Mind Hive: Several – arguably, most people qualify as at least a mild form of this, since the habit of running a muse, a personal assistant AI, on your implanted headware is close to ubiquitous. Of course, actions aren’t by consensus in that case, but the habit of turning your
The Eye of Night (Last Darkness) System has the distinction of being the only black hole accessible to the Associated Worlds, and indeed, the primary reason for the existence of the Last Darkness constellation. The black hole itself, Eye of Night, is designated as the system primary. It boasts a
To whet appetites while I feverishly write this day, here’s a comment I left elsewhere a while ago on the general topics of planetary invasions, and the ongoing argument of the “just slag the planet, no need for troops” vs. “massive world-spanning groundpounder warfare” schools of thought. My conclusion,
Military Mashup Machine: Oh, several. Examining them by the categories of the original trope, we have: Land Battleship: This one, actually, they don’t have. Essentially, by the time it was practical to build this sort of thing, firstly, people who needed a heavy weight of fire on the ground
The Milky Way Is The Only Way: Played straight, given the general uselessness of other experimental fittlers, and since the only reliable form of FTL the universe evidently permits is stargate pairs, the far end of which has to be dragged out to its destination at subluminal speed. Thus, only
“I could almost kiss Kadrish har-Lan Sarkdor this morning.” “You want to get smoochy with the Iltine Minister of Pacification? The Worlds’ leader in using children as missile components?” “Well, I’d kill him afterwards.” “Athenril, you’re perverted. Be sure and record that.” “But seriously. Between him pushing the
Mile-Long Starship: Some bigger classes easily fall into this category or above: dreadnoughts and superdreadnoughts, grapeship megafreighters, the top end of highliners, colony seedships, mobile factories, that sort of thing, and – of course – city-ships. Special note here to most lighthuggers, which have to accommodate vast quantities of deuterium and antideuterium
Got some more questions! Jamie asks: It strikes me as odd that at the technological level the Eldrae work at that they appear to be working under an ideal capitalist system in an era of post scarcity technology. How is wealth determined? What is the currency based on? What kinda
Microts: Ah, the wonders of time measurement. The Eldrae have a number of time measurement systems (well, when you’re an interstellar polity, you more or less have to, since local days and years vary all over the place and it’s handy if your time units bear some resemblance
MIB: The five… ah, four, directorates of Imperial State Security would be horrified to ever be this unsubtle – as would, for that matter, the Librarians of Silence – and, frankly, even when secrets need to be kept, they know perfectly well that eldrae don’t intimidate worth a damn. Using any
MirrorField asks, with regard to Author’s Note: Sovereign Debt: If this is the case, I’m left to wonder on their opinion on the concept of “odious debt”, ie. debt incurred by government *not* representative of it’s constituents. Basically, do the eldrae believe that it’s a-ok to
People’s Republic of Tyranny: Mostly averted, if only because the Associated Worlds, unlike Earth, has no consensus that democracy is the awesomest, shiniest form of government ever, and so there’s no particular urge to genuflect in its direction by way of obfuscating your actual government type. (There is