Absolute Xenophobe: There are some species that might feel this way, but almost none that try to act accordingly on the interstellar scale; in general, pissing off the entire Galaxy, or even that small piece of it that constitutes the Associated Worlds, is not survival-oriented behavior (see Genocide Dilemma, when
Abnormal Ammo: While regular pistols, snipers and carbines (the three principal kinds of slugthrower) just fire flechettes chipped off an ammo block, a sluggun (or a military grade carbine that comes with an undermounted sluggun), while usually firing big slug-spikes of dense metal as an anti-materiel weapon, can instead fire
Hello, new people! If you haven’t seen any of this before, this is my worldbuilding/writing blog, in which I talk about the universe in which I work.  It’s recently been moved here from another site, which is why you can find some archive content older than this,
trope-a-day
This also serves as the introduction to this series of posts.  As I’m porting them over from the old Tumblr at which this used to be hosted, I’ll repeat here what I said there: Welcome to the first of today’s literary announcements. So, I’ve set off
eldrae
I’m posting this one out of order, mostly because I’m finding more and more coming up in the list that reference it – the psychological differences between the eldrae, and indeed the Imperial, on the street and the humanity we’re used to and their effects on their sense
trope-a-day
Fantastic Caste System: Subverted. While the Eldraeic concept of darëssef is often glossed as “caste” in translation, and while the nine groups of acquiescents (those who serve higher powers), aesthants (those who create beauty), executors (those who plan and implement), hearthmistresses (those who maintain; despite the way the name comes
…just tried to hijack a starship that he has no idea how to pilot by pointing a gun at the head of the immortal guy who doesn’t need a body. This is only a very tiny step on the smart side of, say, hyperlocal nuclear brinksmanship with the antideuterium
culture
… referring to any of the Empire’s citizen-shareholders, is valmirĂän in the original Eldraeic; curiously, it is not cognate at all to that nation’s formal name. From its roots, it could have the meaning either of “ordered self” or of “self that sets in order”. When asked if one
eldraeic language
sarvanattar: I was in the middle of a Stargate SG-1 marathon when I decided I needed a particle for SĂntári that makes an imperative more urgent. It would work in the same way that English, Latin, and Greek all use go!, ite!, or ἴθι! plus another command. The particle is
eldraeic language
fyeahconlangs: Wahawafe is the name of my multilingual translation project. It was begun on 18 June 2011. The website was launched on 9 July 2011. “Wahawafe” is an acronym of “We are humans and we are from Earth.”. The aim of this project is to collect translations of this sentence
meta
Frustration is coming up with a starship crew for a piece of writing only to realize you’ve recreated half the cast of Firefly. Redo from start.
gaming
You can’t play MMOs on a lighthugger in flight even with access to copious amounts of tangle (or, for that matter, any other theoretical kind of ansible), because relativistic time dilation causes terrible, terrible lag.