“I am an algetic composer. I am not a torturer.” “Indeed, I can recite more detailed information about the selective stimulation of pain centers than most people. That doesn’t change the reality of what I do, you understand? I am not some damned savage dealing out pain for interrogation
Bigger on the Inside: Averted… so far (as referenced in Stop Fittling With That and its Author’s Notes). The possibility is acknowledged to exist – the field of ontotechnology is working on it even now, in the present of their timeline, under the generic name of “dimensional transcendence”, and it
Ave Machina: Smile when you say that, squishie! Well, sort of. The Imperials subscribe to the elegance of design, logic, and purity of the machine parts of the trope, but, well, this is a trans/postsophontist setting (even outside the Empire, which completely idealizes those notions, nothing-but-the-pure-flesh baselines are rare,
High in the mountains of Cimoníë lies the black-spired citadel of the Aellakhassren, the Order of Beautiful Death, the finest students of ktenology the Empire has to offer. Not death-worshippers, they would have us be clear; their order takes Ithával and Kalasané as exemplars, save those few who, by profession,
The Speculativism Index, under any of its names, is a crude clionomic hack used by free traders, weirdseekers, adventurers, and various other professions which necessarily interact with the starbound and minority civilizations of the known Galaxy in a more amateurish way than the Grand Survey or the Exploratory Service. The
Deus Est Machina: Done deliberately and intentionally. When you build a recursively self-improving seed AI, the kind that turns into, in the lingo, a “weakly godlike superintelligence”, then you have to know that you’re committing a willful act of theogeny, right there. Doubly so when you’re building a
In today’s random conlanging post – the Eldraeic terms for the six simple machines, just because I could: rijvas Inclined plane. rijsevas Wedge (“double-sided inclined plane”, more or less) saejas Screw (originally “circular inclined plane”, then worn down) chalél / charét Wheel / axle sekánlél Lever (“stick that moves things not itself”
The drone stood in the hangar, its blunt nose and forward-swept wings scarred with the black lines of kinetic strikes and near-misses with explosive-tipped missiles, the capped remnant of one sensory pod dangling uselessly from its side. “For great valor in the face of the enemy,” the Wing Commander read,
Hive Mind: The Transcend is not a traditional Hive Mind, it’s a collective consciousness, or group intellect. The difference, as it will point out to you at some considerable length, is that all of the members retain their individual personalities and perspectives as well as contributing to the whole,
Just throwing in, now it’s not on my nonexistent regular blog, a plug for the blog Women Fighters In Reasonable Armor, of which I approve thoroughly in the interest of not making my suspension of disbelief hurt any more than it does already when reading Generic Fantasy or other
“The models you can see in this room,” said the guide, “represent some of the first models of carbon organizer. Carbon organizers were the earliest and simplest form of dry nanotechnology, capable of building simple molecular structures from carbon and hydrogen atoms only. While this may seem trivial, they formed
Mental Fusion: See Hive Mind for the permanent version (Fusions and Self-Fusions). The temporary version, called a conflux, is a standard part of the arsenal for a variety of situations – merged fireteams for greater military efficiency and coordination (and, y’know, battlefield omniscience, when done really right), guard webs that