Bottomless Pit: They aren’t quite bottomless1, but on Eliéra, there are three shafts which have been dug all the way through the flat (well, very flattened ellipsoid) not-a-planet. Falling down one would be… inadvisable.
1. Or, as Amy just pointed out to me, technically they are – finite, yes, just over 200 miles in depth, but they do have no bottom. They instead have two tops, and one midpoint where the gravity goes away and comes back in reverse.
“One of the most challenging diplomatic posts – in my own opinion, right after being posted to a hostile star nation – is that of ambassador to a planet that has only recently been contacted by the Exploratory Service. While the Contact team will have done their best to explain to the newly contacted planet the essentials of the milieu in which they now find themselves, the details of ‘the Galactic way of doing things’ will frequently be yours to convey. In addition, while most star nations have had the rough edges rubbed off their cultures by exposure to the greater galaxy, the same cannot be said of recently Contacted worlds, which therefore pose additional challenges.”
“Another aspect of such ambassadorships is that newly contacted worlds are frequently the recipients of large amounts of attention, both diplomatic, if other star nations are active in the area, and commercial, as starcorporations and trading combines both Imperial and foreign descend in the pursuit of new products and new markets, while the recently Contacted world itself will often seek to establish relationships with greater galactic powers, and to gain technological advancement through trade. Helping a newly Contacted planet navigate these shoals while avoiding the appearance of attempted domination is one of the most difficult balancing acts the Diplomatic Service has to offer, and successfully doing so often a crown to an individual’s career.”
– Calen Minaxianos-ith-Minaxianos, “Ninety Years Abroad”
“Welcome, O traveler, to the Bright City.
Be welcome to the stone upon which the Dragon Throne rests.
Be welcome to the temple of unsurpassed grace and shining beauty.
Be welcome to the seat of wisdom ever-growing and power never-failing.
Welcome, O noble traveler, to Eternal Calmiríë, the jewel at the heart of the World.”
– inscription upon the Founders’ Arch
NOW AVAILABLE:
Petra’s Destruction Assurance
Returned from a successful six-year contract on Vilisset (Aridias Delve), Petra’s Destruction Assurance is once again seeking long-term contracts from polities in need of deterrent forces. Equipped with a squadron of 16 mobile-launcher-based Cherac III-class strategic-range missiles each carrying eight megaton range antimatter warheads, PDA is capable of providing appropriate strategic deterrence for continental planetary or regional asteroid-based powers. PDA provide their own organic auxiliary support, security, inbound tracking and target surveillance services.
Note: Deterrence only; Petra’s Destruction Assurance does not contract for the performance of preemptive strikes. Clients will not be provided with direct access to permissive action systems or launch codes.
Contact Col. Petra Solanel-ith-Serquel, c/o UARC Central Office.
– UARC Customer Bulletin, Spring 5094
Bottomless Magazines: Not literally true, but due to the architecture of modern Imperial firearms, it often seems that way. A typical example has three types of “ammunition”, in a consumables-you-need-to-fire sense: a metal-containing “magazine cartridge” that the flechettes the weapon actually fires are produced from; an energy cell to power the mass driver that makes it work; and a heat sink (containing the same high specific heat capacity thermal goo we’ll be talking about later in Deflector Shields) to give you somewhere to dump the waste heat produced by said mass driver so your gun doesn’t melt.
The flechettes are small enough and light enough (grain-of-sand size, made up for by extremely high velocity) that by and large you should never need to change the magazine, even in a whole sequence of firefights of unlikely length, although you may want to swap in a new one at maintenance time, just to be sure. The heat sink usually only needs to be swapped out at maintenance time (the goo may eventually crystallize), because in normal operation the radiative striping on the gun should be able to get the heat dumped in between uses, but if you routinely keep up sustained volumes of fire, you can carry some spare heat sinks with you and field-swap them to let you keep it up beyond what would otherwise be the weapon’s thermal limit. The energy cell is actually the thing you’re likely to need to swap most often, and it usually holds enough energy for a good couple of hours of firing, so while you may need to change it, you still probably won’t need to change it that often.
And of course, those magnificent legionaries in their combat exoskeletons have their guns plugged into the much larger energy and cooling reserves of their armor, so those guys really do have de facto bottomless magazines.