trope-a-day
To Win Without Fighting: The aim, at least, of most Imperial strategy (because the fighting is the costly part), and especially of eldraeic historic daehain, or “game war”, in which the generals on each side would maneuver until one side was placed in a strategically impossible position, and would then
governance
Overheard in the Crescent Bar, Conclave Drift 6 months post the end of the Core War “It’s a great speech, but it’s not going to work. You know that, right?” “What’s the problem with it?” “Well, mostly, that you’re trying to talk ‘political geostate’ to someone
trope-a-day
Tome of Eldritch Lore: One of the small number of amendments to the Imperial Charter amends the otherwise protected rights of “access to information, freedom of research and inquiry, freedom of speech and of the press” to include an exception “when such information or speech constitutes, in whole or in
Darkness Within
Transfer complete. Transfer complete. Transfer complete. Transfer complete. Transfer complete. Initiate final testing sequence. There I go, then. All ready, and at least three minutes ahead of schedule. The new guidance code; the suit life-support hackage; the router rewire; a command VUI; and some scripts to hold the damned mess
trope-a-day
To Absent Friends: Played straight, with extra poignancy added for more cosmopolitan Imperials due to the number of people who are absent because of death from old age, which in the outworlds there’s more of around than they might care to think of. Often turns into something of an
Voniensa Republic
Cor Trialtain Voniensa Republic (somewhere in the Shell) “It will work!” “It won’t,” Vanír min Athoess replied, “and you’ll probably get everyone on this planet killed trying.” The younger of the two kalatri leapt to his feet. “I thought you were here to help people like us! Now
trope-a-day
Time Travel: Present in very limited forms: the kind you can do with wormhole shortcuts and relativistic travel (whose primary usage is permitting physics grad students to actually observe local causality violations), and the kind that lets transcendent AIs whisper to themselves from the future via acausal logic. In both
Lumenna-Súnáris System
I/5. Talentar Class: Eutalentic Orbit (period): 1.49 au (664.3 T-days) Orbit (ecc.): 0.03 Radius: 2,137 miles Mass: 9.4 x 1023 kg Density: 5.51 g/cm3 Surface gravity: 0.54 g Axial tilt: 26.1° Rotation period: 23.5 T-hours Black-body temperature: 216 K
trope-a-day
Time Abyss: The members of the assorted naturally or artificially immortal species of the modern day still haven’t been around long enough for this – although the Empire contains plenty of people who are older than all Earth’s modern nations, and at least a few who are older than
trope-a-day
Thrown Out The Airlock: While purportedly an old space tradition to deal with pirates and mutineers, in practice, the penalties attached to littering anywhere remotely close to a trafficked orbit and the sheer waste of organic compounds are more than enough to persuade most salty spacedogs to Just Shoot ‘Em…
worldbuilding
‘Cause I have a backlog left over from 2015, that I haven’t found time to answer yet, and it would be nice to go into 2016 all fresh and pine-smelling. So, without further ado: …okay, one other thing that isn’t a question. It’s an art suggestion, for
trope-a-day
Second Law My Ass: I hadn’t actually written anything for this one – I’m not sure it existed when I made the relevant pass – but in the light of our last trope, I should probably address it. I should probably point out that while that last trope is averted,