The defining feature of Lintis (Banners), to most visitors, is that the entire planet smells strongly of peppermint. (A characteristic attributable to the local grass-analog – there’s always a grass-analog – which is heavily loaded with menthols.) Natives and long-term residents, of course, have all long stopped smelling anything, but the casual visitor always ends up leaving before their nose burns in. Or burns out.
– Leyness’s Worlds: Guide to the Core Worlds
“Among the torang, when crisis strikes, it is safer to be among your enemies than among your friends. A friendly torangta may expect you to sacrifice yourself in the name of the friend-group; an enemy will keep you alive as an assertion of superiority.”
– To See The Outer Worlds And Live!, Peregrine Press, 7930
“The Venerable and Veritable Autocrator of Chengál Rock, may his reign last forever, will be accepting petitions from all within the Rock during the first shift for the megapulse following the Rock’s apoapsis, as custom dictates. Please note that immediately following shift-end, all vacuum-qualified citizens of the Rock are required to report to Docks and Locks for mandatory civil labor. All non-vacuum-qualified citizens are required to report to Central Recycling, likewise.”
– system announcement on Chengál Rock public notifications channel
“For new citizens and visitors to the Rock, the ‘mandatory civil labor’ is required because the V. and V. Autocrator has a policy of throwing anyone who demands that he have a policy out of his personal airlock, and traffic control start complaining if no-one cleans up after Petition Fortnight. Be advised.
“And may his reign last forever.”
– anonymous classified advertisement immediately following the above
“Why is the Empire’s software all so reliable?
“Because it’s designed by contract!”
…hey, it’s hilarious if you’re a future space geek. Trust me on that.
“…and the vacuum is hard out today.”
A joke so old it’s evolved sophoncy independently from the primordial slime, but interface vehicle pilots evidently have to say something about ambient conditions at the highport. It seems that talking about the weather comes pre-hardwired into every sophont species’ cognome – whether or not there is any.
– A Star Traveler’s Dictionary
“The greatest and most misleading heresy of my field is the conflation of value with exchange-value.”
– Academician Teidal Ellestrion,
Economist Excellence,
Imperius Professor of Fiscal Econometrics (Commercial University of Seranth),
Director of the High Guild of Coin and Credit,
Aurarch Emeritus of Éävalle
(that we noticed)
So, I was chasing links this morning and ended up at a State Department travel advisory, and then this just wrote itself, really…
“The Ministry of State and Outlands alerts Imperial citizen-shareholders that the quadrennial elections are scheduled to take place in Blatantly Obvious Expy near the end of this year. The opening engagements have already begun, and related activities are expected to only intensify in the coming months.
“As such, the Ministry of State and Outlands recommends that citizen-shareholders avoid travel to Blatantly Obvious Expy until the second quarter of the coming year, due to the high risk of nausea, rage excursions, and self-inflicted head injuries.
“The Ministry regrets that there’s really nothing it can do to help you if you insist on visiting during this period of crisis and localized brou-ha-ha.
“For further information, see publication SO-2961 – Seriously, What The Fucking Fuck?: Coping With Barbarism Through Alcohol Consumption.”
From today’s utterly-non-canon-but-it-got-stuck-in-my-head department of advertising snippets:
The myrmidonic carbonizer. It’s the top of our range.
The myrmidonic carbonizer. Erodes muon metals in seconds.
The myrmidonic carbonizer. For when you absolutely, positively need to split quarkonium.
Our critics have accused our research department of being questionably sane. Well, we showed them. We showed them all.
Our critics have also claimed the myrmidonic carbonizer is spectacularly dangerous overkill for any ordinary circumstances.
We agree. But we didn’t build the myrmidonic carbonizer for ordinary circumstances. We built it for “What has that psychotic asshole done now?” circumstances.
The myrmidonic carbonizer. Built by Mad Science ™, for use on Mad Science (not tm).
Also considered as a slogan:
If God’s Not Dead, You Weren’t Using A Myrmidonic Carbonizer.
“This… is a much honored tradition back in the Crescent. When required by our qalasír to do something truly inadvisable, we always sit down with a bottle of whisky and make a long, comprehensive list of all the reasons why we really shouldn’t do whatever we have to do.”
“So you can argue yourself out of it?”
“Hells, no. If we could argue ourselves out of it, it wouldn’t be a matter of qalasír. It’s just nice to have the extent of our imminent stupidity all properly enumerated.”
(Have a free snippet from a work in progress.)
“Are you really in line for the throne?”
“Oh, yes. House Vintar is neither most ancient nor particularly high, and we Vidutars are a collateral line, so I’m something like… three and a quarter billionth in line for the throne, if you want to get into the fine details. Which he really should have.”
The chain of command, you see, extends right to the bottom. Inasmuch as Valentia I really disliked the possibility of succession crises, and wanted to make a point with her characteristic subtlety, heh, that you literally couldn’t kill off the Empire’s center with assassinations because there was always someone new to be chosen to step into the role.
Which did rather dilute “Unchosen Heir to the Dragon Throne, Successor of the Imperium” as a meaningful courtesy title, inasmuch as it means little more than the intersection of “alive” and “citizen-shareholder”.
But, hey, if you need something to beat officious airport security flunkies over the head with at the ass end of the galaxy, it sounds mighty impressive.
(Still working on actual posts, but here, have a snippet…)
“One perpetual confusion among external Empire-watchers is the confusion between the Ministries of Throne and State and the Shadow Ministries – for example, between the Ministry of Harmonious Serenity, which is a duly empowered governance instrumentality and enforcer of rights and obligations both fundamental and civil, and the Ministry of Exquisition, which is a private Empire-wide circle of branches self-tasked with the promotion of fabulosity, and whose closest approach to governmental power is its chief executive’s entreé to the Court of Courts.
“It is this latter that gives rise to this designation: the leading figure of a Shadow Ministry is afforded the title of Minister as a praetorian courtesy rank along with their entreé; from this, the designation of such courtier-led associations individually as Ministries and collectively as the Shadow Ministries is a simple matter of back-formation and custom.
“Since everyone moving in such circles as are likely to bring them into contact with the Shadow Ministries or the Court of Courts are comfortably aware of this distinction, it is unlikely that any clarifying changes will be made; one should consult the latest edition of the Registry of the Imperial Service (available for reference at any Imperial Services office or directly from the Ministry of Civic Information1) to determine which type of Ministry you are dealing with.”
– Ten Thousand Parts in Approximate Formation: The Empire from Outside
1. A Ministry of State, underneath the Ministry of the Empire, a Ministry of the Throne.
(As usual, a snippet that doesn’t have anywhere to fit.)
“The League’s democracy is an excellent and reliable example of its class; indeed, it is as close to the theoretic optimal case for a generative engine of political compromise as anything I’ve seen.”
“So the problem is…?”
“That if asked to choose whether two and two make four or five, it will reliably answer four-and-a-half.”
(Probably non-canonical, but my brain cooked it up this morning…)
The theory behind RAZOR CATION is that it is a stylishly thin, ultralight, fully functional pocket slate that just happens to be equipped with a single mollyblade edge – such that you can throw it, have it accelerate through the air towards your target using spin-balance and ionic microthrusters, slice neatly through them, and then return cleanly to you, centrifugally slinging any blood off along the way, on a suitable trajectory to let you catch it one-handed, while catching the light just right to impress or intimidate bystanders.
Unfortunately, the practice is that without some rather obvious nerve-enhancement work and a hardened skin weave, an agent attempting to make use of RAZOR CATION is much more likely to cut their own hand off trying it.
Conclusion: Designer has seen too many InVids. Project terminated.
(Sorry for the low activity levels, folks. It’s taking me longer than I’d like to shake off this miserable respiratory bug, and I can’t claim to be doing very much at all recently. But here, have a snippet inspired by longer-work-plotting activity.)
“She started out life as Slow Dancer, superheavy tug out of the Limerí cageworks. She didn’t have the aft superstructure at that point – just the forward grapple array, since the Consortium commissioned her to do orbital adjustments on the inner moons before the elevator could go up, sync them up with timed cable swings to make sure they’d never intersect it.
“She didn’t become Moonseeker until after the Revolt started, and the nuke got blown in one of the elevator cars. The bottom three-quarters fell down and mostly burned up, but the loss of tension sent the top quarter and Avétal with it out of its new orbit on a slow road to nowhere. Then the countermass rep paid Limerí thirty-points-over to yank the drives out of everything under construction, weld ’em onto their tug, and go chase it down.
“…well, obviously we had to get it back. You don’t let anyone blow up your moon and just install a replacement. What would people think?”
(I was reminded the other day of one particular conference that makes a point that it has no detailed “code of conduct” because, well, “It is presumed that those attending the conference are of sufficient moral grounding and intelligence to be well behaved. If we have to explain how you should behave, you probably don’t belong in the first place. […] can be summed up as this: if it becomes apparent you need a policy to know how to behave at the event, you’ll probably already have been ejected from the event.”
Which, y’know, got me thinking of how those convention centers and so forth in this ‘verse deal with these issues, especially considering that many of them necessarily cater to outworlders who may not quite grasp the rigors of the CSP. And so, without further ado:)
“Welcome to the Meridia Rim Convention Center!
…several pages down in the FAQ…
“It is not our policy to have an explicit Code of Conduct, since we prefer to presume that anyone attending a conference held here is a gentlesoph, and thus aware of how to conduct themselves as a civilized sophont. Moreover, being overly specific as to undesired behaviors only encourages the ungentlesophly to inform themselves – we trust this is not your purpose, gentle reader – and game whatever rules are set forth.
“It is possible that we may be incorrect in this assumption, and thus we offer the following guidelines:
“Should you find yourself perpetually ignored, as if you had become invisible, you have probably gone too far, your amalgamated civility meta-reputation score has dropped sufficiently far to engage your fellow visitors’ sense-filters, and you will shortly be ejected from the Convention Center by our meta-rep enforcement robots. Your voluntary departure would be appreciated in the interest of the common peace.
“Should you feel the exquisite sting of a knife in the ribs, you have definitely gone too far, and should consider yourself both ejected and blacklisted for events held at the Center for a period not less than 144 years.”
Overheard in the Crescent Bar, Conclave Drift
6 months post the end of the Core War
“It’s a great speech, but it’s not going to work. You know that, right?”
“What’s the problem with it?”
“Well, mostly, that you’re trying to talk ‘political geostate’ to someone who speaks ‘sovereign service provider’.”
“What does that mean?”
“For one thing, it means that when you say ‘those people being unfairly excluded because of their beliefs’, what they hear is ‘that bunch of jerks who want service without signing up to our service agreement’.”
(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 of steel and stone cloaked the twin suns in a jewel-studded mantle, when the lands and winds of far-flung spheres knew our shaping hand at last, and the old world dreamed beneath its new-wrought sky.”
(Because sometimes the pulp is strong with this one.)
“A little commented-upon feature of all the uplifted species is their racial pride. After all, while many species believe that they are, in some sense, the Chosen Ones, only this small subset have documented evidence to that effect.”
– from a lecture on comparative sophontology
Today’s random text from the mercifully-and-for-good-reason cut pile:
“It was horrible – horrible! We were just sitting there having drinks and talking. And then a robot fell out of the sky and his head exploded!”
“And the robot?”
“It exploded too.”