Honor Before Reason: While it has occasionally been claimed about the Empire (mostly by people who have more experience with I Gave My Word than with their Combat Pragmatism, which is more confusing that enlightening on that point), if you were to ask – or observe – an actual Imperial on that
Good Is Not Nice: For the Imperials, while distinctly subordinate to its cousin trope, Light Is Not Good, this is played very straight on the occasions that Light does align with Good. Good, for a start, has principles (see: Principles Zealot). Good is an appallingly ruthless Combat Pragmatist. Good believes
Light Is Not Good: Well, the Imperials certainly look the part of “light”, being all shiny and glowy and identifying with all kinds of light- and flame-based imagery, philosophically and religiously, but “good” – well, unless your personal morality identifies the good really strongly with knowledge, beauty, excellence, negentropy, self-integrity, obligation,
Gondor Calls for Aid: Played rarely, but straight, on the responding end by the Empire as a polity, which has a firm policy of avoiding entangling alliances, but sometimes just can’t help itself. (Played straighter on this end by volunteer groups like the Sanguinary Enforcers of the Liberty Ethic.
Kythera System, Lunar Transshipment One, outer docking zone CMS Greed and Mass-Energy The bridge of Greed and Mass-Energy was a typical example of Middle Empire Baroque – which is to say, wood paneling over the glassboard walls and be damned to the mass penalty, polished brass fittings, subdued lighting, comfortable and
“What makes the Blood of Tyrants and the Sanguinary Enforcers of the Liberty Ethic extremists is that they divide the entire population of the universe into two categories: people who respect the principle of consent, and people who need to be shot. This eliminates the two additional categories the rest
Go Mad From The Revelation: Fortunately, it is theorized, just about everything that truly falls into this category requires considerable mind-expanding (i.e., technological vastening) in order to comprehend the revelation, which same expansion protects you from being driven mad by it. And when you unplug from the vastening equipment,
Well, I was going to post the second part of The Shipping Trade today, except that writing it didn’t happen because of day job, and so forth. Then, I thought I might post a sketch of the ship involved, just to give y’all an idea of what you’
Handwavium (in General) I try to write the technology in my universe in such a way that at least 95% of it falls within the laws of physics as we know them, or at least as we mostly know them and assuming that they’re being fairly kind to us
I just became a patron, via Patreon, of Winchell Chung’s Atomic Rockets web site. And I am taking this moment now to tell you two things. Firstly, whether you write SF – in which case I’m sure you already know about it and don’t need me to tell
Going Critical: Averted. In four ways: Fission reactors in the universe are very well designed, ideally – although not always – to keep messy things like prompt criticality out of the possible performance envelope. Some of them, the higher-power ones, can still quietly melt down (giving you basically a corium puddle in
Kythera System, Lunar Transshipment One, Docking Ring Gilek, Third Quadrant, Afterquay Level Offices of Hyneral, Myninine and mor-Vertak, Bonded Cargo Brokers “Good shift, brokers. Athné Calaris-ith-Calandia…” “…master of Greed and Mass-Energy! Cheneos-class free trader, I seem to recall. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen you in-system,