NO, IT IS NOT AN OMNI-TOOL. WRONG UNIVERSE, DAMMIT. Every Device Is A Swiss Army Knife/Magic Tool: The ubiquitous nanolathe is pretty much the poster child for these two: basically, it’s a bunch of processors, a future-iPad-equivalent, a complete universal network interface, a pocket-sized nanofac, and a bunch
Every Bullet Is A Tracer: Justified for non-slugguns, inasmuch as modern slugthrowers kick their tiny dust-grain bullets up to such a high velocity – a respectable fraction of c – that they plasmate the air they hit on the way to their target. The bullet doesn’t glow, but the resulting plasma
Even Evil Has Standards: Not in general played any straighter than it is in reality – the dumb and brutal kind of space pirate/raider, in particular, is infamous for atrocities – but seen on occasion. A lot of Renegades, even the gone-plain-and-simple-evil ones, still have their instincts and culture programming, and
Eternal Prohibition: Averted, because no-one in the Empire would consider it reasonable to ban anything that, say, didn’t cause immediate homicidal mania in the first place. Your psychochemistry is your own business, and no-one else’s – except the plentiful dealers in recreational chemistry. And enhancement chemistry, like nootropics, mnemotropins,
Eternal English: Let me put it this way: immortality plays merry hell with linguistic drift. (So does conscious linguistic engineering, but the ongoing presence of a very large body of speakers of the old version certainly helps.)
Most laws concern subjects that exist.  This is not, however, strictly necessary. The most obvious example of this is the language of the Fundamental Contract and the Imperial Charter which consistently refers, when discussing the fundamental and civic rights, the requirements for citizen-shareholdership, and so forth, the word darav, “sophont”
Eternal Engine: Quite a few of the Empire’s – and other advanced civilizations – larger factory complexes (mostly in space, to avoid heat-dissipation and environmental problems, but including things like most of ecumenopolitan Qerach) are like this, including city-like size. The interiors are not particularly friendly to biosapiences, mostly because they’
Equal-Opportunity Evil: Most Renegades, at least the ones that aren’t actually crazy. While they tend to have substantial disagreements with Imperial ethics (see: Blue and Orange Morality, Black and White Morality) – which the Imperials would probably argue is a sign of being, to some degree, sanity-impaired – they also tend
Enforced Cold War: A lot of them, in various places in the Worlds. The Great Powers with seats on the Presidium (see: The Alliance) may not agree on much, but one of the few things they do agree on is the importance of not letting major wars break out and
ssc init –neutral –nocontext –personafile:24601.mindstate ssc run What… where? You are in a simulation space, Subject Two Four Six Zero One. We do, of course, know your real identity as well as the false identity you were using during your attempted infiltration of the Wynérias research colony, but
So, regarding those “Ethnographical Questionnaire” chunks I have posted occasionally – I conclude that I’m going to start posting smaller chunks, on the grounds that (a) it takes me so damn long to finish a section, and (b) smaller and more often is better than giant and occasional.  So, that
“Smuggling is a prestigious career with a long and honorable tradition – being invented something like seven minutes after trade itself. Ideologically speaking, the smuggler and the Market Liberty Oversight Directorate are identical in theory, only differing in application. Markets, like information, want to be free. Demand leads to supply, which