First Commercial Sale
First commercial – not counting private sales, of which there have been several – sale of an Eldraeverse work! Woo! It’s for web publication, so I’ll post a pointer when you can see it live.
Alistair Young
Worker's Cautionary Guide
…while a threat to life in severe cases, most cases of blue-blotch fever are temporary, and can be cured with prolonged off-site bed rest. Another danger of the lower tunnels is the silver plague. Before entering the lower tunnels of the first, third or seventh excavations, stop at the checkpoint
Trope-a-Day: Badass Army
Badass Army: The Imperial Legions try very hard to play this one straight when they have to. Because of the low-growth, low-manpower demographics of a long-lived species, they generally prefer to eschew most army-type fights in favor of the Sneaky Bastard special-ops method of warfare, or better yet, the the-leaders-of-our-enemies-all-dropped-dead-in-totally-unrelated-accidents-that-cannot-be-connected-to-us-three-years-before-the-war-would-have-happened
Trope-a-Day: Warrior Poet
Warrior Poet: Where, in the Imperial opinion, Cultured Warrior and The Spartan Way meet; or the intended product of the latter. What a sentinel is supposed to be; not merely someone who can fight, but someone who understands the philosophy of fighting, and the art of fighting, and the principles
Bloody Diamonds
“I hate dip refueling.” The grizzled spacer took a long pull on his beer, then looked around at his audience. “I came in on Levikí, out of Meryn. That’s her there – the fast courier you’ve been eyeing up in between your drinks. All set up for these long
Come Not Unarmed Before Your God
Fellow Congregants, Cousins in the Army of Kalasané, Sword of Heaven: By the word of the exarch of Kalasané the Ever-Victorious, We of the Prelacy are commanded to speak His displeasure. Kindred, our eikone is the Laughing Warrior, a Lord of War. Remember that it is unfitting to stand in
Trope-a-Day: The Spartan Way
The Spartan Way: Except for the lack of Drill Sergeant Nasty (which see), the Imperial Legions really do train like this – for the principal reason that, well, they are heavily dependent, given the Empire’s population demographics, on quality over quantity, so they want the most absurdly close to impossible
Trope-a-Day: Drill Sergeant Nasty
Drill Sergeant Nasty: Mostly averted, for reasons which should be fairly obvious from Blue and Orange Morality and/or Mildly Military – the kind of boot-camp disindividuation/personality reformation that Drill Sergeant Nasty is useful for is less than useful given both their material and what they’re trying to make
Gendered Pronouns
As you may have noticed from here, here, and here, I appear to have settled on using the ve/vis pronouns to represent the eldraeic neuter (but animate) gender, and the hse/hsis set to represent the hermaphrodite gender. (Still no sign of what I may or may not use
Operation Search and Expunge (4/5): Dying Meat
Central Office, Illicit Drift, Narijic System, Freeport Loop – Mission Elapsed Time +0:11:22 The monitor showed a picture of absolute carnage; the inner security checkpoint littered with corpses, splashed with blood in a half-dozen colors. “Well, Ahkshar?” the blue-scaled kalatri behind the desk asked the linobir standing in front
Trope-a-Day: Mildly Military
Mildly Military: Played… somewhat, due to a combination of the personality traits mentioned in various places (see, primarily, Blue and Orange Morality) which make regular boot-camp disindividuation/personality reformation, ah, less than productive, and the structure of the Imperial Military Service itself (the not-enough-forces-to-have-non-elite-forces model described under Badass Army). It
Made By Fermentation… Well, Mostly Fermentation
…at some point during your stay on Paltraeth, someone is certain to offer you the opportunity to sample “a traditional local beverage”. This offer should not – unless your current ‘shell is built to consume substances that would be classified as hazardous waste under most other production regimes – be accepted. Traditional