trope-a-day
Statuesque Stunner: Average height of the Eldrae is 6Ⲡ8âł to 7Ⲡ8âł, for both sexes. (And, of course, transsophont beauty is built right into the genes.) Everyone qualifies â or rather would, if they were around humans, and not too much like The Fair Folk.
Darkness Within
About that LOX tank⌠The least well defined part of this candle plan has always been how to stay breathing. Before leaving Gutpunchâs hulk, I can recharge my suit reservoirs with the last of the oxygen and inert-mix1 from the emergency supplies. That would be enough for a local
trope-a-day
State Sec: Despite the name, Imperial State Security averts this completely; theyâre just an intelligence/security organization, and a much more constrained (even the Fifth Directorate), non-autonomous one. The only military is, well, the Imperial Military Service under a different ministry entirely, the regime protection forces are three entirely
Comet Ice and Water
ââŚover the course of the 3100s, orbit-change and mass-export rights covering the majority of InlĂŠtanĂłsâs spectacular planetary ring system were bought up by the crowdfunded Outer Planets Aesthetic Collective, most notably in one massive transaction in 3142 in which the Collective purchased as a bloc the entire ring ice
trope-a-day
Star-Spangled Spandex: Fabric that reflects the night sky with tiny stars and nebulae (the generic kind is nebulin), especially the kind that through inbuilt tech or an AR shimmer actually has them move subtly when youâre not paying attention, was a major fashion trend back in the middle Space
Imperial Exploratory Service
âIn reality, there is no such thing as a life detector. Vitalism long since having joined the scientific junk-heap, it is a regrettable fact of the universe that there is no quick, convenient, and universal âvital fieldâ that we can tap into to determine the presence of living beings. âBut
Darkness Within
For those of you who read this for the space technology, it occurs to me that I should perhaps point out at this time that itâs only the militarized version of the Nelyn-class that comes with a nuclear-thermal attitude control system. The civilian one uses regular and more modestly
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Starship Luxurious: Played straight in the Empire, even to a large extent with military vessels. Part of this â see Flaunting Your Fleets â is advertising, much as the brightwork on Age of Sail ships used to be, âlook, we can afford to do this with our naval vesselsâ, but a lot
Darkness Within
MET-187-5+13 et. seq. That will go more easily if I can get in behind it and push it out, but that means exposing the forward maintenance compartment. Which will be a job in itself; a Nelynâs a lot of spacecraft for its size, which has the unfortunate corollary
trope-a-day
Star Killing: The theory exists behind several nova bombs, anyway, and ontotechnology shows the way to interesting possibilities like twist-pinch bombs. (These are essentially the same type of nova-inducing weapon that we see at the start of Charlie Strossâs Iron Sunrise.) And one probably could induce a nova with
Darkness Within
MET 187-5+3 Or possibly I donât need a new plan. Since I canât think of a new plan, just a variation on the old plan, it would be very desirable that this is the case. To make it to the stargate, I would need a vector-control core,
trope-a-day
Excessive Steam Syndrome (was:Â Stanley Steamer Space Ship if you wondered about the alphabetization): Even those reactors that use other principles to extract energy still harness the thermal differential they produce, because itâs there and not to be wasted. Meanwhile, spacecraft require their own complex cooling infrastructure, and often