“To propose taking apart, possibly explosively, a star by means of, or to use as, a weapon is to suggest a violation of Tier I, Chapter I, yes, and a serious war crime. Call the chaps at Harmonious Serenity. “To propose doing exactly the same thing for science, on the
Cyberpunk with a Chance of Rain: Magen (Magen Exodus), throneworld of the eponymous Magen Corporate, is like this. In amusing irony, Magen’s planetary weather was this miserable before the governing cartel of the Associated Worlds’ closest approach to a cyberpunk dystopia got hold of it – not that it’s
“It wasn’t so bad for colony kids; we’d never known anything else. But while we were growing up, we could watch our ship-born parents wince every evening at the thought of eating dead animal and dirt-grown plants. As for what they put on those plants to make them
Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Averted, inasmuch as they don’t cause you to become emotionless, sociopathic, otherwise insane, or terminally angsty. On the other hand, played at least somewhat straight where mind enhancement is concerned, since sufficient mental augmentations do tend to cause a few issues when you look around
In political galactography, the principal distinction to make is that between the two sets of worlds found in most developed polities, the Metropolitan and the Ecumenical. In the beginning, whether through caution, limited colonization budgets, or having begun with sublight colonization using lighthuggers or generation ships, most polities begin colonization
And here, at last, are the final six cards (previous 1-6, 7-12, 13-18). 19. THE STAR A vacuum-suited herm kneels in the harsh red-tinged regolith of an unterraformed world, wearing the gauntlet of a nanolathe on hsis right arm, and holding a cornucopia in hsis left, from which water spills
Cyber Cyclops: Generally averted: parallax is too useful a tool in building sensors for moving things to give up (although static computers not built to do much physical-world manipulation, I suppose, often use single cameras for vision). Although in some cases there may be only one kind of any given
“Yeah, vacuum won’t kill you. Should you find yourself falling free out of a big hole in your ship, stay sharp, and keep your eyes shut and your mouth open the way they teach you when you go out for your S-license, and you ought to live through it.
Cyanide Pill: Played straight in the past, although the old-style cyanide pill was replaced when possible with direct kill-switch brain implants, thought-triggered, such that it was a lot harder to stop someone from using one. Subverted in the modern day – since while the power source for the bug-out transmitter can
For those following along with the worldbuilding at home, the Starfall Arc, the home galaxy of the Associated Worlds is, yes, the Milky Way seen from another perspective. The “prominent satellite galaxies” identified as the Greater and Lesser Ancíël Whirls are those which we call the Large and Small Magellanic
Cut the Juice: While a minor thing, usually harder to do than it seems; UPSes are a standard computer component in much of the Worlds, and various polities, the Empire included, build heavily decentralized power grids because they’ve seen this one in action before, thanks. Besides, coming from the
To begin at the beginning, the galaxy in which we dwell, the Starfall Arc, is a barred spiral galaxy, possessing four major spiral arms, and attended by a number of satellite galaxies, most prominent among which are the Greater and Lesser Ancíël Whirls. These arms, from innermost to outermost, are