trope-a-day
Rape, Pillage and Burn: Happens in various places with various less-disciplined armies, much as it ever does in history (well, probably with less rape, since there are rather more cross-species wars). The Imperial Military Service, on the other hand, is extremely rigorous about averting this particular trope, to the point
trope-a-day
Rape Is A Special Kind of Evil: Not quite played straight; possibly because it’s significantly less common, the eldrae (for example) lacking that peculiar messiness in the human brain where lust and power-lust get tangled up together into a peculiarly vicious kind of squick. It’s slaving, rather, that
military
Self-quoted from a G+ discussion in which the following Rumsfeldian aphorism came up: You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want. It is a truth I think greatly underappreciated (especially by politicians, alas) that unless you have paid the ridiculous-even-by-the-standards-of-US-defense-budgets amount of money
trope-a-day
Ramming Always Works: Mostly averted. At the distances at which most space combat happens, you’re lucky to be able to set a course with accuracy enough to make ramming work, and the other ship has plenty of time to either evade you or explode you. This makes it a
Voniensa Republic
1.1.1: I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all. 1.1.2: Relax, will you? It’s just a – 1.2.1: Would you both shut up? I’m trying to record. 1.1.2: Sorry, Ish. What’s your progress? 1.2.1:
trope-a-day
Rainbow Pimp Gear: What, you think every planet has its vegetation/sky/ground the same color? On some planets – say Saturn’s moon, Titan – burnt orange and fuchsia are camouflage colors.
trope-a-day
Racial Remnant: Most notably, the trilateral londian, who are also an unusual case because while the modern Londian Wanderers are clearly descendants, both genetically and culturally, of the elder-race of the same name that used to dominate the Londian Traverse, they don’t know exactly how they ended up that
UNMOVED MONAD
It is widely believed that time travel is useless. After all, everyone knows the Block Universe Theory and its limitations: changing the past is impossible, and as such all grandfather paradoxes are banned. Predestination paradoxes are permitted, but obviously only create the already-known current state of affairs, rather than alter
trope-a-day
Putting on the Reich: While the Imperial Military Service has been known to like peaked caps (although not in the current uniform), capes, trenchcoats, jackboots, eagles – well, the-local-animal-which-for-our-purposes-let’s-call-a-wyvern, actually, but any raptor gilded and put on top of a standard probably counts – lightning bolts, and calling rapid interface drop-troop
biology
Gabriel Fonseca asks if there’s anywhere that contains detailed physical descriptions of the various species of the Eldraeverse. Well, sadly, there isn’t right now, but for your visualizing pleasure, here’s some descriptions of most of the ones I’ve mentioned recently, anyway: Ciseflish In their home environment,
trope-a-day
Puppeteer Parasite: Mostly not naturally (due to the aversion of No Biochemical Barriers), but infectious neuroviruses can do a damn good impression of this – which is the sort of thing that makes defense planners twitchy, but no-one’s done it on a large scale yet (as mentioned under Alien Invasion)
planetary class
Tony Harris asks: It sounds as though you have some kind of planetary classification scheme set up. Care to share how it works? :please: Well, yes, yes I do. (Let me start out by saying that it does not, however, define what a planet is, except inasmuch as the classification