Mobile Suit Gundam: Pax Iove (An Original Gundam AU Advisorquest)

[x] Coordinator of Research.

Gain Trait: Scholar of Quaoar (+6 Learning)

A plaque hangs above the door to your office, facing your desk. It is embossed with a depiction and the words of the pre-spaceflight political scientist Wallace Stanly Sayre: "The politics of the university are so intense because the stakes are so low."

The Coordinator of Research; the most coveted yet most curtailed seat on the Consulate. Supposedly in control of awarding research grants, setting overall priorities, and facilitating coordination and communication between the Institutes, in practice it's the job of herding a flock of intelligent, prideful cats around a room the size of, well, a small planet. Its appointment is the most tense, even more than the election of the First Consul; the Institutes desperately want control of your position for its enumerated powers, but also seek to hobble any actual exercise of them lest they fall into the sphere of a rival.

Often, it's the Research seat which holds up the appointment process to nearing the final deadline - but there is a deadline, the seat must be filled, and the business of government must continue. The Institutes may stretch protocol and procedure to their breaking point, but they won't shatter them - you only wish that the nominees could leave the hearing and go to sleep while the deans and bursars hemmed and hawed. Or at least that the President of Toypurina Polytechnic would have slipped you some of whatever pills kept the centenarian awake for forty-three straight hours, most of them spent shouting.

Finally, though, they reached their consensus, and called you forward. From there, it was just a perfunctory trip to the irritatingly well-rested House of Voices, who read out your duties and obligations with all the enthusiasm of a broken voice synthesiser, and handed you the key to your office, an epaulet bearing a stylised owl, and a data terminal already flooding with requests, congratulations (with requests), well-wishes (with requests), and expense reports. As soon as you were out of sight of the cameras, you kicked off a wall and sprinted to your office in the Consular wing; you managed a whole four hours of sleep before being summoned up to the Consulate's inaugural meeting, which was better than you'd hoped.

You are kicked from your drowsy recollection by the whirring sound of electric motors, as panels rise from the floor to form a ring-shaped table, followed shortly by a second set which fold into round, high-backed chairs. It takes you a moment to locate your seat, as it still has your predecessor's name on it - before it flickers twice to show yours.

What does it show?
[ ] [NAME] Write-In

[ ] [GENDER] Male
[ ] [GENDER] Female
[ ] [GENDER] Other


The table folds up to reveal a thin display, showcasing the official profiles of the incoming Consulate. Out of curiosity - and to see just how much to expect will be cut from the other files - you start with your own.

(Did they really need to use your passport photo?)

Who were you before your appointment?

[ ] You were the captain of a Union Fleet vessel turned to science.
If Quaoar belongs to the Institutes, Weywot belongs to the Fleet. Quaoar's only moon is perhaps the least interesting thing in its orbit, and the Fleet (officially only a flotilla, but nobody calls it that around a Fleet spacer unless they're desperate to see a dentist) serves in as much a scientific capacity as a military one, using the stronger engines and superior maneuverability of its Palomar corvettes to ferry all kinds of equipment out to the Rings to try and unlock the mysteries of gravity. As captain of the Belogradchik, you formed a rapport with the researchers, and when several Institutes banded together to buy out a Palomar for private use, it was Belogradchik that answered.

• Gain Fleet Officer trait (+2 Martial, +1 Diplomacy).
• Known as a relatively impartial figure to the Institutes, and one they actually respect.
• Access to a dedicated research ship, the former RHS Belogradchik.
• There's a joke that the Reaches are where people go to waste their lives on impossible things - Quaoar wants artificial gravity, Haumea wants interstellar travel, Pluto wants peace in our time. For some people, it's not a joke. Relations bonus with gravity researchers, and with fellow "punchliners" from Haumea and Pluto.
• Mandate: Develop an indigenous warship class designed for mobile suit operations.

* * *

We're almost done with character creation - just special traits to go, and then we'll be into actual research turns.

Vote name/gender by pairs, but use approval voting for background - the second and third place results will be retained and integrated as your immediate subordinates.

The primary stats of each option generally indicate which other Consulate member you'll probably need to work with to accomplish your main goal, but you'll still be responsible for the whole breadth of research and development - the Mandate is just the primary thing they expect from your appointment, not the only goal (or even the only priority)!

Quaoar ([ˈkʷaʔuwar]) is the sixth largest dwarf planet in the Sol system, comparable in size to Pluto's moon Charon. It has a single moon, Weywot, and two distinct sets of rings, all of which have unusual orbital properties - Weywot's orbit is highly eccentric, indicating an unusual formation, while both rings exist well beyond the Roche limit, and thus should not exist according to conventional models of orbital mechanics. The rings remained an obscure scientific curiosity well into the colonial era.

The first formal plan for colonisation was proposed as part of the UNOOSA's Centennial Plan, meant to follow the completion of Hooke Colony Yards in the Jupiter Sphere, but was discarded with the plan's rejection by COPUOS. The committee's chair delivered a fierce denunciation of the plan, naming Quaoar specifically as "an unremarkable, unlivable ball of ice, with nothing to offer but funny rings and a name nobody can say". (The name Quaoar - honouring an indigenous Californian deity - was defended by the IAU and a spokesman from the Republic of California. Their statements received significantly less coverage.)

The Copernicus II disaster renewed an interest in the experimental study of orbital mechanics, and Quaoar was singled out as a potential research site by a team of New Cambridge researchers - however, they struggled to find funding, as most existing colonial ventures were already tied up in the Mercurian energy boom or the development of Neptune. Rights to the colonisation project were purchased by the Venusian pioneer (1) and industrialist Reijo Plymoth Kunwar, who established AstraGrav Horizons as a private, Earth-based colonial venture. AGH would attract prominent investors, with Kunwar promoting Quaoar not only as an academic destination but as possibly containing the keys to artificial gravity or faster-than-light travel, to the great frustration of his academic partners - most notably the resignation of chief colonial engineer Simone Chuong, who had led the original New Cambridge team (2).

AGH would acquire four Von Braun-class construction ships and a Jules Verne-class mobile service yard from Hooke. Kunwar would host a contest to choose members of the crew complement for these ships, personally selecting them from over two million applicants as "our best and brightest, to light so dark a place" (3). He would hold a second contest for berth space on the Verne, inviting universities and private think tanks to submit their best research projects for his "city of science and planet of marvels", promising them significant autonomy and input on planning his "city of lights".

The final AGH mission included representatives of 67 private research companies and 38 public universities, inconsistently named "founders" or "partners" in AGH's own press releases. Of them, 84 were based in the Earth Sphere, 13 from Venus, 6 from Mars, and 2 from Jupiter. The project was lauded for its efforts towards interplanetary cooperation. While selected founders were originally meant to have a full team and their equipment shipped to Quaoar as part of the initial colonisation, this quickly proved to be impossible, and Kunwar shifted to promising priority access to real estate and resources once the colony's core infrastructure was set up.

Quaoar was officially established 41 years prior to the Colonial War. Kunwar never visited the colony, dying at the age of 72 from a stroke while travelling to Earth from Venus for routine medical procedures. The colony was managed by AGH until the Colonial War's end, with AGH retaining ownership of core infrastructure. When several partners lobbied for the construction of a private life support facility, AGH declined, citing Kunwar's original charter, leading to some public criticism until they agreed to grant the partners further control over development, and oversight of AGH's local executive board. These protections slowly expanded over time, most notably when the partners assumed financial responsibility for Quaoar's public educational system in exchange for a number of enumerated rights for "an accredited institute of science or industry" - a law which finally set aside the founder-partner dispute in favour of simply "institute".

The end of the Colonial War saw AGH - like any interplanetary colonial company - officially dissolved by the Treaty of New Toronto. Ownership of all AGH assets was passed "to the residents of the colony of Quaoar, as represented by a body of their choice". The Institutes, as non-colonial entities (i.e., not owning colonial infrastructure or renting them to colonists), remained incorporated, simply legally severed from their parent organisations on Earth, and the Union affirmed their protections as of local rather than colonial origin (having been pushed for by local institutions, against the policies of AGH), allowing them to retain their influence ahead of a constitutional referendum. The referendum would select a constitution written by Jenivive Filo Kızılırmak (4), then a student at the Toypurina Institute of History and Culture, which established an executive body appointed by the Institutes but subject to approval from a popular House of Voices, who retained control over raw materials, energy, and life support.

* * *

(1) Kunwar never set foot on Venus. His private aerostat, Amytis Gardens, was built using resources shipped from Earth and Luna at great expense, and was not considered his permanent residence. While never formally a Geocentrist, he was closely tied to the movement, and a major donor to their affiliated parties in the Californian Third Republic.

(2) Chuong's public criticism of AGH would see her ostracised in the press and removed from any official statements about the colony - including retroactive edits of past releases. She would later file suit against Kunwar, claiming that her designs had been used by AGH without compensation, but the suit would be dismissed after her death. The exact extent of her contributions to the final colony remains unknown. After the Colonial War, Chuong would be posthumously honoured by the Union "for integrity in the defense of science and reason"; she is one of two Outer Reaches representatives on the Wall of Giants on Luna.

(3) This is the first recorded use of Kunwar using this phrase, though it would not be associated with him in the popular consciousness until his speech at the First Venusian Polytechnic.

(4) Kızılırmak would serve one term in the House of Voices before being named to the Consulate as Chief of the Judiciary. She has retained the seat ever since, and is now the longest-serving member of the Consulate.