And here, at last, are the final six cards (previous 1-6, 7-12, 13-18). 19. THE STAR A vacuum-suited herm kneels in the harsh red-tinged regolith of an unterraformed world, wearing the gauntlet of a nanolathe on hsis right arm, and holding a cornucopia in hsis left, from which water spills
Cyber Cyclops: Generally averted: parallax is too useful a tool in building sensors for moving things to give up (although static computers not built to do much physical-world manipulation, I suppose, often use single cameras for vision). Although in some cases there may be only one kind of any given
“Yeah, vacuum won’t kill you. Should you find yourself falling free out of a big hole in your ship, stay sharp, and keep your eyes shut and your mouth open the way they teach you when you go out for your S-license, and you ought to live through it.
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