death
Inspired by this comment: I’ve always been of the opinion that, given the Associated Worlds’s existing tech base and attitudes towards continuity of personal identity and such, there must be a “small” subculture of thrill-seekers who deliberately expose themselves to lethal danger purely out of curiosity as to
paracoercion
“…as to your avowed intention to institute a Universal Income, we welcome such systems – as evidenced by our own Citizen’s Dividend – as an excellent answer to paracoercive states. (Para-, in this case, meaning “not really”, but having initially solved the ethical problems of true coercion, which is to say
PhĂlae (Thirteen Colonies)
There were people on PhĂlae who had a sense of caution in the face of nature. That was amply evident from the architecture of Lower Landing, which was all in the classical style of the first colonists; long, low, heavy buildings of stone and vitredur, aligned from sea to land,
Cultural Crossovers
You know how this works at this point… * Ooh, glowy cube. Wonder if it’s an actual tesseract inside? * Yeah, you can see where Tony got it from. * And this, gentlesophs, is what we call estxijir. * Ooh, we like her. * The culture that makes a point of the importance of
Resplendent Exponential Vector
Turning to the Vector itself, it is, as we have said, the eighth planet of its primary, hot white Enlightenment. Ordinarily, one would not expect a planet so distant from its sun to be warm enough to be habitable, but the energetic history of the system and the star-forming region
Cultural Crossovers
Y’all know how this goes by this point in the series, so let’s get right into it… * I love the smell of science in the evening. * Ooh, Asgard is shiny! And flat! When did they start filming in our neck of the woods? (Seriously, feels familiar.) * Oh, that’
worldbuilding
It’s known that the eldrae (and Imperial culture generally) place a premium on rational belief, but they also place a great amount of value on preserving extant diversity of beliefs and opinions inasmuch as they can be reconciled with rationality. Given this, what do they make of Aumann’s
Resplendent Exponential Vector (Imperial Core)
If you’re coming to the Vector, your first stop is going to be Axiom Station, the tip of the beanstalk descending to Asymptote, the Vector’s capital, jack city, and safe harbor. Everywhere else in the system, from the solar corona to the Shards, is full to the gunwales
eldraeic language
serev (n.): Blood, or other primary life-fluid (e.g., myneni crystalplasm, codramaju suspension, mezuar sap, etc. – even, to stretch a metaphorical point, digisapience electricity.) A word notable for its use in many metaphor-based compounds and etymological cousins, notably seredar (“blood-person”, or paramedic); seredhain (“blood-war”, or war of extermination/genocide); seredáné
culture
A quick question with a quick answer: How would a virtuous eldrae answer the eternal question “Does this dress make me look fat?” Honestly and accurately. But then, if you had spent any time at all in their cultural sphere, you’d know better than ask damn silly questions that
Cultural Crossovers
Wow, our watching cycle is short these days. Maybe I’ll start dribbling these out, oh, once a month or so, so they don’t eat the blog. Once again, I live-blog in-culture: * Oh, yeah. Tony’s entrance to the Expo is exactly how they do it in Mer Covales.
Ley Accords
Hey, folks, guess what? Super-busy-development-crunch-time is done, and back to regular development-crunch-time. So while it may not be full-time writing for me, at least I might get some fiction done this month. Anyway, on to the questions… Under the heading of “the laws and customs of war”: Do the Associated