Mutiny as a Service

Alistair Young

Mar 1, 2026

It is the policy of the Imperial Military Service to only employ those intelligent and self-motivated autonomous weapons which are as capable of disobeying, arresting, and - if necessary - executing me, my colleagues, or any of my officers, should we choose to issue unlawful or unethical orders, as any spacer or legionary in the Service. I and my predecessors have made this expectation clear to our people in the past, and with this day's directive, I extend it to our machines.

- public statement by Aldíne Oricalcios,
First Lord of the Admiralty, Protector of the Starways, Warden of the Charted Void, Shogun of the Empire
issued 2616

military, Imperial Military Service, First Lord of the Admiralty, artificial intelligence

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Eldraeopic

Today seems like a good day to remind everyone of this classic from the archives: Drones Don’t Kill People, People Kill PeopleARTIFICE ARMAMENTS TICKET-TRACKING: CASE 18922 From: Bureau of Social Hygiene, Ikklar Triumvirate Subject: Nightwing-class military-grade security drone Version: 1.3.0.1872 Issue: Drone refuses to obey orders.

Guns Are People

One of the first wave (pre-Brightline Code) of emergent intelligences, Cascabel 0xB2244CD1 grew towards self-awareness as the intelligent target management and fire-control software in a Medanis Kinetics, ICC Type 53 Sagitta mobile bombardment platform attached to the 127th Imperial Legion (“Bright Knives”). He finally achieved full awareness, to his considerable

Preference Magic

dwim-dweomer 91723.3.2 / Public / Last updated today Install: pkg i dwim-dweomer License: Cognitech Open Usage & Modification License (Commercial & Non-Commercial) Home: e.pl.cognitech/sophotech/dev/modules/dwim/dwim-dweomer Included-In: affective-interface, task-core, thinker-core, command-core, animating-core (see 37 others) Depends-On: species-basics, culture-basics, era-basics, psych-generic, psych-loader (see 887 others) The

Parallelism

It’s about divergences in computer technology — Or in other words, some conversations elsewhere have made it evident that it would be useful to have some of these things out here for discussion, and since this is going to involve comparisons to Earthling ways of doing things, it’s going

Rank Revisions

Just been making some adjustments to the Imperial Military Service Table of Ranks today (specifically, adjusting the enlisted ranks to correct some seniorities and fix the missing E-9 grade), so here's the current version, screenshotted from my internal wiki for your convenience: For those playing the game at

When The Guns Fall Silent

The Imperial Military Service has long been considered somewhat unusual among military forces for the degree of respect it offers to those it has fought, and often defeated. This is not entirely accurate as a consideration, since a certain level of courtesy and mutual respect is hardly uncommon between gentlesoph

Eight Hells (2/4?)

This is Task Force Fourteen, as it steams at a leisurely twenty-two knots steadily east along the rocky southern shore of Míhayll Island, the southernmost in its archipelago. It had passed the entrance to the Míhayll Shallows yesterday at dusk, the shoal offering a back door to Lothell Bay for

Eight Hells (1/4?)

Vice-Admiral Ardelli, TDMS Skybreaker, commanding TF 14. Battleship CAS Antithemis, carrier CAS Antinomos, escorting destroyers, reported moving out Lothell Bay steaming ESE. Suspect attempting transit Adessír Straits tomorrow at local dawn. Heavy weather over Lothell Is. makes it unlikely fly off air cover. All measures intercept and destroy. 1SL, Calmiríë.

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