I should perhaps apologize for the current absence/delay in posting the fics-a-day â our air conditioning is currently broken, which means Iâve had to take my servers offline in the heat, which in turn has meant all my Eldraeverse reference material, works in progress, and such is currently unavailable.
Bondage Is Bad: Actually, yes, this oneâs played straight. Itâs an Imperial prejudice, and for once, itâs a prejudice which they donât really have a rational justification for â essentially, as you may have noticed in this series, they have a really strong libertist ideology that holds
Boldly Coming: For much the same reasons as are covered under Bi the Way and Everyone Is Bi, there is actually quite a bit of this around. Species becoming something close to one of those optional attributes helps too, in extreme cases, as do virtual sex and the ability to
One loophole opened up by the Empireâs lack of any gambling regulation is that it is entirely legal to run crooked games, provided that you tell people that they are crooked games (and therefore are not committing fraud by doing so; whether or not there is money or other
CS Unyielding Order, Litash high orbitals. âGrid configured.â âSpecial package CALYX HOLLOW on the rails, launch when ready.â âPermissive action set, authentication 0x991AC38575AA0D0E. Admiral, do you wish to deploy the weapon?â âDeploy it. Right in the starport center, Mr. mor-Calarek.â âAye-aye, maâam. Right in the center.â 90,000 miles
Body Surf: Pretty much anyone can do this â even the pure biosapiences with the aid of some Very Large brain scanning technology â but since they can mostly only enter bodies they have brain ackles for, which mostly means âowned or rentedâ, reinstantiation isnât the sort of problem that the
Body Horror: Letâs not think about the dark side of infectious proteus nanoviruses and just how they can rewrite chunks of your body while youâre still using it. No, really, letâs not.
In a room in the Twilight City, Laryssan dreams. The room is not a room, nor the city a city; the eikones and their realm are creatures of mathematics and algorithm, running on the great lunar brains of CorĂcal AilĂŠk; on local photonic processing nodes scattered across Imperial space; on
Boarding Party: Where battered hulks and surrendered ships are concerned, yes, if the delta-v needed to catch them is within reasonable bounds. Even occasionally elsewhere, with some specially designed boarding pods â but thatâs crazy-difficult enough there has to be something really valuable on the other ship. Of course, where
âThe word which is commonly translated as âImperialsâ, referring to any of the Empireâs citizen-shareholders, is valmirĂän in the original Eldraeic; curiously, it is not cognate at all to that nationâs formal name. From its roots, it could have the meaning either of âordered selfâ or of âself
Blood Oath: Averted. The general consensus is that I Gave My Word should be enough for anybody, on either end of the arrangement.
I Gave My Word: Played very, very straight indeed. As is known throughout the Worlds, the word (or debt) of an Imperial is as close to absolute as you can get. (They are sometimes, if you are prone to abuse these things, Exact Words, and since they are cautious with