Crash. Shit. That would be the cerrúr… The cerrúr, unusual though it definitely was in a place like this, was arguably not the strangest of the Rock’s residents, except perhaps to the most cursory of glances. Even the most ordinary part of the motley band was more than a
Super Senses: Naturally, with various enhancements here and there, with the new Imperial baseline involving enhancing vision to include a substantial chunk of infrared and ultraviolet (everything from 500 nm through <300 nm), better imaging resolution, low-light sensing and thermal imaging, better sensitivity to motion, angle, and range, and
Awesome, but Impractical: Given just how many tinkerers there are (see: Home Inventions) around the place, this happens a lot. Fortunately, the Imperial Military Resource Board and its commercial parallels are pretty good at filtering out the ones impractical enough to get people killed and battles lost before they hit
Narijic System, Freeport Loop The lights of the stargate flared as the megafreighter emerged from its throat, making its braking burn to slingshot around the Narijic sun for the outbound gate, and at the opportune moment, a pod no bigger than a domestic flitter detached from the underside of the
More Dakka: While, by and large, they are not found on normal battlefields, those wonderfully clever people at various research and development establishments have gone a long way towards the wonderfully dakkalicious, both through sheer scale and through quantities of fire. Skipping over the more normal options available and actually
It was raining on Magen that day, the dull, persistent, sheeting downpour that beat down upon the planet’s surface for thirty hours of every thirty-one hour day. Except for those resident in the highest executive towers and the aerostats of the Stockholding Directors, rising above the permanent cloud layer
Home Inventions: With a computer (powerful enough to run a decent CAD/CAM suite) in every closet, and a cornucopia machine in every garage, this happens all the time. Except that most of the home inventors are more than happy to at least try to exploit their unbelievable science-defying constructions
For those wondering what exactly a chelĂr is, after its mention here (and probably also future mentions), it’s an Eldraeic poetry form originating in CimonĂĂ«.  In its original language, it resembles somewhat the Japanese senryu, and so I have attempted to ape this particular style in English in presenting,
Phoebe Dracotarthius owned a star system. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. Her formal writ ran only to the three-mile-long rock that civilization – such as it was in these parts – was burrowed into, even if in the absence of any other authority its advisory traffic-control zone did run all the
Awesome Anachronistic Apparel: A minor consequence of widespread immortality and independent-mindedness is that when people find a style that really fits them well – and even more often than playing any one era straight, this means “taking the bits they like from across a considerable spread of years”, like a more
Awakening The Sleeping Giant: Played mostly straight with the Empire, who despite qualifying as a superpower prefer not to have to referee the world (and, indeed, much of their participation in such transnational organizations as the Conclave of Galactic Polities is to avoid having to, as far as that is
“Those lights? They’re nothin’, kid. Just ships shooting it out for control of low orbit. Nothing to worry about. There’s only three kinds of light show you need to watch for…” “A streak of cloud like a contrail coming straight out of the zenith, a bright glow at