trope-a-day
Short Range Long Range Weapon: Most sensible people try really hard to avert this – seeing as the lovely people who make these things for a living have provided them with so many comfortably long-range weapons, it’s a shame not to take advantage of them, and fight where survivability is
Imperial Navy
From the Office of the Admiralty with the Voice and Authority of those Appointed as Lords of Admiralty and charged with executing the Aforesaid Office under Power of Authority descending From Their Imperial Majesties, under the Great Seal. RÃän Múranios-ith-Murann Elisná We do hereby constitute and appoint you to the
Imperial Military Service
3.72 (a): Personnel of the Imperial Military Service who are missing their dominant arm, or whose dominant arm is severely injured, at the present time shall be permitted to render the hand and blade salutes with their off-hand. 3.72 (a) (i): An exception to the above shall be
military
Kahrsh Pacification Zone Kaher (Yaffish Marsh) Even from within the thickly-armored Hellwind-class command tank, and at the entire river’s width, the yells and screams of the mob advancing towards the nearest island, and so the final span of the lengthy bridge were clearly audible. Lieutenant Vikal Karelian, Forty-Third Waserai
trope-a-day
Rock Beats Laser: No, no it doesn’t. The history of galactic warfare is the history of superior technology consistently crushing inferior technology in Curb-Stomp Battle after Curb-Stomp Battle. Most of the time, it’s not even sporting. There are a very few counterexamples brought up, but when examined, those
culture
The Empire has its monuments to its battles and retreats, to its victories and losses, but more curious perhaps to many are those monuments it has to those who fought against it. On my way into the system, the liner on which I was travelling passed the moon HynÃne, where
trope-a-day
Rape, Pillage and Burn: Happens in various places with various less-disciplined armies, much as it ever does in history (well, probably with less rape, since there are rather more cross-species wars). The Imperial Military Service, on the other hand, is extremely rigorous about averting this particular trope, to the point
military
Self-quoted from a G+ discussion in which the following Rumsfeldian aphorism came up: You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want. It is a truth I think greatly underappreciated (especially by politicians, alas) that unless you have paid the ridiculous-even-by-the-standards-of-US-defense-budgets amount of money
trope-a-day
Ramming Always Works: Mostly averted. At the distances at which most space combat happens, you’re lucky to be able to set a course with accuracy enough to make ramming work, and the other ship has plenty of time to either evade you or explode you. This makes it a
trope-a-day
Putting on the Reich: While the Imperial Military Service has been known to like peaked caps (although not in the current uniform), capes, trenchcoats, jackboots, eagles – well, the-local-animal-which-for-our-purposes-let’s-call-a-wyvern, actually, but any raptor gilded and put on top of a standard probably counts – lightning bolts, and calling rapid interface drop-troop
Imperial Legions
“So, we were about three weeks out from Tanja – that’s in the Glimmerstars, don’ch’know – with the Blood and Gold, us in the Fifty-Eighth, just heading back from some little out-system where we’d been doing the hearts-and-minds thing. Glimmerstars was one of the Expansion Regions back then,
trope-a-day
Power Fist: The cestus, yes; the spiked gauntlet, yes; the electro-zappy-glove, yes. The true power fist, however, as seen in Fallout, et. al., generally comes attached to a set of Powered Armor, or at least a power torso – in the interest of not ripping your arm off when you try