Imperial Charter
Article IV: Imperial Rights of the Citizen-Shareholder The Empire guarantees the following inalienable civic rights to all Imperial citizen-shareholders, over and above the fundamental rights of all sophonts. Right of Person and Property: In recognizing the sacred and fundamental Right of Domain, the responsibilities of the citizen notwithstanding, all Imperial
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Utopia: Well, the Imperials would certainly like to think that they live in one, or at least an asymptotic approach to one, anyway. Of course, as we pointed out back in Imperial Dream, the Empire is a utopia for people who think the way that the Imperials think people ought
worldbuilding
Specialist290 asks: One thing I didn’t really see clarified anywhere else: What exactly is “meddlement” in the sense that it’s used in Imperial law (and, more to the point, what sorts of behavior would it outlaw that would be considered “business as usual” and beneath legal scrutiny *here*
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Uterine Replicator: Or, as it’s known locally, the exowomb. Ubiquitous. (Although neither mendacious nor polyglottal.) I mean, “In vivo? How quaint.” For values of quaint, that is, equal to “Gods below, what is this, the primordial reign of chaos and darkness? With stone knives and bearskins?” Because even leaving
starship
Rejoice, ye people, for my horrendously ugly diagram of the Marlinspike-class MAV is no more, Winchell Chung of Atomic Rockets having made a much better one, which he is kindly letting me use here, too. Go, ye, and check it out.
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(As a side note, please permit me to apologize for the lack of new fic content over the last few days. I appear to have once again contracted some sort of death plague that is playing merry hell with my creativity, so I’m just sitting around crunching numbers, popping
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Urban Segregation: Averted in the Empire, at least in the prestige/class-based sense, mostly because the sort of class structure that results in people of different classes (especially wealth-based classes) declining to associate in the segregationist sense is an outgrowth of primate relative status hierarchies and exclusivist signifiers. Since the
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Uplifted Animal: Quite a few, in the interests of adding people with different points of view and abilities to the population (see: Intelligent Gerbil). Of the greenlife – and therefore recognizable to Terrans – animals, most prominent are the dogs (dar-bandal), cetaceans (dar-ííche), octopi (dar-cúlnó), rat kings (dar-celmek), and ravens (dar-vorac). Averted
accident
(As it happens, my lovely editor and lovelier wife, Amy, has been looking to try her hand at this writing gig, and so please give a big hand to the first piece of Eldraeverse canon not written – my hand was limited to a one-line prompt – by me!) Dear Mom: It’
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Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Played slightly straight, inasmuch as that given the degree of species and clade diversity to be seen in cosmopolitan regions (most of the Empire, the Conclave Drift, the Rim Free Zone, the Free Eilish Confederacy, other hub worlds, etc.) is sufficient that merely looking weird will not
Marlinspike-class microgravity assault vehicle
So, since I’ve just described the nature of boarding actions, I might as well go ahead and describe the ship used to carry them out when necessary, the Marlinspike-class MAV. And yes, this does mean that it’s horrible diagram time again. …or rather not, because Winchell Chung of
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Unusual Euphemism: Eldraeic, by and large, is not a language given to a great deal of euphemism. Circumlocution, yes, but not so much euphemism, as its principal speakers prefer their straight talk to be straight. For example, polite society has no problem with people just saying straight out: valdar sessqár