culture
antiriot (n.): A social version of pair production. To fully explain the antiriot, it is first necessary to explain the riot. This is a socially-accepted form of low-level terrorism found on some barbarian outworlds, in which a mob engages in violence and property destruction as a means to coerce – through
trope-a-day
Techno Wizard: In any society as technological as the Worlds in general and the Empire in particular, being one of these is the basic job skill; after all, all the usual unskilled and semi-skilled tasks are now being done by robots, and the baseline, bottom-of-the-market job is “supervisor of those
trope-a-day
Technology Porn: I’m sorry. I really can’t help myself. (Of course, it’s massively in character in-universe, too, and that’s the excuse I’m sticking too.)
Thirteen Colonies
Memeweave: News/Stargate Project/Recontact/Broadcast (Read Only) Source: CS Prince of Octania Classification: WHITE (General Access) Encryption: None Distribution: Everywhere (News/Live) As received at: Relay Station (Eliéra-Seléne L3) Language: Eldraeic I Time of transcript: 3953:10:04:9-01:30.2 (Imperial Standard Time); time set by relay Light
recommendations
This, gentlesophs, is how you fiction some goddamned science! (Of course, if you’re a regular reader here and weren’t already planning to watch it, I don’t understand you at all. Are you a chthonic impossibility, by any chance?)
trope-a-day
Tank Goodness: Oh, definitely, including all of Spider Tank, Hover Tank, and Drill Tank. (Not Land Battleships, though – too easy for ortillery to target.) But also, of course, the good old-fashioned ground tanks, like the HV-10 Basher or the HV-12 Stormfall and their variants (p.s. click that link for
quotation
(Here, have a Robert E. Howard pastiche.) “Know, O prince, that between the years when your ancestors brought the last of Eliéra’s shining cities beneath their aegis, and the years of the rise of the Thirteen Worlds beyond the Gates, there was an Age undreamed of, when gleaming habitats
trope-a-day
Talking Lightbulb: While it’s not always one of these, most people wearing all-concealing environment suits, etc., or using off-the-rack bodies with non-unique synthesized voices generally do have some sort of “I’m speaking now” indicator on the outside, if only so that people can tell who’s talking when
Darkness Within
Oh, this is very bad, Isif, very bad indeed. I have made one hell of a mess of the design of the thrust frame end. These beam stubs aren’t going to hold under the drive thrust. Static load, maybe. Dynamic load, not a chance. It’ll warp all to
trope-a-day
Talk About The Weather: Played straight, even with 3/5ths of people living in habitats in space, many planets requiring domes on the surface, and various other situations existing where the weather is entirely programmed, and even when that is not the case, weather generally being regulated to avoid serious
trope-a-day
Take That: It wasn’t actually intended, but in the course of writing up Raygun Gothic, it was brought home to me with some force just how easily the Eldraeverse setting could be read as a giant Take That to the entire cynical, gritty, postmodern style of writing, era, and
trope-a-day
Suspiciously Specific Denial: There is no Fifth Directorate, they aren’t a secret agency designed to fight existential threats and handle other excessionary issues, they don’t edit themselves out of the memory of anyone who claims otherwise, and they certainly aren’t standing right behind you with a stunner