From Storm-General Galen Claves-ith-Lelad, Warmain of the Dawn, Strategos of the 33rd Imperial Legion, the Fists of Lightning, to Ironlord Qorran Cieng, commanding the Third Army of Ochale, greeting. I have the honor to command the forces of my Empress, which even now approach the strongpoint you have made of
Floating Continent: Actually, there are quite a lot of these, whether you call them skyhomes, sky cities, or sky islands (in roughly increasing order of size). They are divided into the ones which hover over terrestrial worlds (which exist mostly because people think they’re cool, and why not?), the
Fling a Light Into the Future: A number of independent efforts, as well as cooperative efforts between the Imperial Emergency Management Authority and various bits of the Ministry of Progress & Prosperity are engaged in this – well, not quite this, since it’s still the present and doom hasn’t
Flaunting Your Fleets: Even more than routine commerce protection and anti-piracy operations, this is why the Imperial Navy bothers to run patrols from the Core out to Fleet Bases Coreward, Rimward, Spinward, Trailing, Acme, and Nadir – and, not coincidentally, why every other Great Power, with the exception of the Photonic
Fixed Forward Facing Weapon: Ah, yes, spinal mounts. Mostly common on smaller ships as the primary weapon (railguns and other mass drivers, generally – a big advantage because you can run the rail the full length of the ship, for the maximum possible slug acceleration), but some larger classes have them
Five Races: Not terribly true for the Eldraeverse; for one thing, there’s a lot more than five species out there. A lot more. But let’s look at some archetypes, here: Stout (Dwarf): One of the few that does have an obvious candidate, the pseudosaurian kaeth, whose physical strength
Sufficiently Advanced Alien: The Precursors and other elder races were, in their time. Whether or not they still are, or would be if they somehow came back again, is… debatable, and depends heavily on exactly how much physics lies between the current state of the most advanced known technology and
Older is Better/Lost Technology: Subverted in that while there are some awfully nice bits of leftover Precursor and/or elder race technology around, and piles of interesting things buried in the archives (assuming that some leftover perversion doesn’t eat your soul when you go looking for it), it’
Proud Warrior Race Guy: Some people think of the kaeth, the draconic pseudosaurians with the heavy-metal biology among the Imperials, as this, but while they are certainly violent (er, kinesthetic) enough, their sense of honor also is comfortable matching the Empire’s general Combat Pragmatism and eschewing of Martyrdom Culture,
Martyrdom Culture: Strongly averted by the Empire, who as firm devotees of Living Forever is Awesome consider this sort of thing absolutely, completely, utterly idiotic. It may be better to die for your beliefs than to die in bed for nothing, but whenever not absolutely impossible, it’s a damn
Fish People: Averted. While there are aquatic people in the Associated Worlds who can trace their evolutionary ancestry pretty directly back to piscids (“fish-analogs”), none of them are the least bit humanoid. They are, in other words, fish people, but not Fish People.
Fisher Kingdom: The Empire is a moderate example of the first type; while not involving any actual mental modification, or other self-integrity violations (unlike the mind-warpers of the Equality Concord or various pharmacrats, for example), it is a fully mature information society (much more information-dense than the high end of