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We Are As Mayflies: What, humans? YOUR LIVES ARE MEASURED IN YEARS AND DECADES. YOU WITHER AND DIE.  WE ARE ETERNAL, THE PINNACLE OF EVOLUTION AND EXISTENCE. BEFORE US, YOU ARE NOTHING. …well, okay, awesome Sovereign quotations aside, they’re rarely that arrogant. (Unless irritable, and let’s face it,
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Weaponized Exhaust: Ah, yes – the Kzinti lesson. What can we say about the Kzinti lesson. Well, we can say that it is both entirely true and entirely useless (in actual space combat, although on the ground your mileage may differ). It’s entirely true because, as Larry Niven said, “A
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Weapon of Mass Destruction: Per the Ley Accords (i.e., the Laws and Customs of War), in descending order of aargh, you’ve got star-killing weapons (nova bombs, including specifically star-targeted strangelet bombs, twist-pinch bombs, and most hypothetical causal weapons), planet-killing weapons (large/fast kinetic impacters, including asteroid drops, planet-targeted
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What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Averted to varying degrees (and, obviously, in the naïve sense, completely averted since there are no humans at all). The standard view, in the Associated Worlds, is that described in the Universal Accord on Sophont Rights: anything that thinks and has volition (i.e., is
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War of Earthly Aggression: Preemptively averted with the Empire’s interstellar colonies. The Thirteen Colonies (the first thirteen systems colonized) were originally colonized sublight by sleeper vessels, so while technically subordinate to the Eliéran Empire were functionally independent. When the wormhole was invented and reunification came about, they were each
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War is Glorious: The doctrine of one of the Flamic war gods: Kalasané, Laughing Warrior, Sword of Heaven, Lord of the Two Swords, the eikone of battle, courage, valor, victory through strength, and personal combat, who approaches the whole thing with a degree of enthusiasm that would impress the mythological
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War for Fun and Profit: Mostly averted; the major arms manufacturers can make just as much money, what with upgrades, exercises, and replacements, from the peacetime market, especially once ongoing Space Cold Wars and loss-of-inventory-due-to-privateers-and-military-risks premiums have to be factored into the equation. And the usual run of security companies,
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Walking the Earth: And, indeed, Flying the Space. A period spent doing this is considered a more or less essential part of one’s later education, in the Empire. Got to spent some time figuring the world out, after all.
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Waistcoat Of Style: Played straight, for both sexes (cut appropriately differently). The Empire is a “thingist” culture that particularly enjoys its little pocket gadgets for this and that and the other thing, so obviously, you need a garment specially adapted for keeping them in, starting with your fob… terminal. (And
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Voluntary Shapeshifting: In a variety of limited forms. There are clades which possess a limited ability to change shape within the general parameters of their species (shifters); which are designed to shift between multiple shapes, usually two, although limitations on this and parts reuse tend to make neither shape look
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Virtual Ghost: As mentioned in earlier tropes, everyone who chooses to die “permanently”, rather than being reinstantiated again, which is to say, chooses to move beyond individual corporeal existence, has their mind-state uploaded into the Transcendent soul-ocean to become part of the collective consciousness. Sometimes, when it’s particularly important,
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(This is actually yesterday’s.) Vestigial Empire: There aren’t any really obvious Vestigial Empires – the Empire and the Consolidated Waserai Echelons are still vigorous; while the Voniensa Republic is near its clionomic control limits short of the kind of reforms their ideology won’t permit, it’s not yet