trope-a-day
Clone Army: Just… don’t. In its simplest form, where you’re just using cloning technology to replicate military-grade bodies as quickly as you can, it may be valuable. It won’t help you with absolute growth rates, since the expensive part is growing the minds to put in the
contract
(But first, a quick administrative note. If you’re sending me something through the Contact/Ask form and want to include a link, please be aware that it filters out HTML, including links. You’ll need to include the URL explicitly, or I won’t get it.) Anyway: 1. Does
trope-a-day
City Planet: Alas (?), none of the planet-sized worlds in the Worlds have yet grown to the point of being ecumenopoleis. On the other hand, the subverted “small planet” version is definitely present: 1 AndĂr, in the Lumenna-SĂşnáris System, has been slowly hollowed out over centuries to the point where it
meta
Y’know, I don’t believe I’ve mentioned this article on here before, and I really should have. Because – as a simple matter of contract law – marriage in the Empire and other Societies of Consent does, in fact, permit all the difficult concepts mentioned here and a few more
trope-a-day
Chronoscope: Not literally possible, but the combination of ubiquitous computer/sensor technology coupled with ridiculously huge amounts of computing power to assemble the evidence into a picture can do a damn good imitation of a past-viewing chronoscope. Doing the same thing with prognostication software is, alas, rather more limited, and
Imperial Legions
Ravens. Why are they always ravens? I have met lots of dar-vorac in civilian life, and while they’re strange in the usual ways that uplifts are strange, dar-bandal possibly somewhat excepted, and they’re mostly cheerful, well-adjusted people. No death fixations or suchlike abound, unless you count their taste
trope-a-day
Centrifugal Gravity: The kind of Artificial Gravity widely used by larger habitats and even starships, because it is substantially cheaper than faking it using powered vector-control apparatus, not to mention substantially simpler to implement and with fewer things to go wrong. Notable for its amusing Coriolis side-effects, which is why
culture
Given the overall emphasis the eldrae place on freedom of choice and freedom of choices, how do they deal with issues of overchoice and the apparently paradoxical consequence that having too many choices on the table makes people less likely to effectively make the right choice due to the need
trope-a-day
Capital Letters Are Magic: They are indeed: prominent local examples include the Flame and its opposite, the Darkness, in their theological senses. This, though, is Translation Convention for the Eldraeic augmentative affix, in a language that somehow doesn’t have an augmentative affix. It means “qualitatively, not quantitatively, more so”
worldbuilding
So. Thank you all for your comments, ye who commented. I have duly taken on board and rolled around some. It fits, too, with some of what I have been dissatisfied with in myself, a certain darkening of tone which probably is a result of spending too much time observing
trope-a-day
Bunny-Ears Lawyer:Â A highly individualist society, near-universal self-employment, and other similar factors lead to plenty of these, yes.
airlock
prophylock (n.): Used primarily by free traders, a prophylock is a collapsible docking module used when rendezvousing with untrusted vessels for cargo transfer. Similar to a standard docking module, a prophylock is a cylinder with an IUSI-P or IUSI-F androgynous adapter on each end, one to attach to the host