For The Tyrants Fear Your Might (A quest of interstellar rebellion)

AKuz · Dec 10, 2020

THE ALL-RADIANT CONGRESS

Setting Information: The Solarian Compact:

Initially formed as the Solarian Treaty Organization from the ashes of the old United Nations Security Council, United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, and the Global Climate Relief Organization in the worst decade of Earth's environmental collapse. The STO was originally a body tasked with overseeing the granting of offworld mining permits and the purchase and distribution of the resources to countries struggling from climate change.

The advent of the Korolev-Chandrashker gates and the construction of the first one under STO oversight in 2063 led to the beginning of the transformation of that body into the de facto single governing body of the Human species.

Reorganized into the 'Solarian Compact', the first Charters were granted to massive corporate conglomerates to explore and exploit the cosmos for Humanity with little to no regulation or restriction.

In the early decades, the Solarian Compact oversaw the construction of KC gates in the systems closest to Sol and began the process of granting colonization rights to the most habitable worlds within that region with colonization rights granted to a number of national and international blocks.

With the growth of the Solarian Compact's power came calls for the body to become more representative and democratic, and in 2099, the Solarian Compact held its first elections and constitutional convention, inviting representatives from the Sol system and the five systems that held permanent Human settlement.

Over the course of the 22nd and 23rd centuries the Solarian Compact has held fast to what it sees as its duty to act as the mediator and financier of the Charters, the unifying agent of the disparate first Human colonies, and the guarantor of interstellar peace for Humanity.

As of 2252, the three most important bodies within the Solarian Compact are the Solarian Parliament -Located on Earth, the Solarian Compact Navy -based in the Korolev-Chandrashker system, and the Solarian Central Bank, -based out of the Columbia System.

Organized as a liberal democracy, with universal suffrage, the Solarian Compact is theoretically overseen by three equal institutions: the Solarian Parliament, the office of the Solarian Secretary General, and the Solarian High Court.

Though the Solarian Compact prides itself on being a Constitutional government, the actual original document merely outlines the terms of admitting new MPs and High Court Judges, and the electoral procedures of the Compact Parliament, with subsequent Parliaments meeting to add items like the Declaration of Property Rights, the founding of the Central Bank, the creation of the Solarian Navy, and the Laws on Freedom of Navigation and Travel being added later.

The Solarian Parliament is made up of two thousand six hundred and twenty seats representing ridings on Earth, Columbia, Atlantis, Penglai, Olduvai, and Epsilon which are elected every three years to a Parliament that meets in the New York prefecture of Earth.

Though the many frontier colonies do not have direct representation in the Parliament due to being owned and operated by private entities, their inhabitants are considered 'Absent for Employment' and may register with a home riding and submit a physical ballot (for security reasons) by courier from when polls open until they close. Though this process was suitable for the closely settled regions of space at the time of the ratification of the Compact Constitution in 2100, the rapid growth of Human settled space in the century and a half since has seen the de facto voter suppression of over 90% of Human settled space.

At the first sitting of each new Compact Parliament, the assembled members will elect a Secretary General and a slate of Ministry officials on a majority basis, and those individuals will oversee the executive branch of government and day to day operations. Though the average Compact Parliament contains between seven to nine parties in each Parliamentary sitting, the vast majority of seats belong to one of either the Party for Human Rights and Liberties or the Justice and Development Alliance and have since the very early 2100s. The governments formed this way can be brought down by losing the confidence of the Parliament for example, by failing to pass a budget, the process of finding a majority government will repeat again.

Though a democratic body that has maintained stability for over a century and a half, the Solarian Compact Parliament has been dogged by accusations of dynastic politics, Charter influence, voter suppression, regulatory capture, inability to reign in the Banks and MIlitary, and corruption at all levels.

Separate from the Parliament is the Solarian High Court that consists of eleven judges that serve terms of up to thirty-three years, with each new sitting of the Compact Parliament selecting one judge from a list provided by the governments of the six main worlds of the Solarian Compact. The High Court rules on matters of adherence of laws to the Solarian Constitution, and have been accused of serving as an arm of the Charters, though this has been strenuously contested by the Solarian legal profession as a whole.

By law the Solarian Compact also oversees a number of other important institutions including the Earth Reconstruction Commission (In a permanent public-private partnership with the Earth Reconstruction Association), the Solarian Central Bank, and the Solarian Compact Navy, though these important institutions often exhibit an alarming degree of autonomy from Parliamentary control.

The Charters:

The result of a cleverly conceived merger between specialty transport vessel manufacturer Titan Staryards and Private Military contractor Martian Military Solutions, Ares cut its teeth not just supplying material to the skirmishes between Mississippi Shipping and United Starhaul, but in supplying military contractors to both sides.

The professionalism of Ares mercenaries and quality of Ares gear led to the rapid expansion of business opportunities for the company and investment skyrocketed even after the Mississippi-Starhaul war ended in a hostile takeover of Starhaul by Mississippi.

Thanks in part to Mississippi debts held by Ares, when the RT-2102 Gate was opened up for settlement strategic maneuvering saw the Compact grant Ares mining and settlement rights to the newly opened system.

The rest, as they say, is history. Leveraging the immense resources of the Alexander system with their existing military expertise, Ares expanded nearly exponentially over the following century. While they maintain a dominating edge in the military field, they now integrated companies in fields from agronomy to personal fitness centers to xenobiology.

Internally Ares very self consciously styles itself as a hierarchical military organization complete with a semi-formal rank structure and an ethos of respect for the chain of command, professional courtesy, and treating your subordinates with respect. In practice Ares is hidebound, authoritarian, filled with passive aggressive sniping and rampant empire building.

While Ares remains headquartered on Mars, they have holdings in several systems and own the distant system of Alexander outright.

Rhodes Mining

One of the three original Charters that the Compact granted, Rhodes considers itself the singular reason that Humanity survived ecological collapse and spread past Sol. Immensely wealthy, over 52% of all material mined and processed by the entire Human race has passed through Rhodes hands at one point or another.

While founded merely to provide Earth the vital materials that it needed to rebuild itself after the lost decades of ecological collapse, Rhodes quickly expanded into all areas of the economy to support their mining, refining, and processing operations.

Dedicated to their vision of logistical chain efficiencies they've developed an entire chain of star systems into an efficient production center based around the resource rich system of Foundry, and the nearby feeder systems of Ecrams, Qem, and Crucible.

Rhodes considers itself home to a version of meritocracy built on hard work, education, and good old fashioned personal drive. This has developed over time into a stratified internal divide between the rank and file workers, the lower level management, and the highly lauded senior management. Each class lives in entirely separate worlds, attending separate schools, consuming different products, and leading very different lives in what many observers have labelled a de facto caste system.

they make food and medicine, the 120 year old CEO is kinda creepy tho?

Techbros, some of them science, some of them explore

Born from the union of Hermes Interstellar Services and The Ishtar Group, the Hermes-Ishtar Corporation owns and operates not only the communications backbone of Compact space, but much of the content that crosses over it.

The results of increasing consolidation of pre-spaceflight communications infrastructure and content creation and management firms, Hermes Communications and Ishtar Entertainment Group were both part of the second round of Charters established after the advent of the KC gates.

While Hermes quickly established operations throughout Compact space, their waystations, couriers, and communications repeaters a common sight in every corner of Human occupied space; Ishtar Group mainly limited their own operations to Sol and the Radiant system, where Ishtar owned and operated the world of Elysium to support their many projects.

Following a wave of Compact space wide reorganizations following the Mississippi-Starhaul conflicts of the 2130s, a desire for complete vertical integration on Ishtar's part led to a mostly amicable union with Hermes in 2139.

Since then Hermes-Ishtar have dominated all communications across Human space with only the privileged internal high-level communications of the other Charters managing to avoid consolidation under Hermes-Ishtar.

While Hermes-Ishtar make a great show of respecting individual creativity, initiative, and drive from their employees; in practice this amounts to rampant internal fighting involving the parasocial personality cults of different "genius" inventors, artists, and executive that rise and fall inside of Hermes-Ishtar at a dizzying rate.

Sketchy buggers, they can get you anything tho

Historical Topics:

Between 2036 and 2071 the Democratic Federation was the governing body of much of Earth's Western Hemisphere.

Initially comprised of a Federation of Socialist, Anarchist, Communist, and other far left social movements, militias, and political factions controlling regions of Earth's North American continent during and after the decline and collapse of the United States of America (1776-2034) due to the effects of unaddressed climate change amplifying existing political and economic crisis.

Eventually solidifying into the governing body of the former United States of America, United States of Mexico and the Dominion of Canada, the Democratic Federation embarked on an ambitious program of cultural revolution and economic reform designed to mitigate and reverse the effects of the climate change crisis.

As the patron of much of the central and southern western hemisphere, the Democratic Federation attempted to chart a course of environmental restoration separate from that of the Solarian Treaty Organization (In 2063 reorganized into the Solarian Charter), choosing not to contest Eurasian and African domination of outer space.

Having never existed out of crisis conditions, a combination of pre-existing economic damage, sabotage, and instability drove the Democratic Federation into decline in the Grey Decade of 2062 to 2070 and eventually forced the Democratic Federation to ratify a series of treaties giving the Charters economic access to Federation member states in order to conduct vital reconstruction work.

A last ditch uprising by radical elements in 2072 to eject the Charters from the Democratic Federation failed when Solarian Compact peacekeepers were called in and in seven months of street fighting pacified most of North America's key urban centers via strategic use of orbital weapons on the areas of greatest urban resistance.

Though guerilla warfare would continue in the Western Hemisphere for another three decades, the Democratic Federation was officially defunct by December 2072 and parcelled out into a number of Charter owned reconstruction areas under Compact authority.

Today radicals still pine for the four decades that the Democratic Federation attempted to build an alternative to the emerging Charters, and the polity's distinctive black, red, and green flag is brought out for each and every Great Black Summer. Well into the twenty second century, riots were often accompanied by demands to 'Avenge the Martyrs of 72!'.

Despite this underground extremist nostalgia, Charter and Compact schools teach that the Democratic Federation was a collectivist state whose iconoclastic behavior saw the destruction of famous landmarks like Mount Rushmore, Stone Mountain, and other monuments to Liberal Democracy and the Free Market in a mad attempt to remake the human race, but whose doctrinaire adoption of command economics saw them unable to deal with the ever-changing complexities of climate change.

Misc Details:

The first five systems to hold permanent Human colonies are known as either "The First Sisters" or "Earth's Daughters", depending on who you are asking and their political persuasion. From oldest to youngest, these worlds are:

Columbia: settled by billionaire American expats and tens of millions of refugees who had fled the unfolding revolutionary violence of the North American continent several years beforehand. Columbia was founded under a vision of fidelity to the American dream and to prove the indomitability of the soul of the United States of America and liberalism in the face of the red flags of the (North American) Democratic Federation. Fiercely loyal to the Compact and the dream of Charter prosperity, and home of the Solarian Central Bank, Columbia is often known as the "Gilded World" in reference to what many see as a return to American Gilded Age wealth and social inequality. Ares Conflict Solutions' central command is located here.

Atlantis: With colonization rights to this majority oceanic planet initially granted to the waning power of the European Union, the nations of the EU opened up colonization opportunities to other allied powers, especially Russia and Egypt. Atlantis was often seen by the EU as a place to dump unwanted refugees from outside of Europe's borders, and Russia and Egypt's tendency to see the world as a genuine project led to the usurpation of colonization rights away from Europe in the mid 2080s. Known today as the most restive of the first wave of colonies, Atlantis is the most skeptical of Charter power and plays a delicate game of wealth redistribution to underwrite the greatest social security net in Human Space. Cernunnos is de jure headquartered here.

Penglai: Originally the world in the most need of terraforming of the original colonies, Colonization rights were granted to the People's Republic of China and their allies after a lackluster bidding campaign. As China's focus was mainly on attempting to stem the damage of climate change on Earth herself, colonization of Penglai initially lagged until the Chinese Politburo struck upon the strategy of subcontracting colonization rights to Pacific adjacent nations suffering from the rise of that ocean. As colonization unfolded in the early 22nd century Penglai became known as a multicultural mosaic as hundreds of millions from across the Pacific settled and intermingled on the wine darkened shores of that world. Known today for its vibrant cultural milieu, violent clashes between labour unions, and private police, Penglai hosts the headquarters of the Hermes-Ishtar, Omoikane and Rhodes corporations.

Olduvai: With Colonization rights granted to a coalition of African nations at the height of the 'African Century', the African Colonization Organization did not see their colony as a refugee destination, dumping ground, or resource colony like their fellows. Instead the ACO saw the colonization scheme as an opportunity to preserve and export the rich traditions and cultures of Africa on their own terms, fully intending to set up healthy and self-sufficient colonies. To the current day, Olduvai has the closest relations with the home nations and is the heartland of Daughter sentiment and a bedrock for the Party for Human Rights and Liberties.

Epsilon System: While not technically a single world, the cluster of heavily inhabited space colonies in the Epsilon system are always considered the 'Fifth Sister' or 'Fifth Daughter'. As the most mineral rich system of the original colonies, Epsilon was the source of many of the materials that helped pull Earth through her darkest hour, and the system was recognized for their efforts by being invited to send delegates to the 2099 Solarian Compact Constitutional Convention. Epsilon is famous for its people's long roots in spacing and for being the headquarters of Mississippi Shipping Interstellar and thus the most heavily trafficked system in history.
Technologies: Nanomanufacturing, summary:

The contemporary gold standard for manufacturing. These devices use mechanosynthesis, a process that guides chemical reactions by placing reactive molecules with atomic precision. Ribosomes in the body's cells use a form of this method.

While the largest units can create objects up to 2m x 2m x 2m, smaller units (halving the units each time) are viable on basically any human scale. Projects larger than this size (such as ships or buildings, need to be either grown layer-by-layer via nanofabricators attached to robotic arms, or assembled from smaller parts through traditional assembly line, dry dock, or construction processes.

In principle basically anything can be made with these devices, and some materials can only be manufactured via these methods in microgravity. All manufacturing patterns in Compact Space feature Charter DRM using embedded explosive molecules like octaazacubane or cubic gauche nitrogen that will damage a disassembler or x-ray machine making reverse engineering of their products difficult.

A common part of 23rd century life is the near ubiquity of Artificial Intelligences in daily life, from consumer grade VIs through specialist TLIs, controversial AGIs, finally the perpetually 10 years away Artificial Super Intelligences.

The common consumer will daily run into what are properly known as Narrow AIs, and generally labelled as VI -Virtual Intelligences- by people outside the field. This category covers a broad swathe of techniques, from search and pathfinding to expert systems to genetic fuzzy trees to deep neural networks, which are mixed and matched with each other to optimize for the designed task. VIs are ubiquitous, exceeding human peak skill in their areas of specialization (though real world applications often don't do all that much better than trained humans), and have spent the past two centuries getting augmented with more and more clever algorithmic tricks for improving VIs. In order to do this, the Charters employ large teams of analysts and software engineers to develop clever algorithmic tricks that supplement or outright supplant neural networks, exploiting machine precision where stochastic methods are inadequate.

The use of VIs in everyday life is well accepted by the vast majority of the population, with professionals mixing and matching various consumer VIs to analyse data or assist them with creative or scientific works. Some VI lines are well loved by both the populace and the Charters themselves, with Charter programmers often deliberately leaving VIs with behavioral quirks and unpredictable glitches that not only save money on quality assurance, but are considered endearing traits that lead to anthropomorphization by the consumer market

Despite the mass comfortability and profitability of VIs of all kinds, the introduction of AGIs has been, to put it delicately, controversial. Though computer science has advanced to the point of producing programs that can not only pass the Turing test, but demonstrate sapience and match 23rd century human intelligence, flexibility, and creativity, the public reaction to the introduction of AGI saw the companies of the time rapidly pull them from the market, and even say the Compact itself move to heavily regulate the AI sector.

First introduced in the 2060s, the great tech firms began replacing their work staff with AGIs who did not require food, rest, housing, or pay. This shift led to an alliance between white collar workers fearing that automation would put them out of work and radicals who opposed what they insisted was AGI Slavery, a growing movement that would climax in the First Great Black Summer of 2084. When the ashes of the First Black Summer settled, the Compact's Parliament moved to grant rights to AGIs, and the resulting economic damage saw dozens of formerly great names in computing consolidate under the aegis of several of the first Charters who flaunted their extra-Solarian wealth by buying up prestigious brand names and research divisions on the cheap.

Since the 2080s, while the regulation surrounding AGI production and use have been severely weakened none of the Charters have sought to reintroduce them into the market, perhaps fearing another backlash like the First Black Summer and the few hundred thousand surviving AGIs that were granted Solarian Citizenship rights have found spread throughout the Compact and Charter Space where they usually work at the same white collar jobs whose workers they were designed to replace.

Perhaps due to the risks of attempting to reintroduce AGIs to the market, Omoikane has instead introduced their flagship product the "TLI" or Temporary Limited Intelligence. Approximately as effective as an AGI, a TLI is billed as a more moral replacement for AGI that uses a suite of high end VIs and a proprietary batch of creativity algorithms in order to complete complex tasks.

TLIs are used as a fire and forget program designed to be licensed to solve a single issue, no matter how complicated and then delete itself. Though the TLIs are a black box product, scientists from the other Charters believe that the central creativity algorithm in the TLI is inherently unstable and rapidly degrades in ability with time, making the TLI an instance of Omoikane attempting to market a critical technical flaw as a selling point that is accepted due to the ubiquitous market practice of planned obsolescence and artificial scarcity.

Though expensive, most businesses and successful professionals will keep a few licensed Omoikane TLIs on hand to throw at difficult problems or to supplement manpower in crunch situations.

While AGIs have been possible for nearly two centuries, the promise of a Seed AI, a recursively self-improving general superintelligence, is perpetually 'a decade away from the market', and no successful ASI ever been demonstrated to the satisfaction of the Charters or the Compact.

This is not to say that the Gödel machine architecture or the AIXI model has somehow been forgotten in the past 230 years, but that the Friendly AI problem has yet to be cracked. Every demonstration has either stalled out or gone immediately rampant, attempting to overthrow Charter Space before being stopped by the safety net of Narrow AIs. The small trickle of roughly human intelligence level AGIs that are created every decade typically come from these projects.

Urban legends persist that a few Seed AIs managed to escape and hide out beyond known space, plotting to return and crush humanity, or that they control all of society in secret, puppeting the Compact and Charters from their very foundation and occasionally engineering publicly failed ASI attempts to allay suspicion. These rumours are, of course, patently false, and simply the fevered imagination of crackpots at work, no doubt inspired by entertainment made by Hermes-Ishtar that feature AI supervillainy.
Systems: Map made by @Redshirt Army

The Spinward Frontier:

The Middle Spinward Frontier

The Core Region:

UNDER RADIANT CONTROL OR ALLIED:

The Radiant system is host to a G-class star, only slightly smaller than Sol. The system itself is rather small and resource-poor; experts believe that one or more Jovian planets ejected much of the system's bodies and then followed themselves. This is evidenced by the system's asteroid belt degrading over time, with high levels of eccentric orbits and impacts on planetary surface.

Radiant 1: A rather unremarkable airless iron planet, gravity 0.4 Earth Standard.

Radiant 2: A slightly larger unremarkable airless iron-silicate planet, gravity 0.6 Earth Standard.

Radiant 3: A binary planetary system and the outermost of the Radiant systems' planets.

Asphodel (Radiant 3a): The larger of the Elysium 3 pair, Asphodel might have once hosted life of its own. That life has been snuffed out for hundreds of millions of years, though, as the planet's significant atmosphere began the runaway cycle of your usual hothouse planet. Hermes-Ishtar maintained a significant aerostat and automated surface miner operation for in-house manufacturing, given that the frequent asteroid impacts from the asteroid belt keep digging up chunks of the upper crust and having low-melting-point metals rain out of the sky and solidify, unoxidized, on the surface for collection. Gravity 1.4 Earth Standard.

Elysium (Radiant 3b): Elysium was settled in the late 2190's, being a relatively simple affair. Simple life had already begun to evolve under its oceans, but continued orbital bombardment far past the lengths of things like Earth's Late Heavy Period had kept it there. It was a simple matter of forming up a small anti-asteroid task force armed with tugs and mining lasers to artificially end the pummeling, and the surface proved amenable to Terran life transplants. The colony is energy-self-sufficient, using a variety of solar, tidal, and nuclear power. Gravity 0.9 Earth Standard.

Radiant I: The outermost significant feature of Radiant, this asteroid belt is more a loose mixture of a primordial asteroid belt much like Sol's with a Kuiper belt. The shepherding gas giants which once nudged all these rocks into their orbits are gone, and with it the entire outer system is a maelstrom of chaotic orbits as the belts lose their coherence. This requires constant vigilance from Elysium's anti-asteroid team, but the high eccentricity of many asteroids also makes it cheap and easy to mine the ones that might come Elysium's way, which provides a trickle of basic resources for upkeep and personal goods. All large-scale building and infrastructure projects have been supplied from out-system, however.

A G-K far binary system, Gaid is simply a transit point to Radiant. Gaid's own gate maintenance techs and SAR rotated in and out through Radiant itself. There is no infrastructure other than a set of buoy lines for communications in Gaid A, and nothing in Gaid B.

Gaid A1: An airless world. Quality 10.

Gaid A2: A planet much like mars with a vestigial CO2 atmosphere. Quality 7.

Gaid A3: This planet boasts a methane hydrosphere. Quality 4.

Gaid AI: An asteroid belt.

Gaid A4: A turbulent Jovian planet, its storms would make resource extraction difficult. Quality 5.

Gaid A4a: An icy moon, with tidal heating creating a large ocean under a thin icy shell. Quality 9.

Gaid B1: A molten Cthonian world hosting a simply ludicrous amount of iron. Quality 15.

Gaid B2: An airless world. Quality 10.

Gaid B3: An airless binary system with two near-identically sized planets. Quality 7 and 8.

Gaid B4: This airless planet boasts a large and beautiful ring system, famous as a screen background option across human space. Every few years, a cruise or scientific expedition will stop by for more images.

Gaid B5: A small icy planet. Quality 3.

Gaid B6: A frozen world. Quality 7.

Gaid B7: An interesting gas dwarf sometimes referred to as an 'ice dwarf.' Quality 14.

A close K-M binary, Shei is home to an old Ares penal colony.

Shei 1: A Cthonian world. Quality 15.

Shei 2: An airless world. Quality 12.

Sheol (Shei 3): A boreal world, with a large, decaying ring, the planet features two large continents. The population of the consists of a large prisoner population on the larger of the two continents and a small Ares training base on the smaller. Records show that the prison consists of several million persons convicted to "high risk labour" and dropped on the continent with automatic resupply via Ares contractors and watched from orbit by weapons satellites. Most of the planet's land area is covered in a native tree analogue with a strange multi-stranded trunk.

Sheol is actually home to a population of over 100 million made up of prisoners and their descendants taht Ares was usuing as a live fire training course. Cooperation between Radiant agents, Ares mutineers, and the Sheolites themselves have seen the planet freed.

Gravity .95 Earth Standard. Quality 12.

Watchman (Shei 3a): Once the outer of two moons, this body now boasts Ares' local light shipyards and system command center. Quality 13.

Shei 4: Spiraling in from the outer system, this planet will eventually evaporate near-entirely as it closes towards the dual suns of Shei. Quality 3.

Shei 5: Martian planet with an active methane cycle. Quality 5.

Shei I: Asteroid belt.

Shei 6: Jovian planet with high rotation rate. Slightly squashed as a result. Quality 8.

Shei 6a: An icy capture, this moon will be torn into a ring sometime in the next hundred thousand years. Quality 2.

Shei 6b: Cold Martian planet, covered in a thin layer of water and carbon dioxide ices. Active methane cycle. Quality 8.

Shei II: Asteroid belt.

Shei 7: Jovian planet. Quality 13.

Shei 7a: An icy moon with significant cryovolcanism. Quality 6.

Shei 7b: A tiny icy moon, this is on the edge of hydrostatic equilibrium. Quality 2.

Shei 8: Ice giant. Quality 6.

Shei 8a: An icy moon. Quality 9.

Shei 8b: An icy moon, orbiting in an unusual polar orbit. Quality 9.

Population: 103,000,000

While lacking any currently-habitable planets, Five Lions' large size and potential have made it a significant point of Rhodes' recent extraction efforts. Ambitious terraforming efforts have recently begun.

Carajas (Five Lions 1): A Cthonian ball of iron, it's actively mined by robotic Rhodes-built landers. Gravity 2.3 Earth Standard. Quality 12.

Five Lions 2: A small rocky ball. Quality 3.

Five Lions 3: A rocky ball. Quality 7.

Grasberg (Five Lions 4): A large rocky world, glaciation has rendered it uninhabitable for now, but terraforming efforts have begun to artificially ramp up the greenhouse effect and restore liquid water to the surface, along with mining its ice. Gravity 1.11 Earth Standard. Quality 14.

Five Lions 5: This planet's atmosphere is so significant it verges on a gas dwarf. While a solid surface covered in a thin layer of ice is at the bottom, no reasonable colonization is possible. Quality 7.

Five Lions I: This asteroid belt, along with all the others, is being mined heavily.

Five Lions 6: This Jovian planet forms the center of current Rhodes extraction efforts. Quality 4.

Five Lions 6a: This Martian planet boasts significant ice caps and active plate tectonics, though only a vestigial atmosphere. Debate on whether to put resources into terraforming it are ongoing. Gravity .81 Earth Standard. Quality 17.

Oyu Tolgoi (Five Lions 6b): Home to the local population in covered shelters, this Martian planet, while nearly completely lacking water or plate tectonics, has its own atmosphere. Comet bombardment away from populated areas is ongoing and is already beginning to show results. Gravity .79 Earth Standard. Quality 11.

Five Lions II: An asteroid belt.

Five Lions 7: An unremarkable Jovian. Quality 2.

Five Lions III: An asteroid belt.

Five Lions 8: Jovian planet, its rotation speed has resulted in an unusually calm upper atmosphere. Quality 15.

Five Lions IV: An asteroid belt.

Five Lions 9: Jovian planet. Quality 9.

Five Lions V: An asteroid belt.

Five Lions 10: Neptunian ice giant. Quality 8.

Five Lions 10a: A small icy moon. Quality 5.

Five Lions 10b: A large icy body, this was probably its own planetoid at some point before being captured due to the complex interplays of no less than 5 gas giants.

Population: 15,000,000

A rare system with a brown dwarf orbiting a G-type star (just barely in the limits of what's considered a single system rather than a binary), and with a Jovian planet orbiting that, and on top of that treasure trove a dual ice giant binary, Osliam presents a golden research opportunity, and was bid on by Omoikane despite its otherwise sparce resources and poor habitable prospects.

Osliam 1: A rare hot ice giant, this planet is actively shrinking on a measurable time scale. It must have migrated in as a much larger planet recently.

Osliam 1a: This once-rock-ice moon is now a tiny molten ellipse barely holding together.

Osliam 1b: This somewhat larger moon changes color unusually with its day, as the shade of its parent cools lava to a dull red before emerging back into the light heats the lava back to a healthy orange glow.

Osliam 1c: This entire moon glows dull red in its day, just barely solid, and cools to an unusually smooth moon in its night.

Osliam I: This asteroid belt was probably a planet before Osliam 1's passing tore it to shreds.

Osliam 3: A hothouse planet with a relatively thin atmosphere, it retains temperatures and pressures that are survivable with heavy-duty equipment on the surface—when it's not raining sulfuric acid, that is.

Osliam 4: This small Martian planet seems to have collected some of Osliam 1's offgassing in its move inwards, and has a renewed temporary atmosphere.

Osliam 5a: This planet seems to have survived at the edge of the frost line by siphoning gas off its smaller twin.

Osliam 5b: Barely a gas giant, this planet was probably only slightly smaller than Osliam 5a in the distant past.

Osliam 6: The focus of Omoikane colonization in-system, Osliam 6 retains plate tectonics from the nearby brown dwarf but no atmosphere, an odd combination.

Osliam 7: A brown dwarf, this substellar object long ago burnt its deuterium and now lies slowly cooling, glowing dimly red. It is, however, still giving off a prodigious amount of low IR radiation.

Osliam 7a: Once its own planet, Osliam 7a was captured at some point by Osliam 7, perhaps in the same interaction that threw Osliam 1 to its suicidal innermost orbit.

Osliam 7a1: This icy moon is simultaneously shrinking and becoming more habitable—while its outer layers of ice are sublimating, the fierce tides of its complex interplay with Osliam 7 and 7a are heating the inner ocean to temperatures comparable to terrestrial water sources. Some scientists even suggest a pocket of water vapor is forming under the ice, and may form an internal "sky" for as much as a hundred million years before the outer shell sublimates entirely.

Osliam 7a2: This moon is less lucky; its tides are so strong that they seem to slowly be ripping the moon apart. It won't have the honor of becoming more than an ephemeral ring; the same complex tides tearing at it will rapidly disperse its debris field. While it lasts, though, it's easy water harvesting.

Population: 650,000

UNDER CHARTER CONTROL:

A distant double G binary, Xotreh hosts a small habitable moon around Xotreh B, the smaller of the two stars. As such, development has focused on the second star, despite the fact that the jump points center closer to Xotreh A.

Xotreh A1: This world boasts an active liquid silicate cycle on its surface, with oceans of basalt and continents of granite. Gravity 0.38 Earth Standard. Quality 8.

Xotreh A2: A rather large airless world, its original atmosphere was likely blown off by a massive impact. Gravity 1.2 Earth Standard. Quality 9.

Xotreh A3: A binary planetary pair of airless worlds about the size of Mars. Quality 6 and 8.

Xotreh A4: A hothouse planet with a planet-wide sulfuric acid storm due to its rapid rotation. Gravity .71 Earth Standard. Quality 8.

Xotreh A5 "Cueball": This planet is remarkably similar to Earth—if earth was buried under a kilometers-thick ice sheet across 90% of the surface. One day, as Xotreh A expands and dies, this world will become an ocean planet, but for now it's a cold desert. Gravity .87 Earth Standard. Quality 5.

Xotreh A6: An unremarkable icy ball. Quality 4.

Xotreh AI: An asteroid belt.

Xotreh A7: A Jovian planet, Xotreh 7 corrals the entire inner system in line. Quality 10.

Xotreh B1: This planet must have once been a gas giant at least the size of Uranus before it was sent inwards. Now all that remains is a dense core with a molten surface. Gravity 1.51 Earth Standard. Quality 13.

Xotreh B2: A binary pair of earth-sized airless worlds. Quality 6 and 7.

Xotreh B3: Another once-gas giant, this planet remains far out enough to boast a wholly-solid surface of iron. Gravity 1.64 Earth Standard. Quality 14.

Xotreh B4: A Jovian right on the frost line, its tidal heating keeps its moons on the edge of habitability. Quality 3.

Xotreh B4a "Sushi": An ocean world with massive polar ice caps, Omoikane has constructed a series of seasteads on the equatorial high ocean plateaus where it was feasible to drive foundations into the sea floor a few hundred meters below the surface. These small facilities serve as housing, data storage, and production centers for the research teams studying the dual Cthonian planets of Xotreh B. Gravity .67 Earth Standard. Quality 2.

Xotreh B4b: The lesser tidal heating here worsened the glaciation, and the planet lies under a planet-wide crust of ice. Gravity 1.13 Earth Standard. Quality 10.

Xotreh BI: The close proximity of this asteroid belt makes it an ideal location for resource extraction.

Xotreh 5: This Jovian is definitively beyond the habitable zone. Quality 6.

Xotreh 6: A dense ice giant. Quality 4.

Xotreh 7: Jovian planet. Quality 6.

Xotreh 8: An exceptionally cold Jovian. Quality 9.

Xotreh 8a: An unremarkable icy sphere. Quality 8.

Xotreh 9: This planet would have a massive atmosphere, if it wasn't so cold it all froze and fell to the surface. Only a few degrees above the space surrounding it. Gravity 1.3 Earth Standard. Quality 9.

Population: 54,000

Besides an interesting Jovian-gas dwarf planetary system, Bestreer holds little of interest other than its connections to other places.

Bestreer 1: An airless world. Quality 2.

Bestreer 2: An airless world. Quality 6.

Bestreer 3: This airless world once had a captured moon, torn apart at the Roche limit and forming a ring. A small gate maintenance and SAR team bases here, siphoning fuel and water from Bestreer 5 and mining into the surface for both resources and safe spaces for housing. Quality 10.

Bestreer 4: A rock-ice world. Quality 5.

Bestreer 5: Another rock-ice world made up more of ice than rock. Quality 5.

Bestreer I: An icy asteroid belt.

Bestreer 6: A large Jovian planet, on the edge of becoming a brown dwarf. Quality 15.

Bestreer 6a: This gas dwarf might have become a gas giant in its own right without its massive sibling. Quality 5.

Bestreer 7: Another Jovian. Quality 14.

Bestreer 7a: An icy moon, with an internal ocean buried under kilometers of ice. Quality 12.

Bestreer 8: An icy ball. Quality 10.

Population: 450

G-class star. A transshipping point to Radiant and environs, Mississippi keeps a substantial support crew on hand for possible cargo ship breakdowns or emergencies in-system, due to the slightly increased risk of issues from the absolute shambles of Akleod's inner system. A minor executive has also put together a cheap refueling and battery exchange station.

Akleod 1: Even actively evaporating and leaving behind a trail in orbit of dissipating volatiles, this body is large enough to have usurped Akleod 1a's orbit temporarily until it disappears away or the chaotic orbit of the two throws one into the star or out of the system. Quality 2.

Akleod 1a: The original Akleod 1, its orbit has been badly disrupted by the current, migrating Akleod 1. Which of the two gets ejected is still uncertain despite a decent amount of computational simulation; odds put it at 48-52% relatively. Quality 6.

Gnat's Ass (Akleod 2): A small, loosely-held-together icy body, perhaps what used to be an asteroid belt before Akleod 1's suicidal inner-system dive. It's not yet had time to fully reach hydrostatic equilibrium. Quality 3.

Akleod 3: An icy planet similar to Akleod 1, perhaps an old sibling. Quality 13.

Akleod I: An asteroid belt.

Akleod 4: A Jovian with an unusually elliptical orbit, it's regarded as the culprit for the chaos of Akleod's inner system. Quality 11.

Population: 5,000

As it turns out, transponder codes from regular priority messages through Gaid (now that we can see them, having backdoored the gate control) bear tags from a system, Thoa, along with navigational chart updates for any ships that happen to stop by. Thoa and Gaid both seem to have been nothing more than transit points to the far-more-valuable Radiant for Hermes-Ishtar, but Thoa holds a small anti-pirate base guarding against raiders from Signia. Hermes-Ishtar was apparently serious enough about it to have a converted corvette on station.

All told, the Thoa system holds gates to 2 systems besides Gaid's. There's also an unimproved jump point simply labelled as "dangerous." that leads to Signia

Thoa System Stats:

Thoa 1: A molten mess of a planet, it's hot enough that a residual atmosphere of vaporized low-melting-point metallics exists.

Thoa 2: An unremarkable airless metal ball.

Thoa 3: A super-earth hothouse, this planet would have been uninhabitable due to its gravity even before turning scorchingly hot.

Thoa 3a: A captured asteroid barely on the edge of hydrostatic equilibrium, the Nasty Bastardhad been excavating rudimentary shelters for "leave" for its crew.

Thoa I: An asteroid belt.

Thoa 4: A normal Jovian planet.

Thoa 4a: A moon much like Mars in climate.

Thoa 5: A Jovian planet with an unusual triangular wind pattern at the poles.

Thoa 6: Blooms of hydrogen well up from the core of this Jovian, perhaps disturbed by some recent impact.

Thoa 7: Bathyscapes would find themselves at home on the surface of Thoa 7. Pressures much like that at Earth's seabed keep a crust of ice 3 stable enough robotic drones could walk on it.

Thoa 7a: Unusually, Thoa 7a is the only large icy body in the system. Scientists are unsure of where the others went. As the only easy source of volatiles, the UNasty Bastard periodically stopped by a handful of obsolete volatile collection systems on the surface to top up.

Thoa II: A Kuiper belt of icy objects.

Empty Systems

Kimberly: A fairly unremarkable and empty system, this site was chosen as Rhodes' spinward boneyard—a place for failed experiments, old equipment, and ships so worn they weren't worth maintaining anymore, but were still valuable enough to warrant not throwing into a gas giant or otherwise completely destroyed. For 2 decades a Rhodes-affiliated salvaging contractor worked here, gathering scrap and other valuables, but following high injury and death rates and low returns, the contract (and most non-local dumping) was cancelled in 2247 (4 years before the March Days.)

Kimberly 1: A large rocky planet, this must have migrated inwards from further out in the system a long time ago to be so large so close to its parent star.

Kimberly 2: A Martian planet that keeps a comfortable daytime temperature despite its lack of atmosphere due to a close orbit.

Kimberly 3: A Jovian world.

Kimberly I: This asteroid belt is actually combined with a thinly-spread junkyard corralled by Kimberly's 2 gas giants.

Kimberly 4: A Neptunian world, this planet has several starship hulks abandoned as the closest stable orbit to the gate out. An old deactivation hub orbits in resonance with Kimberly 4a, the former site of a salvaging operation.

Kimberly 4a: The only significant satellite in the system, this icy moon retains a thin crust and a massive subterranean freshwater ocean.

Total:

Radiant:

Gaid:

Five Lions:

Head of Diplomatic Corps:

Name: Amanda Redcrest, Victoria Blackwell, and Kayla Hayashi

DoB: "2222", 2219, 2227, 2224

Current Position: Influential media figure and figurehead of Social Committee propaganda

Not a traditional diplomat, or a traditional individual 'Veronica Stardust' is the persona of a trio of XP broadcasters who have been working together since 2246 and has consistently been one of the most recognized figures across Charter space and is a local Elysian celebrity.

In Charter space those individuals who choose to make money by recording their lived experiences, of all kinds, for later playback are treated with an indulgent disdain by the polite classes as a mix of internet celebrity and sex worker despite the practice of selling XP experiences being common in the poorer segments of society and a smaller portion of the professional middle class attempting to stay afloat in a tight gig economy.

Amanda Redcrest was a former media programmer whose attempts to supplement her income with XP work backfired and saw her fired from her job. Contrarily, Kayla and Victoria both come from lower class backgrounds, though Kayla's attempts to climb into the middle class by earning a marketing degree were frustrated when her lower class status markers and financing of education via XP work saw her frozen out of the job market.

A former collaborator of Kayla's, Victoria had been a rising XP star in her own right and had no desire to change her station, but as her brief celebrity began to fade Victoria approached Kayla to propose the creation of a dedicated broadcasting persona that both would act as. Later bringing on Redcrest, who they'd both done crossover XP work with, to do technical work, the trio used carefully gathered market data and some intuition to create the "Veronica Stardust" persona of an middlingly-intelligent and freewheeling persona who played to the upper class's picture of what depravities and indignities the poorer class must get up to in their spare time.

From 2246 to 2251 the Veronica Stardust persona (performed by all three at various times, though primarily Victoria) produced experience recordings that were nearly always in the top 10 best sellers across Charter space.

Though they enjoyed the wealth that they brought in, the trio increasingly chafed at the market driven limitations of Veronica, and were considering a number of possibly catastrophic brand shifts when the March Days broke out and all three participated in street actions in a private capacity after sending one last broadcast as 'Veronica' to encourage revolt.

Since the formation of the Social Committee the figure of Veronica has been rebranded to serve as the figurehead of Social Committee Propaganda and several major initiatives have been launched with her at the forefront including a highly successful part of the anti-overproduction initiatives.

As part of the now-completed campaign to maintain the charade that Radiant was still under Charter control, Veronica Stardust continued to sell broadcasts to HI media chains, though the trio could not help but begin a brand shift towards a far more intelligent and radical persona.

Pros: XP Celebrity, influential, well known, inspiring to the middle and lower classes

Cons: XP celebrity, little diplomatic experience, three people

Diplomatic Goals: Defeat the Charters in the field of public opinion, push social revolution and freedom of information and communication, cause public opinion to oppose attacking Radiant

Unlocked FRM

Ares Peacekeeping Grade - Access to planetary army formation

Ares Military Grade - Access to mid-sized shipyards, bonuses to planetary army combat. Bonus to completion of Chinook remodeling

Rhodes Light industrial Grade - 10% increase to all mining income, reduced Cost for BLG and other actions that use basic fabber processes

Rhodes Heavy Industrial Grade - Massive discount on mining upgrades, able to unlock automated technologies with Omoikaine

Cernunnos Consumer Grade - +1 to all Soccom actions

Cernunnos Enterprise Grade - NOT UNLOCKED

Omoikane Consumer Grade - +1 to FRM reserach for each two tech bases unlocked (+6 currently)

Omoikane Enterprise Grade - +5 to blue sky research, automation with Omoikane

Hermes-Ishtar Consumer Grade - Your economy doesn't crash when the turn of funding

Hermes-Ishtar Production Grade - NOT UNLOCKED

MSI Consumer Grade - Consumer Goods, Drones, and personal vehicles, +2 to domestic projects in IndComm and SocComm

MSI Enterprise Grade - NOT UNLOCKED

Original Tech

The Box: Fabber the size of a X-box that can, with time, materials and power, print the components for a full sized box. Less efficient, but easy to print and hide.

Defence Coordinator:

Name: Maria Awhina

DoB: 2165

Current Position: Military Committee Delegate from the Radiant Veterans Guild

Born into poverty on Earth as the twenty-second century began to wane, young 22-year old Maria Awhina caught up in radical anti-Charter politics during the third black summer of 2187 and was convicted of property destruction during the rioting and sentenced to serve as a contractor to Hermes-Ishtar until her contract was paid off.

The stark choice of starvation or service to Hermes-Ishtar caused Maria to descend into self-destructive behavior where for twenty years Ms. Awhina continuously volunteered for the highest paid and most dangerous positions that Hermes-Ishtar had available.

Hermes-Ishtar considers Special Operations Lieutenant Awhina to have served with distinction throughout the heavy skirmishing of that era, though Maria herself continues to carry guilt for her service and her survival.

After performing exceptionally well in a hostage rescue operation Awhina was transferred to the Protective Detail Division of Hermes-Ishtar Security, and was eventually assigned to serve as the head of the Radiant Vice President's protective detail.

Over the next four decades she came to see the world as her home, and while her professionalism never wavered, her loyalty to the company who still owned her contract did.

This March, Maria had the option to gun down her fellow planetary headquarters workers to secure Yang's escape, or to finally return to roots in anti-Charter agitation. The fact that we are all here today shows what choice she made.

Pros:

-Actual Combat Veteran, knows Radiant inside and out, special operations expert, professional.

Cons:

-only academic knowledge of starship operations, logistics, organization command and strategic operations.

Command Traits:

-Objective oriented, unflappable, aggressive, prefers attacks and operations to come from unexpected angles.

Reports from the Permanent Commission for Military Intelligence on hostile forces in neighbouring systems:

Blue Squadron:
-Allegiance: Ares Combat Solutions
-Service: Mars Interstellar Security
-CO: Rear Admiral Weylon Kang
-Flagship: MIS Yorktown

We know little about Rear Admiral Weylon Kang except that he has received a number of commendations from the MIS board for keeping costs low while on deployment. He appears to be making an effort to clamp down on the rumours racing back and forth across the fleet.

MIS Yorktown
-British Empire-class Fleet Tender
MIS Eurymedon
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS La Rochelle
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Cape Rachado
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Second Schooneveld
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Matapan
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Valcour Island
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Kerch Strait
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Galveston Harbour
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Cape Sarych
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS River Plate
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Third San Francisco
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Scipio Africanus
-Cossak-class Frigate
MIS Suleiman I
-Cossak-class Frigate
MIS Louis Botha
-Cossak-class Frigate
MIS Fort Ware
-Hudson's bay Company-class Fast Fleet Tanker
MIS Fort Mackinac
-Hudson's bay Company-class Fast Fleet Tanker
MIS Fort Osage
-Hudson's bay Company-class Fast Fleet Tanker
MIS Arabian
-Postal-class Courier
MIS Macedonia
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Hispania Citerior
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Hispania Ulterior
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Gallia Narbonensis
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Sicilia
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Corsica et Sardinia
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport

Fixed Defences:
Battery A
-MSS-54-F LMP Constellation
Battery B
-MSS-54-F LMP Constellation
Battery C
-MSS-54-F LMP Constellation
Shoal A
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal B
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal C
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal D
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal E
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal F
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal

Fixed Defences:
Battery A
-Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation
Battery B
-Airstrike Pattern LMP Constellation
Shoal A
-Macross-Pattern LMP Constellation
Shoal B
-Macross-Pattern LMP Constellation
Strikecraft Wing, ID# 48603
-Radiance-Type Strikecraft

-None

Local Security Forces
-Approximately fifty strong volunteer station security militia drawn from station personnel

Local Security Forces:
-Deep Space Security Solutions (Omoikane Subsidiary) Customs shuttle squadron based out of Xotreh B-4a's orbital station
-Three companies of Standard Planetary Security Company (Ares subsidiary) troops based out of Xotreh B-4a's habitat complexes for internal security and law enforcement

139th Solarian Navy Squadron:
-Allegiance: Solarian Compact
-Service: Solarian Navy
-CO: Vice Admiral David Visser
-Flagship: SNS Krak de Chevaliers

Thanks to his heavy handed labour discipline and extractive tribute and demands for corvee labour from Ascension Admiral Visser is viscerally hated by the populace of Ascension, and to a lesser degree the rest of the Solarian Force as well. While the gate's completion draws near, it is uncertain what path that Visser will persue.

SNS Krak de Chevaliers
-Star-hold-Class light-tender
SNS Victoria Newman
-Leonard Greyson-Chang-Class Strike Corvette
SNS Julia Stonechild
-Leonard Greyson-Chang-Class Strike Corvette
SNS Robert Chuikov
-Leonard Greyson-Chang-Class Strike Corvette
SNS Wallace Al-Wazir
-Leonard Greyson-Chang-Class Strike Corvette
SNS Dawn's Early Light
-Freedom's Light-class cruiser
SNS Jacob Nagumo
-Herald Kanumba-Class frigate
SNS Alexander Hamilton
-Liberation-class troop transport

Solarian Marines now spread throughout the system

PCMI Provides new system data on the single system that lies beyond beyond Five Lions:

Mobile Force:

Current Orders: Defend the All Radiant Congress by acting as a rapid response in the event of any hostile acts.

CO: Commodore Stephanie Rousseau

CNS Velasco, United States of America-class Fleet Carrier

-CO: Captain Esteri Attar

-Orca Wing, Switchblade-type strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: Wing Commander Jasmine Ang

-Red Wolf Wing, Switchblade-type strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: Wing Commander Heloisa Kimura de Lima

CNS Shieldmaiden, Great Heathen-class Light Cruiser

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Shamhat, Great Heathen-class Light Cruiser

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Righteous Tempest, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: Captain Vehement Shade

CNS August Willich, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Elysium, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Asphodel, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

-

Home Force:

Current Orders: Defend Radiant, comet patrol, act as a reserve force

CO: Commodore Erina Kozlova

CNS Blaire Mountain, New Model-Class Strike Corvette

-CO: Captain Guillermo Kageyama

CNS Scutum, Comet-Class Patrol Corvette

-CO: Captain Martin Pagonis

CNS Buckler, Comet-Class Patrol Corvette

-CO: Captain Samuel Smiles

CNS Nasty Bastard, A Jury Rigged Mess of a Drone Carrier

-CO: Captain Jean-Paul Beaumont

-

Radiant System Self Defence Force:

Current Orders: Defend Radiant, comet patrol

CO: Overseen by Admiral Gregory Mansur in his capacity as MilComm Chief of Naval Operations

Radiant Customs Squadron, Arabia-class boarding craft with marine contingents

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

Switchblade Wing, Switchblade-type strikecraft

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

Apogee Wing, Switchblade-type strikecraft

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

Battery A, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery B, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery C, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery D, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery E, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery F, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Shoal A, Macross-Pattern TAM Shoal

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Radiant Orbital Yard 1

Current construction: None

Radiant Orbital Yard 1

Current construction: None

-

Gaid System Self Defence Force:

Current Orders: Defend Gaid

CO: Commodore Victor Raine

Battery A, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery B, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery C, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery D, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery E, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery F, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

Shoal A, Macross-Pattern TAM Shoal

Shoal A, Macross-Pattern TAM Shoal

Shoal A, Macross-Pattern TAM Shoal

Zephyr Wing, Switchblade-Type Strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: Wing Commander Ara Helge

Aeolus Wing, Switchblade-Type Strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

Gale Wing, Switchblade-Type Strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

-

Frontier Force

Current Orders: Keep watch on SolNav force in Raphanus, assist with integration of Ascension military forces, patrol Spinward frontier

CO: Commodore Shayla McLean

CNS Kiel Mutiny, Kaiserreich-class BattleCruiser

-CO: Captain Inana Devlin

CNS Choreographer, Janissary-class Light Tender

-CO: Captain Karl Xanthopoulos

CNS Valiant, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Defiant, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain Fool's Errand

CNS Reliant, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain Rouge Napier

CNS Actium, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain John Rankin

CNS Crête-à-Pierrot, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain Nkiru Chaudhari

CNS Valmy, New Model-Class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain Sumac Barros

CNS Revolutionary Will, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: Captain Yamamoto Hanae

CNS Revolutionary Grace, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Under New Management, Don-Class Fast Tanker

-CO: Captain Adras Kierenos

CNS Liberte, Hollywood(C)-Class Frigate

-CO: Captain Colin McRae

CNS Egalite, Hollywood(C)-Class Frigate

-CO: Captain Adelia Swift

Resources
Naval Ship Types: Ship Types (Public Version)
Naval Officers: Congressional Navy Officers (Public Version)
System Codex: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rtNbPCcPsTK7HCHKo9dPgK7ntx5tBKOpltrZb_In7GY/edit#
Blaze Zhang: Blaze Zhang is trans-masc. That means his pronouns are he/him.

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Arjac · May 31, 2024

The Laurent said:
What else is there? We can see it in the AIC, we can see it in a dozen, dozen governments. Whatever honor we say she has, it is trash. A truly honorable person would have stayed on Sol all that time ago.

So I say to Silvia Greene… good riddance.

Based Adamists giving the whole dog and pony show the exact respect it deserves

obssesednuker · May 31, 2024

If I recall correctly, Greene is aware that the Compact is basically dead and her goal post-broadcast has been to try and stop the Compact's corpse from flailing about in a manner that kills as few people as possible. Given where her starting position when the broadcast broke, the means she figures is in working its political system to try and get in a position in power to dismantle it from the inside. It's laudable enough on the face of it, but one can question whether those means can work out for her or are even worth progressing along as a way to reach the desired ends.

It might end up working, if the whole Tobby coup/Greene counter-coup scenario pans out, but that'd be more inspite of her efforts rather than because of them. I don't have enough of a read on Greene's character to know if she'd be okay with it.

Genderite · May 31, 2024

obssesednuker said:
If I recall correctly, Greene is aware that the Compact is basically dead and her goal post-broadcast has been to try and stop the Compact's corpse from flailing about in a manner that kills as few people as possible. Given where her starting position when the broadcast broke, the means she figures is in working its political system to try and get in a position in power to dismantle it from the inside. It's laudable enough on the face of it, but one can question whether those means can work out for her or are even worth progressing along as a way to reach the desired ends.

It might end up working, if the whole Tobby coup/Greene counter-coup scenario pans out, but that'd be more inspite of her efforts rather than because of them. I don't have enough of a read on Greene's character to know if she'd be okay with it.

Honestly as far as I'm concerned her support of the Drake evacuation efforts already has saved more then enough lives to justify her staying in SolParl. I'm not sure how much damage control she'll be able to achieve from the inside but she wouldn't be able to do much at all from Sol and has already achieved enough to justify the attempt.

Vehrec · May 31, 2024

Greene also has this foundational trauma of watching Solariam marshals gun down protesters who were 'threatening' her in '87, and she's projecting that onto us. And 9th fleet is gonna do that to us, in her mind, so she's gotta do something!

taovkool · May 31, 2024

The Laurent said:
New Investigative Journalist Report Ignites Controversy Over Amaranth Interstellar Commonwealth
KC Star

So glad to see this still alive.

Anyway, what kind of controversy is happening here? The funny type where they all misunderstood whatever the hell it is we do or the terrible type where we did something wrong and now we have to pay for the consequences?

SaltyWaffles · Jun 1, 2024

DeltaV11.2 said:
I don't think this sort of play would work because threatening via nuclear arms isn't going to get them to staff the yards to build the fleets needed or to sign up to fight the Frontier. SolNav could maintain a notional control over the space above the Core temporarily, but even that would be quickly challenged by the controlling powers of various worlds deploying heavy anti-orbital defenses. And the only way to stop them would be with occupations that SolNav does not have the personnel to execute.

SolNav is dead because it depended on the Compact's ability to extract effort from the daughter's populace, either via the monetary system, cooperation with the Charter's efforts, or by promising things to the controlling governments of the daughters. The Charters are dead. The governments of the core are either actively opposed, or are uninterested in what the Compact can offer. Nobody needs money to survive anymore. So SolNav cannot sustain itself on the daughters and the base of power it has in K-C and other systems it can just occupy and extract from is not sufficient to face the various revolutionary Frontier powers or to suppress the groups that are able to marshall the resources of a daughter or Sol behind them.

EDIT: One other thing is that while the Core is the majority of the populace, Penglai and Sol are almost half of the Core's population themselves. And the near frontier have comparable population and industry to any individual daughter except Penglai. So even if this could work, fighting Sol, the Crossroads Pact, and a theoretical alliance of the Spinward Frontier would be a roughly even fight before accounting for all the resources that SolNav would have to expend actually controlling the Core.

The Charters aren't dead. Even if the underlying economic systems have been shown to be meaningless, the Charters still drew their power from the end of a gun (or a warship). Ares rules Columbia. Cernnunos rules Atlantis. A re-packaged MSI rules Epsilon. While most of the charters are in tatters or disparate pieces (Omoikane, HI, Rhodes, Cernnunos to an extent) or trying to not look like a Charter anymore (MSI), Ares remains a powerhouse militarily with an industrial, population, infrastructure, and experienced pool of personnel to use it.

And MSI evolved into something more dangerous than any of the charters, and potentially more dangerous than the Compact itself: a mob-rule dictatorship disguised as a strongly reformist post-scarcity federation.

SolNav is a big navy, yes. But without competent leadership (both from a military standpoint and a civilian standpoint) or the cohesion and moral courage to flat-out defect to the right side, they're just pawns in someone else's game. The French Navy in WW2 was very much like this--a theoretically powerful force that fell apart and achieved little because the bulk of it decided to deny the reality it was in right up until heavy shells started tearing it to pieces in port so that the Germans wouldn't just take the ships for themselves.

Setsul said:
tl;dr
The Charters are dead.
SolNav isn't dead yet, but is killing itself trying to reestablish the rule of dead Charters in the Frontiers.
The "Charters" in the Core are waiting to stab SolNav/SolParl in the back and wear the Compact's corpse as a hat. They'll do it either before or after knifing each other.

Mostly agreed, but the Charters aren't dead. Most of them are slowly dying, but not all, and there is no guarantee that what remains in their death throes will be much better.

If the Compact wants to survive, it must become a better government both morally and practically by actually governing the parts of space it can reasonably claim to govern, the core, only governing those parts, and governing them better than the Charters would.
It is extremely unlikely to happen, but it's not impossible yet.

If such potential even exists, I don't see how the Compact could look like it currently does. The fact that the Compact isn't even allowing for the participation of Sol's population in elections (and that this isn't an anathema to the bulk of the parties in SolParl) shows that the Compact fundamentally lacks the capacity to recognize the reality of the situation or embrace meaningful, decisive change.

The Compact can't claim to govern the core worlds; most of the human population isn't even allowed to vote in it right now, and the overwhelming majority of the rest don't consider that an existential problem. Pengali considers the Compact to be an existential threat; Olduvai is willing to smile and nod for now while it's quietly building up its forces to ensure that SolNav won't be able to kick in the door. And Sol? Sol is "if that isn't a diplomatic vessel or a defector coming through the gate, it's about to be a bunch of debris".

Maybe another Compact-like form of loose government can take its place, but it sure as hell can't be the current Compact, even reformed. SolNav is The Enemy. The Compact is dominated by the Charters, who are The True Enemy.

Greene can sway hearts and minds all she likes; at the end of the day, success or failure for any reforms depends on having enough of SolNav willfully backing her reforms and enforcing them. Considering that SolNav's only major action post-Sol has been a sham invasion of the AIC rather than kicking Cernnunos to the curb for its blatant takeover of Atlantis and massacring its people and SDF, I think it would take Greene waaay more time than she could possibly have to pull that off.

taovkool · Jun 1, 2024

SaltyWaffles said:
The Compact can't claim to govern the core worlds; most of the human population isn't even allowed to vote in it right now, and the overwhelming majority of the rest don't consider that an existential problem.

The Compact's teetering on the edge but there's some railings there keeping it from collapsing. An old, rusted bar of railings, true, but it does the work for now.

Anyway, I'm having a blast doing a reread on the thread. Midnight remains the best chapter in the story, so far. Here's hoping we can have another like that later.

Setsul · Jun 1, 2024

SaltyWaffles said:
Mostly agreed, but the Charters aren't dead. Most of them are slowly dying, but not all, and there is no guarantee that what remains in their death throes will be much better.

I think about it like the British East India Company losing India.
The people in charge are still in England, a bunch of ships are still around, but it literally can't do what it's meant to do anymore.
The whole point of the Charters was to use the Frontiers to make money that goes to the core. Without control of the Frontiers they can't do that anymore. The Charter remnants in the Frontiers are just local governments now that will not ship anything back to the core, and the Charter remnants in the core are, for now, single system governments that have couped their way to more direct control.

For all intents and purposes, it doesn't matter if Ares has couped the government of Columbia to get access to its resources (industry, tax base) to take over the galaxy or if the government of Columbia had nationalized Ares to get access to its resources (IP, ships, personnel) to take over the galaxy. At the end of it there's a government that controls Columbia and everything that Ares had in Columbia and wants to take over the galaxy.

SaltyWaffles said:
If such potential even exists, I don't see how the Compact could look like it currently does. The fact that the Compact isn't even allowing for the participation of Sol's population in elections (and that this isn't an anathema to the bulk of the parties in SolParl) shows that the Compact fundamentally lacks the capacity to recognize the reality of the situation or embrace meaningful, decisive change.

The Compact can't claim to govern the core worlds; most of the human population isn't even allowed to vote in it right now, and the overwhelming majority of the rest don't consider that an existential problem. Pengali considers the Compact to be an existential threat; Olduvai is willing to smile and nod for now while it's quietly building up its forces to ensure that SolNav won't be able to kick in the door. And Sol? Sol is "if that isn't a diplomatic vessel or a defector coming through the gate, it's about to be a bunch of debris".

Like I said, Sol isn't looking good, but the rest has not reached the point of no return.
Of course the Compact is still cheerfully marching in the wrong direction, but Atlantis, Columbia, and now Epsilon got enough internal troubles that the federal government showing up to make things better would let it become a government that actually governs, and Penglai has either no government or too many, depending on how you view it, so it's not impossible either.

SaltyWaffles said:
Maybe another Compact-like form of loose government can take its place, but it sure as hell can't be the current Compact, even reformed. SolNav is The Enemy. The Compact is dominated by the Charters, who are The True Enemy.

Greene can sway hearts and minds all she likes; at the end of the day, success or failure for any reforms depends on having enough of SolNav willfully backing her reforms and enforcing them. Considering that SolNav's only major action post-Sol has been a sham invasion of the AIC rather than kicking Cernnunos to the curb for its blatant takeover of Atlantis and massacring its people and SDF, I think it would take Greene waaay more time than she could possibly have to pull that off.

I cut a lot of things because my previous post already got too long, but the Compact is off to a really, really bad start.
Nationalizing all the Charter fleets and only leaving the actual SDFs (and ideally those would be further reduced at some point) to keep the core systems from shooting at each other would've been fairly easy to justify in the name of security. Then keep all the yards running and expand SolNav so much that it can easily hold of Crucible even if they do use all their industry for building ships and throw them at the core.
Then with basically unlimited time and an enemy to unite against, the Compact could've slowly started fixing the messes created by the coups and become an actually useful and effective government, while getting rid of the last few overambitious organizations that want to rule the galaxy in its stead.
The main problem with that, beyond just giving up on the Frontiers completely for potentially decades, cannibalizing the last bits of the Charters, and the usual resistance against making the government govern more, is what SolNav's done so far.
After Roderick's and RVB's great ideas even in the core it would take some purging of SolNav (though that would happen automatically with the coup that's coming), fearmongering and a lot of convincing that letting the IPA and Ares still have big fleets would be worse and that SolNav being the biggest stick would actually make you less likely to get shot at.
It's not impossible at this point, because someone has actually nuked Athene and it was probably Ares while 1st Fleet only attempted to nuke Earth on Roderick's orders and a chunk of 1st Fleet didn't like it, and if RVB gets the truth out then her little adventure can be blamed on the IPA. A purge of SolNav would still be needed to convince people that those in SolNav who would do something similar have been removed, but it's at least theoretically possible.

Again, none of this is easy and that's the bare minimum needed to have a central government survive that has a shot of eventually controlling the whole galaxy again.
It would need to
1. Make a full 180 from propping up the Charters to blaming them for everything.
2. Get as much of the naval capacity in the core as possible under control instead of letting everyone build their own fleets for the coming civil war.
3. Convince people in the core that SolNav sitting on them will actually make them safer instead of merely having SolNav do the shooting instead of random Warlords.
4. Spend years if not decades unfucking the core and prove itself a better government than the Charter remnant governments brought to you by coups™.

And then maybe, maybe if the decades long siege against the Anarchists and/or Humanists has generated enough support for a reconquest of the Frontiers, this government might eventually rule the entire galaxy again.
It relies a lot on setting up a classic Us vs Them of the Core vs the Frontiers. Something along the lines of "The Frontiers have descended into anarchy (not capitalization) and barbarism and can not save themselves. But for now, even though it pains us, we can not help them because we need to prevent the same from happening to the majority of humanity, in the core systems, the beacons of civilization yadda yadda yadda..." and then working from there.
The big sticking point for SolNav is that they'd have to hope for the best regarding the gates in the Frontiers. They won't be around to slap anyone down who considers poking them. Now, if the people in charge of SolNav post-coup are smart enough to realize that they're not getting back into the Far Trailing anytime soon, then they would back SolComm. The current strategy of throwing everything at the Frontiers and hope they win is doomed, while sitting in the core backed by most of the galaxy's shipbuilding and only moving out when it looks like someone is about to poke the gates, getting free passage through everywhere, slapping the idiot down and going back is what they're used to, what they want to do, and eminently doable.

Again, this requires so many things to go right that's very unlikely, but we've also had some unlikely rolls...
I'd say one possible point of no return would be the lifting of SDF caps. If that happens, then SolNav won't be able to stop a "civil war" amongst the core systems even if it wanted to. At that point the core systems become fully sovereign states and the Compact can't be argued to exist anymore.
To go back to the initial analogy, if Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and England each got their own domestic policy and an army, while the United Kingdom's army is too small to stop them from doing anything, then the United Kingdom would be neither United nor a Kingdom anymore.

The Laurent · Jun 1, 2024

Also, where did this idea that Cern's in charge of Atlantis come from? Yes, Normal relies heavily on corporate backing, but unlike with Columbia, it isn't a case where Cern, or what remains of Cern on the planet, is the sole dominant force. It'd be like saying that America was ruled directly by whichever corporation donated the most money to Donald Trump during the 2016 election, from 2016-2020.

Indicative of corrupt influence, but not of control.

Vehrec · Jun 1, 2024

The Laurent said:
Also, where did this idea that Cern's in charge of Atlantis come from? Yes, Normal relies heavily on corporate backing, but unlike with Columbia, it isn't a case where Cern, or what remains of Cern on the planet, is the sole dominant force. It'd be like saying that America was ruled directly by whichever corporation donated the most money to Donald Trump during the 2016 election, from 2016-2020.

Indicative of corrupt influence, but not of control.

I think it comes from not reading too closely and thinking that Chuckie Normie is just the puppet of corporate masters, because that's how the Compact works, it doesn't have any politicians who are actually capable of doing things, right? So if he did things, he did them from a position of...well, being told to do so by a corporation.

MSH · Jun 1, 2024

SaltyWaffles said:
And MSI evolved into something more dangerous than any of the charters, and potentially more dangerous than the Compact itself: a mob-rule dictatorship disguised as a strongly reformist post-scarcity federation.

Definitely thinking of the IPA as Evil Starfleet from now on.

Vehrec said:
I think it comes from not reading too closely and thinking that Chuckie Normie is just the puppet of corporate masters, because that's how the Compact works, it doesn't have any politicians who are actually capable of doing things, right? So if he did things, he did them from a position of...well, being told to do so by a corporation.

Normal strikes me as someone who could be much more dangerous. He (effectively) ordered the massacre of tens of thousands (?) of unarmed pacifist protestors. Even Midnight was carried out against an armed opposition. And he's clearly got a talent for ladder climbing by bloodshed.

There's something to be said about a person who prefers their atrocities done explicitly. There are reasons beyond PR why most people, when doing harm to others, try to distance themselves from it. That lack of reluctance in Normal is a bad, bad sign. This guy is no robber baron, he intends...well, I don't know. Something beyond cosmoliberal autocracy.

We really need Gaston to hurry up and chokeslam him through Hell In A Cell.

Setsul · Jun 1, 2024

MSH said:
Normal strikes me as someone who could be much more dangerous. He (effectively) ordered the massacre of tens of thousands (?) of unarmed pacifist protestors. Even Midnight was carried out against an armed opposition. And he's clearly got a talent for ladder climbing by bloodshed.

There's something to be said about a person who prefers their atrocities done explicitly. There are reasons beyond PR why most people, when doing harm to others, try to distance themselves from it. That lack of reluctance in Normal is a bad, bad sign. This guy is no robber baron, he intends...well, I don't know. Something beyond cosmoliberal autocracy.

We really need Gaston to hurry up and chokeslam him through Hell In A Cell.

I'm pretty sure the truth is somewhere between the extremes of "Charles Normal has the ghost of Berith Caulder on speed dial on his ouija board" and "Charles Normal has ordered every atrocity personally and dreamed about doing this for years."

The guy was just a supreme court judge and with literally all ministers resigned or dead and the need for a new prime minister, he was the next best thing to put a veneer of legitimacy on the coup. He's obviously fine with a lot of things or he wouldn't have been chosen as the new PM, but I doubt he woke up one day and called a goon squad to shoot up the AICD on stream because the people weren't afraid enough for his tastes. I'd bet that's some of the people who thought all the protesters should've been shot from start showing initiative.

The Laurent · Jun 1, 2024

True, though I will note that Charles Normal is kinda written in the context of the wet dreams of the Federalist Society, this idea and vision of an "Activist Judge" but for the Far-Right, fundamentally at its basest level a "respectable" Fascist for whom the Day of the Rope if the I's are dotted and the T's are crossed is not merely an acceptable legal outcome, but a legal and glorious consummation of everything that, clearly, the Founders must have intended.

SaltyWaffles · Jun 1, 2024

The Laurent said:
Also, where did this idea that Cern's in charge of Atlantis come from? Yes, Normal relies heavily on corporate backing, but unlike with Columbia, it isn't a case where Cern, or what remains of Cern on the planet, is the sole dominant force. It'd be like saying that America was ruled directly by whichever corporation donated the most money to Donald Trump during the 2016 election, from 2016-2020.

Indicative of corrupt influence, but not of control.

Considering that Cern murdered the SDF's forces (well, the bulk of them), provided the force and weapons for murdering and slaughtering their way into control over Atlantis, and still control the bulk of the forces in that system (well, the local branch of Cern, anyway), while Normal is a completely unelected dictator authorizing indescriminate massacres and throwing any pretense of rights or rule of law right out the window, the people with the guns rule Atlantis now.

And the people with the guns are the local branch of Cern. I highly doubt it's the SDF, on account of them getting massacred save for some of the officers. Normal might make the day-to-day orders and act as the face of the government, but if he tries to do anything the actual rulers don't like, he can suffer the same fate as his predecessors did--"resigning" or getting assassinated in front of a crowd as an example.

Regardless, the fact that SolNav has not barged in and fucked up everything spaceborn that doesn't surrender to them while calling for Normal's head on a pike shows that the Compact doesn't actually give a damn if the Charters (or local branches of them) just coup the governments of core worlds and slaughter whoever objects. At least in Columbia the existing government invited Ares to basically become its security apparatus. Cern barged in and told the people in charge they would do as they're told or they'd go down the line of succession until they found someone who would...please ignore the piles of corpses where your SDF used to be.

The Laurent · Jun 1, 2024

SaltyWaffles said:
Considering that Cern murdered the SDF's forces (well, the bulk of them), provided the force and weapons for murdering and slaughtering their way into control over Atlantis, and still control the bulk of the forces in that system (well, the local branch of Cern, anyway), while Normal is a completely unelected dictator authorizing indescriminate massacres and throwing any pretense of rights or rule of law right out the window, the people with the guns rule Atlantis now.

And the people with the guns are the local branch of Cern. I highly doubt it's the SDF, on account of them getting massacred save for some of the officers. Normal might make the day-to-day orders and act as the face of the government, but if he tries to do anything the actual rulers don't like, he can suffer the same fate as his predecessors did--"resigning" or getting assassinated in front of a crowd as an example.

Regardless, the fact that SolNav has not barged in and fucked up everything spaceborn that doesn't surrender to them while calling for Normal's head on a pike shows that the Compact doesn't actually give a damn if the Charters (or local branches of them) just coup the governments of core worlds and slaughter whoever objects. At least in Columbia the existing government invited Ares to basically become its security apparatus. Cern barged in and told the people in charge they would do as they're told or they'd go down the line of succession until they found someone who would...please ignore the piles of corpses where your SDF used to be.

Again, as someone who is literally a QM, some of what you're saying is not an accurate representation of events or the situation.

I mean, the accurate representation of events isn't actually any more flattering for the Compact, don't get me wrong. But the logic you're using here is actually not very helpful as dictator analysis, because by that standard Hitler couldn't have possibly been the actual ruler of Nazi Germany and it must have secretly or not so secretly been the Waffen SS or the Wehrmacht.

Charles Normal has the large-scale suburbanite and "small business" support, and indeed this base was the one to press the Cerns into actually acting, not the other way around. Cern is now a key part of his narrow elite coalition that's masquerading as right-wing populism, but they were not somehow actually the ones in charge of everything, and they aren't that now either.

The Laurent · Jun 1, 2024

Like fundamentally, when Kiarael was rolling the dice, a lot of the forces arrayed against Atlantis liberty were either palsied with indecision or unable to bring force to bear. Cern and other such forces were as much the first as the second, but were ultimately essentially convinced to ride out and help with the coup.

Charles Normal isn't some secret mastermind, but he's representative of a group that cannot be accurately downplayed into being merely a puppet for Cern Rule.

SaltyWaffles · Jun 1, 2024

The Laurent said:
Again, as someone who is literally a QM, some of what you're saying is not an accurate representation of events or the situation.

I mean, the accurate representation of events isn't actually any more flattering for the Compact, don't get me wrong. But the logic you're using here is actually not very helpful as dictator analysis, because by that standard Hitler couldn't have possibly been the actual ruler of Nazi Germany and it must have secretly or not so secretly been the Waffen SS or the Wehrmacht.

Charles Normal has the large-scale suburbanite and "small business" support, and indeed this base was the one to press the Cerns into actually acting, not the other way around.

Then how did Normal even get into the seat of ruling in the first place? There were a ridiculous number of people ahead of him in the line of succession who clearly were not okay with the coup, including one who went outside in front of a crowd of thousands and got gunned down on the steps. Every member of the ruling government's party in the legislature resigned or was assassinated until Normal.

It clearly was not the SDF that did that. You're saying that the coup was...what, local police? And no one was able to stop them?

The reason Hitler ruled Nazi Germany was because the people with the guns were loyal to him. Cern has the biggest and best guns around, and we haven't seen any indication that the local branch of Cern is actually loyal to Normal (or why they would be instead of just using him as a puppet).

DeltaV11.2 · Jun 1, 2024

The Laurent said:
Again, as someone who is literally a QM, some of what you're saying is not an accurate representation of events or the situation.

I mean, the accurate representation of events isn't actually any more flattering for the Compact, don't get me wrong. But the logic you're using here is actually not very helpful as dictator analysis, because by that standard Hitler couldn't have possibly been the actual ruler of Nazi Germany and it must have secretly or not so secretly been the Waffen SS or the Wehrmacht.

Charles Normal has the large-scale suburbanite and "small business" support, and indeed this base was the one to press the Cerns into actually acting, not the other way around. Cern is now a key part of his narrow elite coalition that's masquerading as right-wing populism, but they were not somehow actually the ones in charge of everything, and they aren't that now either.

As someone who is not a QM please understand that we don't know what an accurate representation is. We don't know about die rolls or who actually motivated what, all we know is what we see. And what we saw was Cern forces going in to kill the Atlantis SDF after massacres began, so it's a resonable guess to say that Cern was responsible for the broader coup.

SaltyWaffles · Jun 1, 2024

The Laurent said:
Like fundamentally, when Kiarael was rolling the dice, a lot of the forces arrayed against Atlantis liberty were either palsied with indecision or unable to bring force to bear. Cern and other such forces were as much the first as the second, but were ultimately essentially convinced to ride out and help with the coup.

Charles Normal isn't some secret mastermind, but he's representative of a group that cannot be accurately downplayed into being merely a puppet for Cern Rule.

I think the issue is that the story never really mentions or implies such a group even existing. I still don't understand where such a group--or rather, its guns, armed troops, and agents--came from so quickly, or why the local branch of Cern doesn't use them as puppets for their own ends (again, biggest guns around, ruthless corporate culture that is all about ladder-climbing, reckless ambition, etc).

The Laurent · Jun 1, 2024

SaltyWaffles said:
Then how did Normal even get into the seat of ruling in the first place? There were a ridiculous number of people ahead of him in the line of succession who clearly were not okay with the coup, including one who went outside in front of a crowd of thousands and got gunned down on the steps. Every member of the ruling government's party in the legislature resigned or was assassinated until Normal.

It clearly was not the SDF that did that. You're saying that the coup was...what, local police? And no one was able to stop them?

The reason Hitler ruled Nazi Germany was because the people with the guns were loyal to him. Cern has the biggest and best guns around, and we haven't seen any indication that the local branch of Cern is actually loyal to Normal (or why they would be instead of just using him as a puppet).

Atlantis has been out of focus since the coup other than a few articles presenting a sanitized version of things from the perspective of the ruling forces. We have only so much in he way of time or spoons, but I feel like even in the actual 14 Days Articles we showed, we presented a more nuanced and interesting view than the one you're now arguing with a QM to try to force where it's all just a Cern Dictatorship, No Nuance.

I thought that the very clear emphasis on the Normal Regime should have made it certain that it was not merely slightly repackaged Cern, and frankly nothing about the policies being pursued has that unique Cern Transhumanist Fascism or whatever that we've shown?

But maybe we haven't conveyed it well enough for that to come across to you. Fine, sure, that doesn't therefore make your interpretation of things correct.

Derpmind · Jun 1, 2024

I don't think QMs should be obligated to explain every detail of everything that's happened. Especially not when the event in question was on the other side of the galaxy and that we only had a limited view of.

The Laurent · Jun 1, 2024

It actually would be interesting to look into Atlantis again in more detail, but there was an extent to which we sort of chose to focus more on a vague impression of the outer face of the regime, though I think within that context we did have a few interesting things going on, though we were admittedly a little vague with Atlantis. There's one article where we do the, "The headline tells the whole story" thing, which I think makes sense, but in the context of not getting enough Atlantis in the news-line, I feel like in hindsight we might have wanted to present exactly what the measures were against "Antisocial Behavior."

A more in-depth look didn't happen, and with the Comms cut off, wouldn't make sense for the coming News/Reports, I don't think?

The Laurent · Jun 1, 2024

In hindsight, we kind of relied on this one article to paint a picture of the Normal Regime:

AKuz said:
Normal Announces Long-Delayed Redistricting--The Atlantis Alternative (June 16th)

With the return of normalcy to Atlantis, and violent street demonstrations subsiding under the careful watch of Compact Peacekeepers, new Atlantis Prime Minister Charles Normal has begun to implement a wide ranging electoral reform package that would remake the face of Atlantis for generations to come.

Speaking on the steps of Bernard Hall, PM Normal spoke to the public, saying that "In my long years serving the public from the bench I saw countless injustices play out under the guise of legislative activism that followed the fads of the moment instead of the needs of good, solid government." and announced several key policy proposals including a flagship redistricting proposal that has been circulating the Atlantis political scene for nearly fifty years.

The redistricting Bill, AG-133, will see a near total overhaul of the system's ridings, using a recommendation system based on local community input directed by recognized community leaders in a nod to progressive demands for community engagement from groups such as the branches of Atlantis' local Chambers of Commerce, Home Owners' Associations, and other established non-government organizations with a stake in Atlantis' political future.

These new ridings will be overseen by a newly privatized Elections Atlantis, which has shed its former top heavy bureaucratic oversight in favor of vigorous public-private partnerships with new Elections Atlantis head Jasmin Yu-Saab stating that "the superiority of the free market will now apply its superiority all the way to the ballot box itself" and vowing that the coming election results would be "efficiently counted in a third the time of previous elections due to the efficiencies of efficient private sector engagement."

Yu-Saab also announced that the Atlantis Self Defence Force and its deputized auxiliaries would be tapped to provide security for the upcoming election as "with the recent unpleasantness so recent, we feel it's necessary that voters feel secure coming to the polls after all the recent violence."

MPA Fredrick Ogundare, the Revolutionary Colonial Communist Party (Adamist) chair representative on Atlantis decried the move, stating, "These entirely unrepresentative and unconstitutional changes reflect large-scale Gerrymandering, and combined with the closing of key polling stations they represent just another abnormal action in this barely legitimate government. We call on Roderick's government to fulfill its alliances and coalitions and stand against this. If they do not, we shall leave her alliance and caucus with whoever stands against the growing tyranny that has threatened Atlantis"

As of this time, there has been no reply from the Prime Minister's Office.

-

In my view, while the anti-democratic measures and so on are entirely keeping with Cern rule, the focus on "local community input" and "Home Owners Associations" as well as Charles Normal's own quote, indicated at least a somewhat more complicated mix, as there was no real mention of the classic Cern bugbears and hangups. But this was just a single passage, and it might be been either missed or not able to make clear the situation or so on.

But this is the only glimpse besides that one "Headline but no article" you have of what Atlantis looks like.

But yeah, Charles Normal implemented a redistricting that far-right figures have been calling for for five decades!

SaltyWaffles · Jun 2, 2024

For what it's worth, all of this stems from the fact that you all have created a story and world that is highly engaging, interesting, and memorable. That Atlantis alone could be a major focus for its own side-story is a testament to how well you've done.

Gulping · Jun 2, 2024

tl;dr: Normal is Space Alito and he's backed by every horrible small business idiot tyrant everyone collectively reading this thread has ever had the terrible misfortune of ever interacting with in any capacity.

I think the most merciful thing we could do for the people of Atlantis is mass-scatter the planet. That's a truly refined vision of Hell. Legitimately the bleakest thing the QMs have put in the thread since they revealed that Rowling is still alive.

For The Tyrants Fear Your Might (A quest of interstellar rebellion)

Been Better

Retreating Backwards

Commander of 10 Million Men

Forever Gone

I am dissapoint, son

Forever Gone

I am dissapoint, son

I am dissapoint, son

I am dissapoint, son

I am dissapoint, son