Mental Affair: Fairly common, or at least the “virtual reality” kind is; species generally don’t come equipped with the necessary hardware to do this sort of thing naturally. Popular for a variety of reasons, including obviating distance, permitting all kinds of things from, well, extra stamina to Power Perversion
“By his own admission and as his court-martial will undoubtedly confirm, our Lieutenant Sarathos screwed up by the numbers. We stipulate that. “Many casualties undoubtedly resulted on the Ekritat surface from his misplaced shot, and this in turn will have unknown and significant consequences for the cultural development of the
Men Are The Expendable Gender: Averted in both ways. Firstly, of course, because greater valxĂjir and lesser sexual dimorphism with regards to the distribution of various things, etc., produces a very large number of “uppity” women who just plain wouldn’t stand for it. And secondly, because the demographics and
“I want you to understand this, and understand this well. This is not making a deal under duress. This is extortion.” “By which, to make our positions absolutely clear, I mean that some people would use the “you took the agreement to exchange goods for exval, even if there was
We Have Reserves: Heavily averted thanks to the quality-over-quantity philosophy of the Imperial Legions. Even the most kill-crazy of the Empire’s historical generals (which is to say, the House of Sargas, for the most part) have been very determined indeed that the death should all, so far as is
“Jennis Inurian, captain-owner of the free trader Transfinite Revenue, inhaled deeply as the airlock door rolled back, catching the rich, spicy scent of myriad species and goods crammed into too few hab modules with too little organized air reprocessing. It smelt promising enough.” Among the floating markets of the Starfall
Nuclear Option: The Imperial military is somewhat keener to use the Nuclear Option than most, partly because of the lack of a Nuclear Weapons Taboo, partly because nukes have a marvelous combination of characteristics that kill lots of things dead that conventional weapons are less useful against, like active bioweapons
Jennis Inurian, captain-owner of the free trader Transfinite Revenue, went through her traditional pre-disembarkation ritual – checking the telltale lights on her emergency pack and the collar of the skinsuit she wore under her spacer’s leathers, adjusting her trader’s signet to best show the Confraternity seal, and testing the
Memory Gambit: This is the stock in trade of the ISS and of most intelligence organizations that have the technology to do it. People who don’t know the plan can’t give away the plan. Besides, eliminating the knowledge from your brain is pretty much the only way to
And we have a follow-up FAQ. Mark Atwood asks: Follow up question: how compatible are various worlds and polities nanofacs and slurrys? Polities that are colonies of existing polities will likely use compatible slurries and facs, but independent invention and/or long-enough separation in time will lead incompatible tags, inline
Sometimes, a Floating Market forms. No-one knows when or where – they are emergent phenomena. Free traders accumulate oddities in their holds, the detritus of a thousand speculative trades on a thousand worlds – some trash, some too unique or exotic to sell, some which could be either. Slash-traders, smugglers, walkers of
Having mentioned Gilea & Company’s policy on this, and even storified it, I should perhaps head off at the pass the inevitable someone pointing out that “sovereign debt doesn’t work that way”. No, it doesn’t work that way here, where we are accustomed to extending a certain