Month: March 2012

Trope-a-Day: Banana Republic

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Banana Republic: While not in the fruit sense, usually, a number of the (usually single-system) misfortunate client polities of the Magen Corporate and Iltine Union are exactly this.

One could make a case, possibly, for those polities unfortunate enough to get themselves into serious debt to Gilea & Co., and run foul of their so-you’re-a-state-so-what? collections policy, but those guys are capable of seeing the long view and thus avoid inflicting the gross mismanagement that tends to characterize banana republics.

Operation Search and Expunge (5/5): After-Action Report

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Unidentified Habitat, Moons of Braníthár, Mírlan System – Mission Complete

The view from the hab’s for’ard lounge was spectacular, Morria decided. Outside, storms and swirling winds swept the blue face of Braníthár, and  the upper limb of the planet flashed with periodic fluorescence  as Tehelmír’s radiation swept over it.

Her new bioshell was a vatjob, but close enough to her usual frame to feel close to home. She turned her attention back to the trigraphic projection unrolling between her seat and her employer’s, the counter at its base ticking off from MET +0:13:30. From behind the eyes of the gray shadow of her previous incarnation, she watched as…

…it slammed and locked the entrance door, infowar daemons code-locking it behind, then moved smoothly through the server cluster, snapping off precise needler shots at the technicians.

Even as they fell, it moved to the control pillar, and punched in a request; data began to stream up the pillar in a continuous cascade, too fast to read on the recording, while the hiss of cutting torches came through clearly.

”I haven’t had the opportunity to review the file listing you pulled. Anything noteworthy?”

”Mostly just the usual – Delphys InVids and slinkies, any amount of flat text, audio and EM recordings – a few poorly secured consumer product and printfood recipes. But there was one item of interest; copies of the Ikarakakt forknapped mind-states.”

”So, the Narijics are moving up to slaving, now.  Good to know.”

Meanwhile, the projection continued to unroll; the data streaming up the pillar coming to an end even as the hiss of the torches came to a stop. The shadow unslung the pinch from its shoulder, twisted its midsection, and set it on the floor.

With a crash, the door fell inward.

The image blurred and stopped as the lifelog ended. Mission Elapsed Time +0:15:69.

”Survivors?”

”Enough to tell the tale. Office staff, in the outer ring, and if the security there was even halfway competent, some of the core techs should have survived them, the pinch, and my bugout charge. Total data loss, though.”

”Excellent work, Operative, excellent! The Association will pay out the full performance bonus.”

”There’s just one thing that always bothers me about these missions, Chief.”

He looked at her inquiringly.

”I never get to remember if I thought of any good last words.”

Trope-a-Day: Badass Creed

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Badass Creed: Not the Imperial motto (that’s “Order, Progress, Liberty”), but more of a simple statement the eldrae, at least, have been using in tight situations – those who are not of one of the various institutions that have one of their own – for a very, very long time: “The Flame, Unconquered!”.

The Flame, of course, is meant symbolically; the soul, the will, qalasír, that ineffable quality – so in a sense, this can be read as another variant on assorted other creeds of variable badassitude used by various people and institutions from place to place and time to time in their culture: “In Death, Unbroken”, “We Do Not Serve”, “Unowned, Unconquered, Undefeated”, etc., etc.

More pointedly, though, the traditional duality/opposition to the Flame in classical philosophy is Entropy, death, chaos, the void, the decay of all things and the inevitable heat death of the universe.  And that “Unconquered”?  In the original Eldraeic, that’s the verb-like predicate, and attached to that, well, Eldraeic has probabilistic tenses for describing future events.  Care to guess what tense that “unconquered” is in?

Future simple certain.

The Horns of a Trilemma

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an-lorzhár íren-eloé aldamanyr – lit. “trapped between the gods”; this expression indicates that one is caught in a particular type of dilemma.  Recall, if you will, that in mainstream eldraeic belief the deities are iconic, partially-personified representations of fundamental principles: creation, knowledge, trade, love, invention, war, and so forth.  Thus, one who is “trapped between the gods” faces a dilemma not merely in choice-optimization, but in which of two dearly held principles in conflict they must adhere to, and which defy.

See also: an-lorzhár íren-eloé rian, “trapped between blades”, for lesser dilemmas where one must optimize for the least bad option, and an-yalcetár eloé qanlin quel, “cursed with an abundance of good things”, for those lesser dilemmas in which one must optimize for the best choice among mutually exclusive goods.

– A Treasury of Eldraeic Metaphor

On the Drift

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The Conclave Drift. The jewel at the heart of the Associated Worlds, it is the heart of the Accord community; the seat of the Conclave of Galactic Polities, the most comprehensive center of interpolity diplomacy in the Worlds; an unofficial cultural, commercial and financial capital for hundreds of species and star nations; and the most tightly packed polyspecific community anywhere in the known galaxy.

Located very close to the center of the Worlds – just one gate away from Eliera, Palaxias and Cinnaré by arterial – in the Accordance system, the Conclave Drift is also at the heart of Imperial space. While system security is provided by detached units of the Imperial Capital Fleet under Conclave authority, the system is legally neutral territory open to the passage of all; the diplomatic vessels of even the Empire’s avowed enemies are permitted free passage to Accordance, in peace or war.

(The Drift owes its location to the willingness of the Empire both to provide an otherwise empty – except for a few support facilities – star system to house it, to accept the principle of free passage to and from the Drift, and to defray by far the largest part of the construction expenses and operational overhead. Much of this, in practice, was paid for by private interests which foresaw the advantages of such a hub, and indeed, the Empire’s commerce has reaped considerable benefits from playing host to the Conclave and its hangers-on.)

The Drift itself orbits 52 million miles from the hot, white star Accordance. It is the largest drift-habitat ever constructed (excluding the hexterranes at Corícal Ailék) at 36 miles long, a gleaming, fluted flame lily against the void of space.

The stem of the lily hosts the drift’s microgravity infrastructure, a short mile-long stalk.  Most visitors to the Drift will dock here, at the far end of the Stem, and take a transport pod to their intended destination.

Abutting the utilitarian Stem is the Conclave Mall, a wide habitat ring clad in shimmering gold cerametal plating.  It contains the heart of the Drift’s official functions; the offices of the various organizations attached to the Conclave, embassies and offices from the various polities represented in it, offices of the largest starcorporations, and a few restaurants, shopping districts and private residences for the Worlds’ elite.  While most of the Mall is maintained as a compromise mid-range oxygen-breather environment, of note are the Alternate Environment Sectors between the 40 and 160 meridia, for the use of species preferring ammonia, halogen, methane, sulphide, or hydrogen environments.  The spin gravity is maintained at a third of standard (“just enough to keep your feet on the floor”), in deference to the aquatic and aerial members of the Conclave, and the simulated day-night cycle matches Imperial Standard Time.

But with a few exceptions (such as the Crescent Bar – one of the galaxy’s largest hotels, with an open-air bar which crosses the entire width of the Mall, which most of the unofficial business of the Worlds passes through at some time or other, and which still maintains a welcoming atmosphere, an excellent cuisine, and an unmatched drink selection – opposite the Conclave Chambers at the 180 meridian), the businesslike and relatively ascetic environs of the Mall are not the reason why travelers for pleasure should visit the Drift.  The excitement happens in the Petals.

The “flower” of the Drift, the Petals, curves outwards in a single sculpted megastructure 32 miles from the ring of the Mall to its open end, its polished silver cerametal coating gleaming white in the light of Accordance.  While the structure of the Petals itself contains transport systems and other low-level infrastructure, within it is the true bustling city of the drift, the Enclaves. Every polity associated with the Conclave is permitted to claim an region within the Petals, which it may then develop as it sees fit; a bustling throng of miniature cities in myriad architectural styles and environments, home to nearly 20 million embodied sophonts.  The Enclaves never sleep – following an early-established custom, there is no alternation of day and night in the Petals – and at any time of the cycle, business is done, entertainments are to be found, meals to be had, and there is always something to do.

While there are tens of thousands of places to visit in the Petals, here are some of our particular favorites…

– Leyness’s Worlds: Guide to the Conclave Drift

Trope-a-Day: Badass Bookworm

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Badass Bookworm: There are a lot of these about; after all, Imperial society as a whole tends towards the relatively geeky and nonphysical, for reasons which have a lot to do with historical culture as an outgrowth of demographics and the hideous waste that is using a sapient brain to operate a push-broom-equivalent when you can instead use that brain to build a machine to do that, writ large across time.  Or, more relevantly, properly construct and use this ingenious repeating-clockbow-slash-fireoil-projector.

Raw musclepower has never got you very far, therefore; only the kind that has a brain behind it, and therefore the personality types which tend to trend this way.  (See also Cultured Warrior, Warrior Poet, et. al.)  And, too, the martial arts (with gun, sword, and fist) have always been part of the basic education, Everyone Is Armed, and emergency parapersonalities are common issue.  The result is… played pretty damn straight.

(It also helps that the Eldraeverse in general is built on scientia potentia est, philosophically speaking.)

…also, played even straighter with fortunately small in number Cyprium-ith-Gislith lineage, who are just are little cracked.  In a manner that leads most of them to take up designing unstoppable – or at least humorously ironic – superweapons for fun, belike.

Worker’s Cautionary Guide

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…while a threat to life in severe cases, most cases of blue-blotch fever are temporary, and can be cured with prolonged off-site bed rest.

Another danger of the lower tunnels is the silver plague.

Before entering the lower tunnels of the first, third or seventh excavations, stop at the checkpoint and perform a careful self-examination of all limbs for open wounds.  Any cut or other open wound, no matter how small, may provide a pathway for silver plague infection.  If any are found, report yourself off tunnel duty until it has fully healed.  Remember, you have only one life.

While unusually regular, glistening, moist, or oily-appearing surfaces are the most common source of infection, no surface in the lower tunnels can be considered entirely safe.  People have contracted the silver plague through wound contact with surfaces not fitting that description in any particular.

Signs of the silver plague include scarring, fast-growing gangrene and severe bruising spreading around the entry wound, fever, pallor, headache, and malaise.  If the scarring or gangrenous region is cut into, a grittiness can be felt, and occasionally flecks of metallic-gray dust can be seen.  If you observe any of these symptoms in yourself or your colleagues, report them to a supervisor AT ONCE.  The silver plague is universally lethal within two days, and once the infection begins to spread to other parts of the body, which may happen within hours of the initial contact, it becomes impossible to treat.  Early detection and cauterization or, in severe cases, amputation of the affected body part is the only known efficacious treatment.

Know that your willingness to face these hazards in the pursuit of greater understanding of our past is appreciated.  “Knowledge is its own justification.”

– Worker’s Cautionary Guide, from the Iniscail Lunar Library Archaeological Initiative

Trope-a-Day: Badass Army

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Badass Army: The Imperial Legions try very hard to play this one straight when they have to.  Because of the low-growth, low-manpower demographics of a long-lived species, they generally prefer to eschew most army-type fights in favor of the Sneaky Bastard special-ops method of warfare, or better yet, the the-leaders-of-our-enemies-all-dropped-dead-in-totally-unrelated-accidents-that-cannot-be-connected-to-us-three-years-before-the-war-would-have-happened method of not-warfare.  But sometimes you have to have a real war anyway…

…which is where they figure they need to make the most of the limited number of sophont resources available, by virtue of equipping them all with genetic and cybernetic enhancements (see: Super Soldier), training them rigorously in their own version of The Spartan Way, including in the incredible coordination and discipline that comes from fighting as a conflux (temporary group-mind), and then equipping them lavishly, which means power armor even for regular infantry and combat exoskeletons amounting to walking tanks for the heavy kind, a plethora of Mecha Mooks and Attack Drones attached to each individual soldier, and liberal use of heavy weapons up to and including nuclear/antimatter hand grenades.

After all, when you don’t have numbers, you might as well plow that budget into extended training and capital equipment, right?  The Legions themselves may be small in number, but they work hard to make facing them like facing an army made up entirely of elite troops, with a weight of metal on the field a couple of dozen times higher than should be reasonable for that number of people.

Trope-a-Day: Warrior Poet

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Warrior Poet: Where, in the Imperial opinion, Cultured Warrior and The Spartan Way meet; or the intended product of the latter.  What a sentinel is supposed to be; not merely someone who can fight, but someone who understands the philosophy of fighting, and the art of fighting, and the principles by and for which one should fight.  (And would understand perfectly where the Vikings and the Irish and the “pen and sword in accord” samurai were coming from.)

And the ability to quip, or better yet toss off a perfectly formed chelír, mid-battle certainly also doesn’t hurt.

Bloody Diamonds

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“I hate dip refueling.”  The grizzled spacer took a long pull on his beer, then looked around at his audience.

“I came in on Levikí, out of Meryn.  That’s her there – the fast courier you’ve been eyeing up in between your drinks. All set up for these long wilderness runs with the fanciest new scoop system and thermal shielding you ever saw so we can pick up fusion fuel anywhere and keep as much velocity as we can while we’re doing it. You ever heard of a Záïc Dip?”

“Well, that’s what Levikí was built to do.  Do a slingshot around a convenient gas giant in mid-voyage, making a high-speed pass through its upper atmosphere as you do it.  Thermal superconductor plating and the oversized heatsinks keep you from burning.  Open up those for’ard gratings, and the dynamic pressure, all the while, rams the hydrogen-helium mix through the mollysieves neat as neat, and strip out the deuterium and helium-3.  Come out the other side fully bunkered and ready to burn for the far gate.  The captain loves to use it, ‘specially as he’s a bit of a tight-wire and won’t spend a taltis if he can get something done himself.”

“Anyway, like I said, we came out of Meryn.  Any of you can tell me where we fuelled heading out of Meryn for a spinward run?”

“Helcáss is the nearest, but it’s not got the right atmosphere –”

“Not bad, kid. Here, have a drink on me.  But it’s close enough.  All the right components are there to fuel her.  They’re just mixed up with a bunch of methane ’cause Helcáss’s too hot to stratify, but that doesn’t stop the Dip from workin’.  Methane doesn’t take well to the dynamic pressure, though.  All that carbon doesn’t fit through the mollysieves, and it’s not going to go back out against the pressure, so it crystallizes right where it sits.”

“And then ship’s mechs, which would be me, gets to spend the next leg out from Meryn with his brain plugged into a dozen or so worker-bots, carefully scraping the kveth-lakh carbon-crystal off the ‘sieves.  Which is not, I may tell you, my favorite choice of in-flight entertainment.  And then we’ve got to store it somewhere.  Can’t just toss it out the lock, y’know.  That’d be littering.”

“So, know anyone who wants four-five tons of starshit-grade diamonds?”

Come Not Unarmed Before Your God

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Fellow Congregants, Cousins in the Army of Kalasané, Sword of Heaven:

By the word of the exarch of Kalasané the Ever-Victorious, We of the Prelacy are commanded to speak His displeasure.

Kindred, our eikone is the Laughing Warrior, a Lord of War. Remember that it is unfitting to stand in His presence, in the precincts of His temples, without being armed as for War. In earlier days, the sword and pistol you carry may have satisfied Him, but in these days in which they are the common arms of all daryteir, He requires more of you.

From this cycle forth, let none attend the Musters of Kalasané without at the least a weapon of the carbine class, and armor of the first military grade, or their equivalents; and know that further armament is apt and pleasing in His sight.

– Prelate Deximos, Fane of the Bound Axe

(Those cousins who require training or assistance in obtaining these weapons of war should consult Tetrarch Valeni of the Fane’s templars.)

Trope-a-Day: The Spartan Way

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The Spartan Way: Except for the lack of Drill Sergeant Nasty (which see), the Imperial Legions really do train like this – for the principal reason that, well, they are heavily dependent, given the Empire’s population demographics, on quality over quantity, so they want the most absurdly close to impossible quality that they can possibly achieve.

The casualty and even the dropout rate is refreshingly low these days (due to modern techniques of assessing psychological breaking points and that modern noetic technology lets you resurrect the dead – but still, if you die more than twice, or twice on the same test, you fail.  Although you do get to live again, just not to continue the training program beyond that point; the Legions also need auxiliaries), and also due to the mental, genetic and nanotech upgrading that comes as part of the package (see: Super Soldier), but it’s still really, really harsh.

And would, yes, violate most of the Laws and Customs of War were you to do it to the enemy.

And, yes, that same modern noetic technology does let you conduct occasional live-fire exercises and do ANBC training with real radiation, nanoburn, and nerve gas.  (Although due to the expense of replacing bodies and equipment, Valhalla-style live-fire exercises are reserved for virtuality training.)

But then, if after the training the actual war feels like a picnic in the woods, then it’s pretty much done its job right, right?

Also, importantly, contrast Cultured Warrior, since the Empire doesn’t want to Sacrifice Basic Skill For Awesome Training – on the modern battlefield, the inflexible die fast – nor do they want the people responsible for protecting society to end up with the distorted perspective that comes from a life of fighting and only fighting.

Gendered Pronouns

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As you may have noticed from here, here, and here, I appear to have settled on using the ve/vis pronouns to represent the eldraeic neuter (but animate) gender, and the hse/hsis set to represent the hermaphrodite gender.

(Still no sign of what I may or may not use to represent “prenuptial catalyst” or “postnuptial catalyst”, though…)

Operation Search and Expunge (4/5): Dying Meat

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Central Office, Illicit Drift, Narijic System, Freeport Loop – Mission Elapsed Time +0:11:22

The monitor showed a picture of absolute carnage; the inner security checkpoint littered with corpses, splashed with blood in a half-dozen colors.

“Well, Ahkshar?” the blue-scaled kalatri behind the desk asked the linobir standing in front of it, under the guns of the door guards. “How do you explain the complete failure of your mercenaries?”

“The intruder — there was no — it was –“

The linobir’s translator stuttered and cracked, but hse was saved from the immediate need to answer by a flashing pop-up message on the manager’s desk.

++ WARNING: MULTIPLE SYSTEM FAILURES (TISSUE BANK)

A tap on the message, and the monitor now showed another room; a haze of smoke drifting up from the silos around the perimeter of the room. Fluid gushed from severed pipes leading to suspension units in clusters nearer the room’s center, and the clone bodies held within them writhed and choked as they asphyxiated.

The kalatri’s eyes blazed, red with fury; and a single shot caved in the linobir’s facial aspect.

“You and you, come with me. Instruct everyone who’s left to converge on the central server area. I am taking charge of this personally.“

Mission Elapsed Time +0:12:19

Trope-a-Day: Mildly Military

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Mildly Military: Played… somewhat, due to a combination of the personality traits mentioned in various places (see, primarily, Blue and Orange Morality) which make regular boot-camp disindividuation/personality reformation, ah, less than productive, and the structure of the Imperial Military Service itself (the not-enough-forces-to-have-non-elite-forces model described under Badass Army).  It is the general opinion of their strategoi that when you have a military service composed of ubercompetent technical experts and Warrior Poets highly trained in inner discipline according to the local Spartan Way, a more collegial atmosphere is to be preferred.

Made By Fermentation… Well, Mostly Fermentation

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…at some point during your stay on Paltraeth, someone is certain to offer you the opportunity to sample “a traditional local beverage”.  This offer should not – unless your current ‘shell is built to consume substances that would be classified as hazardous waste under most other production regimes – be accepted.  Traditional kaeth alcoholic beverages serve, as so many things do in their culture, as a test or demonstration of strength; thus, in addition to a high percentage of ethanol, they are known to contain a variety of other alcohols (including methanol, isopropyl alcohol, cyclic alcohols, and others of those which tend to cause blindness, madness, or death in other sophonts), toxic, carcinogenic and hallucinogenic alkaloids, benzene, fuel hydrocarbons, a variety of caustic substances, high levels of the heavy metals found throughout Paltraeth’s environment, and rather more radioactivity than the manufacturers of glowing synthdrinks would consider safe or advisable.  The offer is essentially a joke when made to an offworlder, and no-one will think any the worse of you for refusing it if done good-naturedly.

If you can consume just about anything, however, and have no particular place to be, go ahead and chug it right down.  You can make some great new friends this way, and the hangover will almost certainly be worth it.

– An Innocent on Paltraeth, Delphys Travellers’ Press

Trope-a-Day: Cultured Warrior

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Cultured Warrior: A very important aspect of training and institutional culture, not just for the Imperial Military Service, but for the entire sentinel darëssef, which includes the police, emergency services, paramedics, etc.  The argument runs, essentially, that it has dangerous and unpleasant side effects to have people running around trained to fight who know nothing else but fighting, be it fighting wars, fighting crime, fighting disease, or fighting entropy, and are thus disconnected from the finer things in life and the gentler, civilized virtues.

Thus, in addition to everything else, sentinel training (including even the seriously harsh kind used by the Imperial Legions) works hard to cultivate a taste for high culture and an appreciation for the finer things in life as a contrast to and counterpart for the gritty side of life.  In action, the institutions of the darëssef, from the IMS, the ISS, the Watch Constabulary, etc., on down have traditions to encourage this, including specific cultural leave in which their membership is encouraged to immerse themselves in this side of life on the institutional dime, in the interest of keeping them collectively healthy, functional, and complete.

Even many mercenary outfits do this, on the grounds that a sane mercenary is a more profitable mercenary.

Operation Search and Expunge (3/5): Meatgrinder

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Security Checkpoint, Illicit Drift, Narijic System, Freeport Loop – Mission Elapsed Time +0:08:17

Shit. Unbelievable greencored shit. The fresh-awakened linobir finished struggling into hsis combat armor, and leapt for the checkpoint door. “Would someone shut that selffucking siren up?” hse demanded. “And what in the selffucking netherworld is –”

The status board spelled it out all too clearly, though. Hull penetration in the outer office ring, compartments – too many compartments – open to space. Half the spacetight doors were down, and the rest slicing the external security force into a dozen isolated sections with diabolic cunning; and yellow system-unreliability markers radiating out from the damaged areas, showing a spreading stain of infowar perversion.

A spearhead pointed straight at hsis checkpoint, the route to the inner core of the drift. As hse watched, the final corridor segment outside the checkpoint flicked over to the black of decompression, with the accompanying clack of sealing valves from the outer blast door.

“Defense stations!” hse yelled, scrambling to take cover behind the room’s central wall, gesturing with one mid-leg to a nearby lieutenant, “And you, shut off every infosystem in here before we lose them. They’ll be –”

A series of loud metallic clangs resounded from outside the blast door, distracting the guards for a fatal moment; a fractured second. Hse barely had time to speak a syllable before the ceiling service panel tore open, and a small object dropped through.

The needle-blast of the grenade tore through the first and second ranks of the guards. The gray ghost that followed it rapidly began to carve its way through the last line, moving elegantly as a dancer through the carnage – splatters of red, blue-black, yellow and white – while the flèchettes of the survivors caromed off its armor.

Hse spun to face it, raising hsis weapon a fraction too slowly; at its gesture, a shaped gravitic pulse ripped free hsis right limbs and tore into hsis guts.

Shi-

Mission Elapsed Time +0:09:64