Lost Colony: Not played straight, for the most part, simply because with the stargate network, virtually every system is visited on at least an infrequent basis (for routine maintenance checks, if nothing else) and/or receives at least basic extranet service, so most colonies would never have a chance to
Loss of Identity: Given how often itâs done (see: Body Surf), everyone in a modern transsophont civilization is pretty clear that body-swapping doesnât cause it. The mind is not the plaything of the body â fundamentally, at least, even if it may distort the way it plays out. Strictly
Deep recon and forward scouting is the job of the recon destroyers. And contrary to âRunning Coldâ, itâs not a particularly stealthy job. For all the boffins dream about stealth starships and talk airily about basement universes and domain walls and dimensional transcendence, Iâve never seen one. And
Look On My Works, Ye Mighty, And Despair: As mentioned, the galaxy is an old place, positively littered with the ruins â and boasts â of civilizations dead and gone. Curiously enough, this has not put an end to hubris in general, nor in specific stopped the Imperial Service routinely appending epithets
It was a wet, cold, shivery, gray afternoon at the dying end of autumn. Fog blanketed the waters of the bay and veiled the other towers in a manner that made them look almost respectable; almost. The harbor towers had been little more than frameworks of heavy, rejected ship-timbers and
Longevity Treatment / Immortality Inducer: Immortagens, which are Exactly What It Says On The Tin, along with mind-state backups. (Previously anagathics, too, but technology marches on, etc., and why settle for a few extra centuries when you can aim for eternity?) The Empire, or groups within it rather, works hard on
A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away: Well, a spiral arm far, far away, anyway, inasmuch as Iâm writing about places that arenât Earth and species that arenât human. (And as such, strictly speaking, relative time periods are all unestablished.)
Long Game: Happens quite a lot; of course, since many people (eldrae, galari, immortagen-takers, most postsophonts, AIs, etc.) live for very, very long times. Of course, itâs not so much a Long Game from their point of view, except for the immortagen-users; just a question of having a different
Living in a Furniture Store: Played fairly close to straight in most advanced civilizations. This is what a self-aware, AI-driven home and extensive household robotics does for you â everythingâs clean and organized and nice, and apart from the odd robot zooming through making it happen, without you having to
Cousins, sisters, brothers, partners, commensals, and any other clan-affiliates you see fit to share this with: Whatever youâre doing, drop it, get off your branches, and get to Torqat in the Csell Buffer right now. Bring anything that can fly and hold mass. Flagrantly was scouting a heat signature
Literally Shattered Lives: What cryoburn ammunition (see: Abnormal Ammo) could do, ideally â but itâs really hard to pull off outside laboratory conditions.
Liberty Over Prosperity: Outright inverted, from most perspectives. The Empire with its tiny apathetic example of The Government is also, by any reasonable standard, the polity with the largest amount of cashy money sloshing around at all levels of its economy, while its economists mutter smugly about âdeadweight lossâ, âartificial