worldbuilding
…burn reality’s house down, with the lemons. Or use them for something creative. The following is an excerpt from a comment seen this morning on Reddit: Meanwhile, here’s some phrases lifted verbatim from political internet articles from the past few months: “Poisonous Parade” “While the Madman Prowls” “Age
Ministry of State and Outlands
satrapy (n.): A foreign polity, for whatever reason, temporarily operating with the advice and under the supervision of an Imperial satrap (typically, an officer of the Ministry of State and Outlands of prefectural or higher rank) but not under military occupation; a relationship one step closer than a client-state. The
trope-a-day
High-Tech Hexagons: Well, yes, for reasons of efficiency and domes and carbon and geodesic construction and other practical reasons given in the trope page. Plus, of course, six-sides shapes are only natural for people who count in twelves.
Resplendent Exponential Vector (Imperial Core)
Here There Be Dragons: Seen on star charts which include the Resplendent Exponential Vector system, and in particular, that moon given over to the biogenesis project working on creating the mythologae the way they really ought to have been. (They haven’t managed to actually create any dragons yet, but
Lintis (Banners)
The defining feature of Lintis (Banners), to most visitors, is that the entire planet smells strongly of peppermint. (A characteristic attributable to the local grass-analog – there’s always a grass-analog – which is heavily loaded with menthols.) Natives and long-term residents, of course, have all long stopped smelling anything, but the
Repository of All Knowledge
Great Big Library of Everything: The Empire’s Repository of All Knowledge, which is exactly what it says on the tin. Apart from containing copies of every work in every medium published anywhere in the Empire and many of the unpublished ones too, it routinely sends out collections agents to
Places Not To Go
An Ember-class star distinguished only by its relative proximity to the Eye of Night (Last Darkness), orbited by a scattering of asteroids and an equally undistinguished dwarf planet (Geydagan Actual), the Geydagan (Last Darkness) System is occupied only by the Servants of Geydas, a cruel, hostile, aggressive, and secretive cult
trope-a-day
God Test: Have gone rather out of fashion since most examples of a miracle became something people could purchase at their local hardware store, leaving things people could ask to be done as proof of divine bona fides too academic (“Violate conservation of energy!”), too insane (“So make a rock
black cell
black cell (n.): An originally-improvised form of prison or brig cell used by various independent drifts and starships designed for long-duration flight, a black cell is adapted from an airlock, in which the outer door is not equipped with a docking collar, and the inner door is only controllable from
trope-a-day
A Glitch in the Matrix: Avoiding this sort of thing, when it comes to virtual reality, is one of the few legitimate uses for the Out-of-Mind visual textures. (Others mostly including hiding gifts and playing really terrible practical jokes.) A more commonly seen variant are “weavespiders”, small metallic fractal spiders
worldbuilding
A somewhat snarksome summary written for use elsewhere, which I repost here for general interest: Theomachy of Galia A polity controlled by and largely made up of religious fanatics, well-known for despising unbelievers, anyone they perceive as weak, the female of the species, any species1, and for some incomprehensible reason,
trope-a-day
Giving Radio to the Romans: Tends to happen quite a bit, given the lack of any Prime Directive-equivalent and the large number of free traders around who are more than happy to sell anything to anyone who can pay – and that’s not even counting the “fell off the back