For Science: Played terrifyingly straight, at least from dear old neophobic humanity’s point of view; while the Imperial science establishment does have a few notions of ethics (informed consent – while the Monument to the Martyrs of Science is large, it’s also to volunteers, really – sophont and prosophont rights,
Potential Applications (Just Think of the Potential): Worrying too much about the Potential Applications in the negative sense (you can have all the enthusiasm you want about them in the positive sense) will get you thrown right out of the Fellowship of Natural Philosophy¸et. al., as an Obstructively Naysaying
Thank you for your purchase from Viridian Verdance. The flame lily is a flowering perennial shrub of EliĂ©ra’s cold mountain regions, especially the mountains of TelĂrvess and the Caliváry, known for its large, fluted blue-purple upraised flowers in early spring and its unusual adaptation to late frosts, and makes
Cultural Posturing: All the Great Powers of the Worlds are prone to this – with varying degrees of justification (see, for example, Can’t Argue With Elves, when their sensibilities are particularly offended, and remember that these are the people who consider pride a virtue) – and have been since before your
When you become a sniper, they cut out your hearts. This is not a metaphor. It’s a difficult series of surgical operations, considering all the things they did to your skin and bone and sinew when you passed the Anvil to prevent the enemy from getting near either of
Creative Sterility: Completely averted; even the technical non-sophonts (non-volitional sapients) can be creative; you just have to tell them to be. But in general there’s no art form that doesn’t have some digisapient, etc., practitioners.
“Me? I’m a logotect. I make words – well, there’s lots of kinds of us, some specializing in ordinary words, some in jargon, or in seals, or in meaningful names, or whatever. Technically, I’m a euphemigen. I’m the opposite of a normal eonymic; I make words that
Everything Is An iPod In The Future: “Right now, being cutting-edge is all about plain black and white (maybe pastel colors if you’re lucky), translucent plastic, smoothed edges, screens that slide and flip out, touch screens, unobtrusive buttons, minimalist advertising and displays, lights that come out of nowhere and
(to these events…) “By vote of three to one, the Photonic Network abstaining, the Presidium of the Conclave finds no justification in the any of the Accords to disbar any species from signatory status or from signatory-member status on the basis of its origin. By vote of three to zero,
Raygun Gothic: The other major influence on the Empire’s aesthetics (albeit adapted to much newer technologies and materials than would be usual), along with Crystal Spires and Togas and – to a lesser extent – Everything Is An iPod In The Future. This one is notably major because for a variety
Crystal Spires and Togas: Well, the Imperials have the crystal spires down. Although, a little unusually, this wasn’t the follow-on from the “big, shiny, and sciency!” period (that is happening simultaneously) – it’s just that the saerymaharvéi silverlife, descendants of Precursor materials-processing nanites, left the surface of Eliera scattered
Just to warn y’all, things are going to look a little off in the trope-a-day world for a while, because while the next trope up technically is The Beautiful People, it happens to be sitting on top of a dependency chain 24 tropes deep. So we’re going to