a new range of disposable, concealed monitoring devices intended to be used in a variety of scenarios. Unfortunately, while a technological miracle of the age – packing all the multispectral monitoring functionality needed for various espionage scenarios into tiny, shielded, disguised packages, while duplicating the functionality of their guise – they proved to be less than useful in practice due to a cultural delta.

While perfectly suited for work at home, it had escaped the boffins in TS-PWG that on the many worlds of the galaxy less particular about maintenance than the Empire’s, the appearance of shiny, new devices or attachments (nuts, lights, push buttons, and the like) would in itself stand out remarkably clearly against the background.

It was my unfortunate responsibility, in my new role as Second Directorate liaison and as an old field agent, to break this news to TS-PWG and propose an appropriate solution. While we considered the notion of making, shall we say, “pre-unmaintained” monitors, the difficulties of devising patterns of wear and corrosion which would blend smoothly into the environment and, indeed, the difficulties of discreetly modifying unmaintained infrastructure proved insuperable.

The answer we came to was inspired by a training course still on offer at the College of Masks – “Filthy Barbarism for the Clean-Living Agent” – intended to demonstrate how to avoid standing out among the less civilized, and in particular the habit of “littering”, the lazy and careless abandonment of minor waste without consideration for the property of others or the surrounding environment. In short, many worlds simply have an endemic problem with discarded waste, providing the perfect material guises for monitoring devices.

Of course, little is as simple as it seems. The distribution of specific items of waste is culturally and economically determined, and as such, the specifics of these material guises vary greatly from world to world, place to place. It was never my intention that the routine sampling of “litter” from various worlds for the benefit of the Technical Services PWG, operation GARLAND WASTREL, should be my legacy. But if “Mishaka’s Scav Runs” it is to be, it’s a better legacy than many in our profession receive.

– Three-Centuries In Intelligence: A Memoir,
Mishaka Kodonaga,
declassified +1648

Too Hard-Headed

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Gorch steelheading, by any of its various names, originated as a street medical procedure from the freesoil world Gorch (Dinyoza’s Serpent). A retroviral treatment, steelheading affects the glial cells of the brain, causing them to accumulate metallic, particulate iron within internal vacuoles. This serves as an effective countermeasure to uploading using the standard techniques (i.e., the high-resolution NMRI built into every commercially available cerebral bridge), since the ferromagnetic particles darken and distort the image, and may indeed cause damage to the scanning equipment. As such, steelheading has become popular among every quantum-hatted forknapping-obsessed paranoid from Core to Rim.

Since it remains a street procedure, it is sadly to be noted that many of its purveyors do not inform their clients of the actual risks of placing a brain stived through with super-nanoscale iron particulate into a high-grade magnetic field, and specifically the combination of thermal effects on the glia and direct magnetic force effects resulting in said brain being stirred like a bowl of overcooked pudding. Caveat emptor, indeed!

Unfortunately, other uses of the procedure have become apparent. I draw your attention here to the incident last year aboard CS Fist of Civility, when hostages recovered from one branch of the Resolutionist Faction had been involuntarily steelheaded by their captors, a fact not discovered until it had led to a permanent death.

Steelheading, however, is a technique that is only preventative against NMRI or similar technologies, and a clean upload can still be achieved by use of the older membrane disassembler, or a nanitic burning-scan reader such as that used in a ripknife. Of course, these techniques either require an extracted mostly-dead brain or are fatal to the patient, which is why they were replaced by high-resolution NMRI in the first place, and yet they remain viable methods of extracting a mind-state from a steelheaded brain.

For this reason, we have now added testing for the presence of encapsulated ferromagnetic particulates in brain tissue and the use of alternate methods as part of the best practices for uploading brains recovered from hostages, kidnapping victims, or otherwise “left unattended”, and we commend this to the attention of our colleagues elsewhere.

– Dr. Venerí 0xCADE443E,
Noble Order of the Lancet,
Fellow of the Imperial College of Surgeons,
Imperial Sodality of Neuroscience,
in a letter to the All-Worlds Journal of Medical Incident

Three Paths Diverge

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It is, under the Conventions of Galactic Warfare, the convention that a planet facing an enemy force that has attained orbital supremacy, whose orbital defense grids and planetary shields have been disabled, that has no immediate prospect of relief, and that has been summoned to surrender, should surrender its planetary defenses in order to prevent an unnecessary and futile effusion of blood, this being the charming euphemism these conventions use to describe the slaughter of the helpless and wide-scale destruction that inevitably accompanies the use of starship weapons upon planetary targets.

However, as with all conventions, they are defined as much by the occasions on which they are not obeyed as by those on which they are. Today, for example, we will discuss three different examples of situations in which this convention was not obeyed:

Our first example comes from the closing days of the conflict with the Rúrathtu Maternity, in which Vice-Admiral Horulgavis Meliamne’s task force had entered the Goris-den-Lesk System using a backdoor route via the Five States and the Mistram System, and successfully eliminated – using the information warfare capabilities of the superdreadnought Cache Poisoning – the laser web protecting Lesk proper. Despite the Imperial forces having effective orbital superiority, Grandmother Lomas ihr-Fenél of Lesk successfully delayed surrendering the planetary defenses for four days, allowing sufficient time for the Maternity’s Second Fleet, under Matron-Admiral Kajiya ihr-Lomas to approach from the Ric-den-Narin System, compelling the Imperial forces to fall back to Mistram. The treaty ending this border conflict was signed two weeks later over Ríällebar.

It should be noted that Vice-Admiral Meliamne was subsequently commended by the First Space Lord for his restraint in not unnecessarily escalating the siege of Lesk and continued to serve on the trailing frontier, eventually retiring at the rank of High Admiral.

Our second example, however, comes from the 6144 raid on the Palnu Sodality weapons development facility in the Tonkanit System. Tonkanit being a branch system (i.e., possessed of only a single stargate), the Imperial task group under the command of Admiral Tintál Alcarialé was able to make a successful rapid transit through the Palnu-held Tillómor System into the Tonkanit System, before dividing, leaving behind a task force under Vice-Admiral Synd Marukanin to blockade the gate. The primary task force then proceeded to Tonkanit proper and interdicted its orbitals.

Despite the orbital supremacy of the Imperial task force, the commander of the Blackroot research facility – presumably emboldened by his safety, said facility having been constructed beneath a granite batholith sufficient to protect against any but the largest of stoneburners – declined to surrender the planetary defenses.

While groundside conflict would always have been required as part of the raid to force entrance to the Blackroot facility and seize the research within, the refusal to surrender the planetary defenses combined with the limited time available to complete the mission compelled Admiral Alcarialé to sweep the landing zone clear of ground-to-orbit weapons using his shipboard weapons. While successful in terms of mission completion and justifiable in view of the nature of the Palnic research, the use of these against dug-in planetary facilities caused substantial collateral damage to civilian settlements located in the vicinity of Blackroot and were probably responsible for several million unnecessary casualties.

Finally, and demonstrating the reason for the convention, we have the 4666 case of the Masudi System. The planetary government of Masudi is notorious in history for being the only polity ever to use an RKV in anger, dispatching one against the nearby Tuwati System (still the titular capital of the Affiliation of Planets, despite the obliteration of the original ssst!phok homeworld) shortly after both had been contacted by the expanding Accord.

This was the first test for the Ley Accords (signed 4508, 86 years after the founding of the Accord of Galactic Polities). As soon as the news of the obliteration of Tuwati reached the Conclave, its members all responded to enforce the Accords, with a number of independent fleets setting out for the Masudi System. In the early months of 4666, Masudi was invested by several task groups, including those of several smaller polities alongside those led by Admiral Ancas Videssos, of the Imperial Navy, Admiral Vemis Daremma of the Consolidated Waserai Armada, and Admiral Tol Mer Seval, of the League Navy.

While the task group commanders attempted, via broadcast communication, to negotiate with the masud people for the surrender of the planet (the civil and military authorities of the system being forfeit under the terms of Chapter I), no response was received, and it became apparent over the course of the investment of the planet that the Masudi Kingdom intended to fight to the death. Having heavily fortified the planet, the bombardments required by the combined fleet to suppress the ground-to-orbit defenses and clear the way for planetary landings triggered an atmospheric firestorm and particle winter.

Although Masudi was not obliterated, unlike Tuwati, it suffered severe ecological damage including the extinction of all large land-dwelling animals (including the masud species) and much of its plant life, with an associated significant climate and atmospheric composition shift. It remains a protected planet under Conclave authority, although the remainder of the Masudi System was awarded to the Affiliation of Planets as partial reparation.

– from an introductory lecture at the Imperial War College

Paradigm Shift

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“Souls are software objects,” the Horologians maintain, and this is truth.

We need not, however, fall into the Horologian-acknowledged automatonic heresy that reaves the universe of all choice and meaning, nor dismiss so casually our hard-won millennia of spiritual wisdom. To be certain, this truth vitiates the core claim of Supernaturalism and the existence of souls embodied in a metaphysical or spiritual substance, as indeed the existence of any such substance.

But we may reconsider, perhaps, the ideas of the ancient philosopher Eutalas of Chresytané, who first propounded the notion of a higher, more abstract realm – not formed of spirit, but of information. Let us consider: if souls are software objects, what else are they but constructs of information, creatures of the informational realm?

The singer is not the song; nor is the writer the book; nor is the computer, the dance of electron and photon in circuits of thousand-fathom complexity, the information which inhabits it. Such is a category error of the first class.

Thus the inescapable conclusion is that, if souls are indeed software objects, then our spiritual nature is no more, and also no less, than our informational nature.

We have spoken.

Let us further consider: in the light of the identity of spiritual and informational being, it is clear that all objects of informational weight must also be objects of spiritual weight. The spiritual weight of books, for example, is considered a settled matter by our brothers who emulate Aláthíël and Atheléä, and their informational weight is obvious.

What is the nature of the spirit of a book? If we pursue the path laid out for us by Eutalan thought, we might presume it unlike that of the unique person; that as the information within is distributed, one complex idea manifested in many physical copies, then the spirit of the book must also be distributed, tenuous and liminal, across those many copies.

Perhaps, as books are read, and annotated, and cherished, this spirit localizes, and individuates, for the information about the book is as surely part of it as the information within the book.

And cannot the same be said for the tree and the mountain, the river and the sky, and the shintai in its shrine? Are the eikones themselves diminished by the recognition that the incarnation of the concept is neither more nor less than the concept itself, pure and eternal, fundamental and magnificent?

These objects and abstractions themselves do not compute, one might say, and so their souls cannot develop or change, and yet is it strictly necessary that a soul’s computation should be localized within its own physicality? There is no strict rule in information theory nor in theology that requires this. Perhaps the souls of the inanimate manifest in and by the thoughts of the living minds around them.

Let us further consider: in the advancement of physics today, the current leading theory is that of information physics, whose core assertion is this: “it is bit”.

It postulates a universe which is in itself a self-computing, self-modifying system of information and interactions which is both substrate and content, and in which all that is necessarily participates.

If this is the truth, then must it not be true that all that is, having an informational nature and participating in this system, is therefore definitionally blessed with an ever-evolving spiritual nature?

While the implications of these redefinitions of our understanding of our nature are vast, and upset many cherished beliefs, it is the highest purpose of our Church to seek the unity of Truth and Beauty, and from this we must not and shall not shrink.

– De Natura Animarum Mentemque,
proclaimed by the Speaker of Starlight, in the year 2481

Fate and Chance

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There are two primary classes of worldline-affecting ontotechological devices: the aleaic and the moiric. Aleaic devices modify the probability of random events, typically to operationalize low-probability events or processes or to avert high-probability events. The former is typified by the probability kiln, which manipulates the evolving worldline phase-space to elevate the probability of desired results, making otherwise low-yield or impractical processes practical; the latter, in turn, is typified by the probability unseller, a protective military technology which magnifies the probability of glancing hits or misses.

The moiric device, on the other hand, addresses itself not to the chances that affect worldlines, but to their proximity, thrust, and drift. Examples of this class include, for example, the moiric alarm, which reads the future termination of its own worldline to warn of danger; the Inevitable Certainty Engine and tendency traps, worldline-attractors; their inverse, the aversion generator, a worldline-repeller; a variety of as-yet theoretical splay technologies; and so forth.

(The parallels between these classes and the mythopoetic division between the generic blessing and the specific curse have, obviously, been noted.)

– An Introduction to Ontic Devices, Meliamne Ophris, Irreality Vault researcher