The most important thing to remember about the Shadow Realm is that it does not exist. “Cyberspace” is a null concept. The selfness of the Transcend is a distributed, heavily parallel, sophic process-set. It runs on the fractal chandeliers of CorĂcal AilĂ©k, as close to a central node as the
…well, no, actually we got steined. But however you care to verb it, thanks to Dunhamshire Creations, I now have this rather splendid and entirely appropriate vessel to lubricate the old synapses from as I write. Shiny!
Language of Truth: There is no first-class language of truth (that is more or less impossible), but Eldraeic was custom-designed to make speaking logical fallacies – by a variety of logics – bad mathematical statements, woeful imprecision, etc., etc., as difficult as possible if not downright ungrammatical, especially when spoken in formal
The first thing I saw, after my arrival at CorĂcal AilĂ©k, was the Transcend’s root code. I didn’t see the live root code, of course. If you are one of the Transcend’s constitutionals, and so can enter Its mind – or rather, as they insist, the Shadow Realm
Will Not Tell A Lie: Not strictly played straight with the Imperials, but mostly played straight. They are very averse to lying, for reasons of honor/integrity, for reasons of ethics/religion (remember the appropriate verse of ElmirĂĂ«n’s Truths?), for legal reasons based off of those (“falsification of information”
Land of One City: Quite a lot of Imperial constituent nations are city-states – indeed, two of the founding members were the Cestian city-states of Eume and Baryvekar, and the later-joining Veilyns was a confederation of city-states. In more recent times, a plurality of underwater and sky cities, artificial islands, and
…we’ve got a hot soup spill in section 31, lead mops report immediately. Section is status yellow, caution… …spallation debris approaching starport orbital, get a laser grid on it… …can’t clear those remains for release yet, suspected contamination… …major fire, section 10, and area is negative on water
Lady of War: Inasmuch as the martial arts are part of the educational curriculum for both sexes in the Empire, this is something of an archetype; certainly the archetype for female members of the sentinel darëssef. (With the stipulation that grace and reserve – and an elegant fighting style – are also
Knighting: Somewhat different; the actual title in the Empire is lathlé, which literally means “holder of certain privileges” – and are given out for a rather wider variety of reasons – and depending on exactly why you’re being appointed as one, where you are being so designated, from the Court of
Knight Templar: To a lot of people in the galaxy, the Empire, based on their unapologetic status as a libertist-technepraxic ideological state, willingness to tell the rest of the universe that they’re all doing it wrong and other forms of earnest ideological propagation, and utter devotion to, oh, I
Well-Intentioned Extremist: Plenty of them. The Empire’s (and Rim Free Zone’s – not that they’re really coherent enough to spend much time dealing with them, unlike the Empire, which understands that they’re both staggeringly counterproductive and vaulting merrily across the Moral Event Horizon) principal embarrassment in this
So let’s talk a little about the setting of our ongoing fiction, the Associated Worlds. First: they’re big. Really, really frakkin’ big. Sci-fi writers with a sense of scale big. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemists’, but… Ahem.