trope-a-day
Space Cold War: Oh, lots of them, simultaneously. The Empire vs. the Voniensa Republic over AI rights, proper contact protocol, economics, and No Transhumanism Allowed. The Silicate Tree versus AI-slaver civilizations, with contributions from the Photonic Network, Empire, and others. Random bits of the Rim Free Zone versus whichever states
trope-a-day
Space Clothes: Averted; even in space, people just wear regular clothes. (Sure, they have lots of pockets, but that’s not specific to spacer culture.) The only difference is that the pure-skirt option is eliminated for both sexes (because microgravity), and the cloaks have to come with MEMS and occasional
Building the Imperial Navy
(First, a somewhat apologetic editorial note: I know there’s been a lot of worldbuilding and not much fiction here, relatively speaking, recently, and this will probably be the case for a little time to come. Sigh. Sorry. Things are a little difficult right here and now at Chez Moi,
less-lethal weapon
(Sorry, folks, no fic today. We spent much of said day having electrical work done, leaving me separated from the notes and assorted apps which I need to check various important details of the whichness of the whyfore, so…) Sonic Stunner / Static Stun Gun: Averted the former because the general
trope-a-day
Something Only They Would Say: A number of intelligence agencies and other organizations use this kind of call-and-response code as a non-technology-dependent shibboleth, but for the sake of extra security, they’ve more or less perfected the technique of embedding them into subconscious levels of the mind-state, so that the
worldbuilding
Asked in a G+ comment: How common is it for individuals to own full up dreadnought or super-dreadnought class warships? Am I correct in thinking that individually owned and operated cruiser and frigate class warships are commonplace? Actually… not very common at all. (Even for corporations and other coadunations, even.
trope-a-day
Some Call Me Tim: They didn’t go to all the trouble of acquiring such an impressive collection of syllables (see: Overly Long Name) to have some git go and shorten them. Use all of them. Well, at least, use everything up to and including the attributive name if you
Building the Imperial Navy
This is the third part of our six-part series on Building the Imperial Navy (first here; second here), in which we extend the strategic goals we made in the second part by defining the Navy’s role relative to the other parts of the Imperial Military Service, and define in
trope-a-day
Sociopathic Hero: The Fifth Directorate has special tools (ICE BLUESHIFT) to induce the capacity for this sort of behavior – albeit very high-functioning ones, who genuinely don’t have any desire for cruelty [1] – under special circumstances, because in the existential threats business, sometimes necessity really does mandate, and so forth.
trope-a-day
Society of Immortals: Indeed, the eldrae and the galari (among others) being natural immortals, and desiring very much to extend the privilege to everyone else, too.
contact canon
contact canon (n.): (also contact ‘chive) The collection of documents and multimedia resources, stored uncompressed and in simplest-possible encoding, kept for transmission in first contact situations – once basic-level communications have been established – to enable one’s interlocutors to derive a comprehensive linguistic and cultural corpus for their translation software. To
trope-a-day
Snowy Screen of Death: Imperial camera systems, like just about everything else, are digital mesh-networked systems these days. When something gets disabled or shredded, you get a blank screen and a “Connection lost; connection timed out.” message, not static.