Cyanide Pill: Played straight in the past, although the old-style cyanide pill was replaced when possible with direct kill-switch brain implants, thought-triggered, such that it was a lot harder to stop someone from using one. Subverted in the modern day – since while the power source for the bug-out transmitter can
For those following along with the worldbuilding at home, the Starfall Arc, the home galaxy of the Associated Worlds is, yes, the Milky Way seen from another perspective.  The “prominent satellite galaxies” identified as the Greater and Lesser AncĂĂ«l Whirls are those which we call the Large and Small Magellanic
Cut the Juice: While a minor thing, usually harder to do than it seems; UPSes are a standard computer component in much of the Worlds, and various polities, the Empire included, build heavily decentralized power grids because they’ve seen this one in action before, thanks. Besides, coming from the
To begin at the beginning, the galaxy in which we dwell, the Starfall Arc, is a barred spiral galaxy, possessing four major spiral arms, and attended by a number of satellite galaxies, most prominent among which are the Greater and Lesser AncĂĂ«l Whirls. These arms, from innermost to outermost, are
“Understand this: we have only one crime in the Empire. That crime is choice-theft. “Underlying every principle of our law, more fundamental even than the Contract and the Charter, is jĂrileth – the principle of liberty. The principle that all sophonts, all with reason and will, should be afforded the greatest
Cut And Paste Environments: Common to begin with in outposts, new colonies, and a whole range of other environments where you’re trying to get established quickly and where you’re working on a budget; modular systems and prefabricated constructions dominate this market, courtesy of Llyn Standard Manufacturing, ICC and
“The Seam” refers to the region of the Associated Worlds in direct contact with the Voniensa Republic, consisting of the Crimson Expanse, the Vanguard Reaches, and Csell Buffer constellations on our side of the border, and Vonis 31, Vonis 36, and Vonis 41 on the Republic side. The Borderline arterial
Curse of the Ancients: Quite common, with the wrinkle that the specific form it takes is the use of curses from local languages, rather than the Eldraeic interlingua. (There are other circumstances for this relapse to locality, of course, but they have more to do with what’s chic in
Curb-Stomp Battle: Happens quite routinely to new members of the Interstellar League of Tribal Chiefdoms, many of whom explode off their worlds with a tremendous sense of hubris as yet unblemished by a realistic threat assessment of current galactic civilization. This attitude is, ahem, corrected quite swiftly. For example, this
CS Extropy Rising, entering GalárĂ© system. Core, Command Bridge Two hours later, SvĂnif looked around the conference table, and wished his old headache back. “Preliminary reports. Let’s see what we have. Comms?” “EM emissions from our target world, just as the exception said, all over from log-8 to log-10.
Culture Clash: All. The. Time. The really big ones, like between the Imperials and the Hope Hegemony or the Equality Concord at one end of the spectrum, and between them and the Rim Free Zone at the other, and between the Photonic Network and all meat intelligences everywhere, etc., are
“The difficulties of interstellar travel are widely underestimated. Within the stargate plexus, even simple ships — capable of only relatively low accelerations, capable of being built by cultures little more capable than those which have developed orbital flight, and requiring no extraordinary skill for a single sophont to pilot and maintain