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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Thalton · Jun 17, 2021

Gravitas Hunt said:
We haven't really seen it because it's mostly favoured by ~~vampires~~ execs.

... well they are sucking the life out of people in most cases.

They are also immortal as a rule.

clockworkchaos · Jun 17, 2021

Thalton said:
... well they are sucking the life out of people in most cases.

They are also immortal as a rule.

Stakes through the heart usually kill them. Unfortunately most don't seem to be repelled by sunlight, garlic, crosses, though pouring a bucket of holy water over their head does seem to distress them.

Alex the Average · Jun 17, 2021

clockworkchaos said:
Stakes through the heart usually kill them. Unfortunately most don't seem to be repelled by sunlight, garlic, crosses, though pouring a bucket of holy water over their head does seem to distress them.

The great thing about stakes through the heart is that they work on non-vampires too.

DocSpooky · Jun 17, 2021

clockworkchaos said:
Stakes through the heart usually kill them. Unfortunately most don't seem to be repelled by sunlight, garlic, crosses, though pouring a bucket of holy water over their head does seem to distress them.

Unfortunately, they also have a habit of going places they aren't invited.

NHO · Jun 17, 2021

I just had a thought. That may have been missed by me or by the thread.

We just saw a massive man-made catastrophe - famine on agriworld - because capitalists proudly followed the book after trade disruption.

The Charters exist in economic bubble. It is about to pop. Everywhere will suffer trade and cash flow disruption.

Spreading cracked fabber patterns and revolutionary know-how looks like the only way to save majority of human race now.

DocMatoi · Jun 17, 2021

NHO said:
I just had a thought. That may have been missed by me or the thread.

We just saw a massive man-made catastrophe - famine on agriworld - because capitalists proudly followed the book after trade disruption.

The Charters exist in economic bubble. It is about to pop. Everwhere will suffer cash flow disruption.

Spreading cracked fabber patterns and revolutionary how-to looks like the only way to save majority of human race now.

while I don't disagree, where are you getting the bubble from? I don't have much of a head for econ so I probably missed it

TheArcanist · Jun 17, 2021

DocMatoi said:
while I don't disagree, where are you getting the bubble from? I don't have much of a head for econ so I probably missed it

The QMs have mentioned that the whole terraforming craze is almost certainly a speculative bubble that will burst at some point in the future.

Also the bubbles are a given because that's how capitalism works, it always lurches from bubble to bubble because of the way it organizes production.

NHO · Jun 17, 2021

Also, thread speculation after galactic market report with limited economic growth.

The Laurent · Jun 17, 2021

Spinward Market Stagnates on H-I Rumors, Collapse of Nutritional Supplement Stocks

The market last quarter crawled to a 0.2% growth rate, spurred by the collapse of independent dietary conglomerate Neulyfe after its CEO was convicted of running a Ponzi scheme. Distrust in the market segment caused other companies in the supplements area to lose value, and the knockon effects have devastated Cernunnos subsidiaries producing health product predecessors, destroying all growth of the past two quarters.

The market was further held back by persistent rumors of H-I mismanagement in the spinward frontier. Sources claim that ongoing protests have spread to several colonies and that local police have been unable to quell unrest, and several abrupt cancellations or changes in tone of popular H-I series offerings suggest it's affected production schedules.

Only the rising tech sector, spurred by a favorable Omoikane earnings report, kept the S&P 500 positive year-over-year.

*****

Jobs (In)security: Economics reports claim that the brief recession caused by the collapse of the emotional futures market has mostly been corrected, with the last double digit million people expected to drift into lower paying gig jobs over the next year or so, with the majority of the insecurity being centered in Sol.

Well known sign of economic stability. "The recession has been ended by most people getting moderately poorer en masse in less secure jobs that are likely to collapse even easier next time."

Amazing Abzan · Jun 17, 2021

Can I just point out how horrifyingly dystopian the phrase "emotional futures market" is? I don't even know what it means, but I know it can only exist in a brutal capitalist hellscape.

The Laurent · Jun 17, 2021

Don Alverzo said:
Can I just point out how horrifyingly dystopian the phrase "emotional futures market" is? I don't even know what it means, but I know it can only exist in a brutal capitalist hellscape.

Basically, it's meant to track how people feel and how they will feel in the future, and thus it crashed entirely when the Charters cut off our broadcasts, because the quality spiked, there was a big bubble of people feeling happier than they had in a while, and of people speculating on TV shows and entertainment driving happiness through the roof... and then they cut it off.

Presumably, we'll actually be reinflating that stupid bubble when we return to producing quality programming for literally free.

As I've said, the Charters might not even stop us in doing this, because even though it absolutely hurts HI's bottom line, individual execs can just invest in Emotional Futures or silly merchandise for the free shows or etc.

...now, the news that we exist will provide no such bubbles, and once it's known that our existence keeps the good shows flowing... they'll have to deal with a further mass-recession once the time comes.

TheArcanist · Jun 17, 2021

Don Alverzo said:
Can I just point out how horrifyingly dystopian the phrase "emotional futures market" is? I don't even know what it means, but I know it can only exist in a brutal capitalist hellscape.

It's exactly what it sounds like - speculation on how sad you think people are going to be in the near future.

The market collapsed when Radiant revolted and produced a bunch of high quality content to keep up the ruse that we were still under Charter control - which, as the protagonist of my omake put it, lead to a bunch of rich people deciding that people were too happy and promptly triggering a financial crisis over it.

Thalton · Jun 17, 2021

God I cannot wait to park a fleet over Earth.

An invasion will probably make everything better ironically.

TheArcanist · Jun 17, 2021

Thalton said:
God I cannot wait to park a fleet over Earth.

An invasion will probably make everything better ironically.

I mean... If the Black Summers are anything to go by, Earth's inhabitants are entirely willing to start getting revolty all on their own.

The Laurent · Jun 17, 2021

Yeah, we do not have the forces to possibly liberate the whole galaxy... militarily. We chose the Propaganda-focused start, instead of the 'fight all of the Charters combined to a standstill' start.

DocMatoi · Jun 17, 2021

The Laurent said:
Yeah, we do not have the forces to possibly liberate the whole galaxy... militarily. We chose the Propaganda-focused start, instead of the 'fight all of the Charters combined to a standstill' start.

Liberate the mind of the worker, and there is no gun that can stop you

Godwinson · Jun 17, 2021

"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."

Or perhaps--

"Stand up, all victims of oppression
For the tyrants fear your might"

Thalton · Jun 17, 2021

Godwinson said:
"Stand up, all victims of oppression
For the tyrants fear your might"

"Because they sure as hell wouldn't spend so much money oppressing you otherwise."

nocarename · Jun 17, 2021

I wonder if we can get contracts for additional work on the side.

Less for the Charters, but if you had an email you could send a a project spec to and have a proposal come back and it was cheap, well, you might have something that resembled free time then. A chance to take a breath and think for a moment about something other than deadlines and survival.

The first thing is to receive the benefits of the BLG, you must live.

Strunkriidiisk · Jun 17, 2021

DocMatoi said:
Liberate the mind of the worker, and there is no gun that can stop you

Godwinson said:
"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed."

Or perhaps--

"Stand up, all victims of oppression
For the tyrants fear your might"

"Behind this mask is an idea... and ideas are bulletproof."

Torgamous · Jun 17, 2021

Strunkriidiisk said:
"Behind this mask is an idea... and ideas are bulletproof."

- Stephanie Rousseau, post-Bad End

bdun140 · Jun 20, 2021

And now, because I have 0 self control and a horrible, horrible habit of starting things and then not finishing them, I have an official strategy guide for the first 4 (technically 3) levels of Steel Golgotha Rampage.

========================

Posted by Official_RBC_Outreach_Platform
INTRO

Hello! I'm Bob Sullivan, chief creative officer for Bunkerdown Games and lead writer for our first commercial release on the Radiant Broadcasting Channel, Steel Golgotha Rampage.

Now, I'm not one of those food blogs that'll make you read a short novel before getting to the part you're there for, but I do have a bit of a story I wish to tell about the origins of Bunkerdown in general and this game in particular. If you're not interested, feel free to ignore the following spoiler and scroll right past to reach the gameplay segment.

The genesis for this project starts a whopping 25 years before the release of SGR, in an otherwise unremarkable chatroom. Myself and a handful of others who were less than satisfied with our then-current places of employment were talking about life, the universe, and everything, when the idea came up of starting a videogame studio. We had a large number of ideas wildly varying in feasibility, and the one we eventually started working on was this concept for an RTS game where you could customize your units.

God only knows why we chose THAT, of all possible things.

We called this endeavor Project: MegaMech Mechanix, Project 3M for short, and it became pretty clear pretty fast we had bitten off more than we could chew. Progress was glacial due to the preexisting demands on our time and money, but one glorious day we were able to present our proof-of-concept unit creator to some folks outside our initial group.

They hated it.

It was clunky, it was clumsy, it was janky, it was counter-intuitive, you needed a degree in real-life vehicle engineering to create something that could move without spontaneously combusting and about 12 tries to get that thing to a point where it wouldn't break the simulator. Comment that stuck out to me most was "you realize that 99% of people are never going to have the time or patience to figure this thing out, right?" We were devastated. Group broke up not long after that. That said, I never got around to deleting everyone's contact information, nor to deleting the assets or documentation that had been put together for Project 3M. This will become important later.

Fast forward to a point in the much more recent past: namely, the place I was working shutting its doors for good in late March of 2251. It should have been the scariest day of my life, and I guess on one level it was, but there was also this overwhelming sense of relief, that I would not be beholden to the ignoramus who called himself my boss anymore. I went home that day, laid on my bed staring at my ceiling for like an hour, then was struck by the idea to try and take another stab at Project 3M. I rallied the old posse, pulled up the old files, and we started tinkering with the old prototype, trying to figure out what complexities we could/should simplify for the sake of making it less impenetrable to the uninitiated.

It was at this point that the nascent Bunkerdown Games collectively learned the meaning of the term "technical debt". Technical debt happens when you take shortcuts in writing your code so that you achieve your goal faster, but at the cost of uglier, harder to maintain code. It's called technical debt because it's like taking out a loan. You can accomplish more today than you normally could, but you end up paying a higher cost later. In the case of Project: MegaMech Mechanix, because of the quick and dirty methods we had used to try and make something that could theoretically work, making it ACTUALLY work became an exercise in frustration, with any change to one feature having unpredictable effects on the software as a whole. I forget who it was that made the metaphor exactly, but somebody called it a game of poking the jello, where taking an action here meant running the risk of having something shake itself to pieces there.

The team shrank dramatically during these months, and eventually Project 3M got shelved a second time as we tried to make something else, something less ambitious. Something we would be able to do properly and then take the experience from that into a full-scale project. And, somewhere along the line, a member of the team named Niko took some of the assets created for Project 3M, and slapped together something they called "Lasergod". Lasergod was the arthritic, senile grandfather of Steel Golgotha Rampage, a silly little time waster where silly looking tanks and armored cars and stuff would shoot at the camera to no effect, and when you clicked it would fire a laser that blew them up. It was like popcorn, you enjoyed it for 5 minutes or so and then you did something else. But it was a game, a working game, and it was ours.

Fast forward once again to the dawn of the RBC, and to the mad scramble for anyone who wanted to be a content creator to get their foot in the door. It was here that Bunkerdown Games would face it's baptism by fire. We had Lasergod, plus some other shiny trinkets and petty baubles, but I wanted something that would set us apart. So I put my thinking cap on, and suddenly found myself visited by the good idea fairy. In an over-the-phone interview, I mentioned Project 3M to the RBC Games division, but instead of framing it as a full-on game mechanic I framed it as a game development tool, a rapid prototyping engine that could be used to quickly populate a game with modular or semi-modular vehicles and pieces of scenery.

What I did not mention is that the original Project: MegaMech Mechanix had by this point been given the "Old Yeller'' treatment, and that we'd pretty much be building this rapid prototyping doohickey of mine from scratch. The "Functional Alpha" we wound up presenting was somewhere between Lasergod and what Project 3M had originally been envisioned as: you assembled some stupid looking armored vehicles from Chassis, Turrets, and Weapons, each catagory haveing like 4 things in it, and then you'd put them on opposite sides of a colored line in an otherwise flat and featureless plain to start ramming and shooting each other. Progress!

Bunkerdown Games was now officially a thing, and inspired by Lasergod's gameplay of blowing up hopelessly outmatched foes from an elevated position plus a somewhat rambling conversation about the various ways which armor and health and protection get represented in video games came the base idea for Steel Golgotha Rampage. Fun fact, none of us actually knew what a Golgotha was at the start of development, but it sounded a bit like "Goliath" which we knew was copyrighted to hell and back, while being distinct enough to hopefully avoid said copyrights.

Honestly, compared to the rollercoaster ride that preceded it, making SGR was a breath of fresh air. We had fun, we learned from our mistakes and from the wisdom of the veterans, and we made a frankly excessive number of enemies to fight. The plot point of the alien civil war resulting in a technological backslide was pretty much an excuse for us to have both "realistic" enemies and crazypants sci-fi sh** in the same game, on the same side. It also let us sidestep questions about why humans were able to make this robot work when the descendants of it's own builders couldn't. We actually wound up having to cut quite a few units, either because they were too weak or too strong or too weird, or because something else already in the game more or less filled the same tactical niche and folks were worried about deadlines and file sizes.

The single biggest source of drama was actually how big we wanted Golgotha to be. My first idea was 50 meters, which I remembered being the height given for Godzilla in one of its many incarnations. The reasons the Golgotha in the game stands at a mere 20 meters are mostly gameplay related. Having a smaller giant robot meant a higher ceiling on how agile and responsive it could be before this started to mess up the feeling of having enormous mass, while also allowing us to have the player interact with the environment in ways that aren't just "smash". In addition, it meant that the enemies would be larger by comparison, which in turn meant it would be easier to tell the difference between the various models and thus know which enemies should be prioritised for destruction. I still miss the 50 meter concept, though in hindsight I can see how it would run the risk of getting stale and/or frustrating.

In terms of future projects, we have three things currently in the "doodles on a whiteboard" phase, and the sad truth is that whichever one we end up growing more fond of will probably push the others to the backburner. One is an RTS not unlike what Project: MegaMech Mechanix was originally envisioned as, but instead of the unit customizer being a central feature it would be off to the side as part of a larger mission/scenario editor. This is the "if only a tenth of people will figure this out, make something everyone else can enjoy first" idea. The second is to basically take some form of unit creator, and then make a hyper-extended tutorial for it packaged and presented as a puzzle game, with each level adding a few more things to the toolbox while also asking the player to complete a more complicated task. Lastly, we have this concept of having to build up a fleet from scratch to defend a space station from aliens, with the idea being that the smallest ships will have a low ceiling on how many moving parts they can actually have, and then as bigger and nastier aliens show up you'll be building bigger and more complex warships to fight them off.

Phew! That took a lot longer than I thought it would. Wonder how many people are going to read it all. Also, in case you're wondering, yes, I am still footing the bill for EVERYBODY'S assorted junk food cravings, in apology for the whole trying to pass off P3M as a "working alpha" thing.

MISSION ONE: THE DIG SITE
Watch (or skip) the pretty intro cutscene explaining the basics of what's going on, see our teenage alien research assistant protagonist accidentally bypass the DNA lock on the Golgotha's cockpit, and start things up.

Right away, you will be confronted with a frankly intimidating number of small-arms equipped infantry and drones, who will start chewing through your shields… And then start doing 0 damage a shot when they get through to your armor. Given that the dialogue is triggered by your shields hitting zero, we had to write an alternate set of lines for if the player came back to the level later with a functioning Null-Shield. In case you're curious, said lines imply that our lad managed to debug said shield, in spite of all the prompts and warnings in the cockpit being in this dead language that nobody speaks anymore, by pushing buttons at random and hoping for the best.

At any rate, once it is established you're not actually in danger, you'll be asked to figure out how to move, aim, shoot, etc. Once you have completed all of the tutorial tasks, it's time to fry some baddies. Shoot enough of the tiny infantry dudes and the rest will flee, being berated for cowardice by their superior over the radio. You will then be given a nice little break for your shields to regenerate. Once they do, you start facing enemies who can actually pose a threat, if only a minor one: infantry that have explosive weapons, drones that have explosive weapons, drones that ARE explosive weapons, and your first, decidedly underwhelming armored fighting vehicles.

The bad guys come at you in puny penny-packets for this segment, each one politely pausing until the one before it is completely destroyed before pursuing, allowing you to pick apart the pack of panicked perpetrators at your pleasure. It's even possible to get through the rest of the level without your shields going down! As a matter of fact, that just so happens to be the first mission's bonus objective, as revealed once you complete the stage. Future missions you'll be able to see the bonus objective on the map screen next to the mission overview, so you'll be able to plan around that.

At the end of each level, you will be awarded medals for various criteria: Complete the stage in under the par time to get the Speed Medal, complete it with your armor/HP above certain percentages to get the Survival Medal, complete it with a certain number of friendly units still alive to get the Strategy Medal*, complete the bonus objective unique to that mission to get the Secret Medal, and do all of the above in a single run to get the Supremacy Medal. Please note, that in missions where there are no allies on the stage, like this one, Golgotha making it out alive counts as an ally surviving, so you'll get the medal by default.

Defeat the last wave of enemies, and some air transports will arrive to take aboard the scientists and workers to evacuate them. Our hero will be told to exit the Golgotha and grab a seat with his colleagues, but he will refuse, stating that he doesn't want to see what The Empire would be capable of doing if they got their hands on the Golgotha. He will then state his intent to travel overland to the rally point, with the scientists staying in contact over radio.

MISSION TWO: ALPINE CROSSING
This map is significantly larger and more complex than the last one, having a large number of rocks and trees and hills to block line of sight. It is also the introduction of two new mechanics related to how enemies spawn in and behave: Limited Spawners bring in units according to a fixed timer, with no limit to how many can be on the field at once… And a strict limit on how many can be spawned overall. Once this limit is reached the Limited Spawner will shut down and stop sending dudes after you. You can also force it to stop before it gets to the limit by finding the actual spawner and blowing it up. The other new way for bad guys to come after you is the Unlimited Wave. Enemies associated with these will usually be airborne and will always be programmed to flee from the battlezone after shooting at you. Fixed wing aircraft will make a single pass and then RTB, while VTOLs and certain ground troops will take some time to dump munitions your way before bugging out. There is no way to permanently cut off these forces, and a hidden timer will start ticking down to send the next wave any time the existing one dies or de-spawns. However, every time an enemy associated with an Unlimited Wave gets destroyed, the between wave timer gets slightly longer.

Players appear in the south-east corner of the map, and your main objective is to reach the north-west corner. Your bonus objective, meanwhile, is to kill a large number of ground units, which requires a bit more risk in terms of time spent and potential damage taken than the last bonus objective.

Main features of the map as far as enemies are concerned are a bunch of patrols spawned in as part of the map itself, two Limited Spawners, one Unlimited Wave, and a big invisible line running from the South-west corner to the North-east corner which serves as a halfway mark to completing the main objective. Southern LS, west of the player's starting point, spawns APCs while the eastern one spawns IFVs. Now, the distinction between these vehicles may be fuzzy in real life, but here it's easy: IFVs don't spawn infantry and have larger turrets above their center of mass, while APCs do spawn infantry and have smaller turrets offset towards the front. IFVs are the bigger threat for now, because they have rapid fire cannons that do just enough damage to punch through your armor and impact your health. When you start upgrading your durability they'll become far less worrying, but that won't be for a while.

The Unlimited Wave associated with this level is just some VTOLs, nothing to really worry about, but the halfway line is where I like to think things get interesting. At the start of the mission, the APCs and IFVs will attempt to pathfind to a point between the objective and the player before committing to an attack, whereas after you cross the line (if the spawners are still spawning), they'll abandon such maneuvers in favor of simple pursuit. Additionally, crossing the middle line will cause a quartet of Light Tanks to spawn where the player first entered the level and start chasing them. These guys have the highest single-hit damage encountered thus far, but this isn't exactly a high bar to clear, and they're not all that well armored either. Bolt for the exit or turn and blow them up, it's the player's choice.

MISSION THREE: THIS FAR, AND NO FURTHER
The first mission to feature a significant number of allied units. Also the first mission where you have access to The Armory, wherein you can upgrade, fix, swap out, or otherwise tinker with your various gubbins. Primary weapons, secondary weapons, auto-turrets, modules, all the classic video game tropes.

Now, seeing as your allies are supposed to be "realistic" similar to the lower tier enemies who don't have access to the crazy superscience wunderwaffe made in automated factories that the aliens can't build more of because they don't know how, one might think they'll have trouble telling who's who in the heat of battle. But not to worry, combatants in this game are color-coded for your convenience! Fecal matter brown with evil red highlights for the "realistic" enemies, battleship grey with heroic blue highlights for one's allies, and weird neon purple with toxic waste green highlights for the "sci-fi" enemies. Remember that now.

At any rate, this mission takes place in a series of fortified mountain passes which the enemy is attempting to force their way through so they can attack the city in the hills and plains on the far side of the mountains from where they are. You're mostly going to be stomping from valley to valley targeting the heaviest hitters in each wave while leaving the rest to splatter against the allied bunkers and dug-in vehicles. There are three valleys which vehicles can roll down, and then a whole bunch of other paths that are only accessible to infantry and legged war machines able to step over the rough terrain, and all of it is going to be scorched and blasted by the time you're through. Oh yeah, there's also a pair of Unlimited Waves, one spawning VTOLs and one spawning fixed wing aircraft, but the bunkers have AA guns able to shoot them down, so just head for friendlies if you're having trouble swatting these nuisances.

The bonus objective is simple: do not let ANY of the allied bunkers get destroyed. Strategy medal only requires 2/3rds of the bunkers survive, plus the mobile response force that spawns THE FIRST TIME an enemy group gets close to the end of a valley. In service of completing this, you're going to want to try to be in the middle valley at the end of the last wave, so that you can intercept the mini-boss as soon as it spawns.

Now, mechanically speaking, the Quadrupedal Heavy Weapons Platform (allied reporting name: Tarantula) is not a full-on Boss Encounter. It doesn't have an on-screen health bar, it doesn't have a unique theme, and while it is the personal ride of the enemy commander who's been screaming at you the last few missions it's defeat does not signal the end of the chapter, nor a major turning point for the story, except as as far as the "tutorial arc" is concerned. It is, however, an enemy that is conspicuously nasty even when you encounter larger numbers of them later in the game, now showing up at a point where you don't have a lot of clever options or brute force to wield against it. It's also quite intimidating, standing at 15 meters to Golgotha's 20, making it the single tallest non-boss enemy in the game (though, not the biggest overall. That honor goes to the Mastodon class super heavy tank, which shows up later).

Once you've battered down it's shields, one good tactic would be to focus fire on one of its legs. That's one of the things about enemies once they get past a certain size, you're able to start destroying bits of them individually. Each leg you destroy significantly reduces the Tarantula's movement and turning speed, making it much easier to avoid its fixed angle main guns. The turreted secondary weapons can be destroyed as well, to reduce the amount of firepower it can throw your way just in general. If you're low on health or feeling a bit scared, it may be worth it to let the Tarantula get close enough that the allied defenders can start shooting at it, then launch your own attack to draw it's attention away from said defenders. Once the Tarantula is destroyed, the mission will be over.

SECRET MISSION ONE: OPERATION CANNONBALL
The first secret mission, canonically taking place between missions 2 and 3, unlocked after acquiring 2 secret medals. Being the first of its kind, it of course has the lowest requirements to unlock, with later secret missions requiring larger numbers of multiple medals.

This mission was balanced with the assumption that players with upgraded machines and a firm grasp of the game as a whole would be coming back to it. If you're playing it at the earliest possible point where it can be unlocked, your margin for error will be razor thin, even following this guide's instructions.

Before you attempt this mission, go to the armory, then purchase and upgrade the Shoulder Auto-Turrets, the ones whose description mentions being good against aircraft. If you've gotten a supremacy medal on both missions 1 and 2, you should have exactly enough resources to get what you need.

Mission begins with the following briefing: "Local militia forces and evacuated civilians are using these mountains to hide from the invaders. We've been pulling out the refugees and resupplying the defenders by way of air transport, but rapidly increasing enemy fighter cover has rendered this too risky to continue, and Planetary Defense Force HQ can't spare forces to try and secure the area. But thanks to the heavy casualties you've inflicted on the enemy's vanguard and mobile assets, we might just be able to pull off an overland evacuation!"

This map is the biggest map in the tutorial arc by far, and it also has the fastest spawning Unlimited Wave you'll encounter for quite some time. Fortunately, the units spawned are some of the most fragile of their class, and will only spawn two per wave. Even so, upgraded Shoulder Auto-Turrets will be a vital necessity if you want to keep the sky-cancer at bay. Scattered across this map are 10 allied settlements: one Forward Operating Base belonging to the PDF, two Hamlets, three Cave Entrances, and four Tent Camps. Any time you approach a settlement, it will contact you over radio to confirm you're friendly, and then begin spawning convoys that will try to flee to the north of the map. At the same time, the enemy commander will get angry, and will start spawning ground vehicles and aircraft from the south, as well as infantry and drones from the east and west. These forces are theoretically trying to stop the convoy, but can and likely will get distracted and start attacking the settlements instead, which is honestly just as bad.

Tent Camps are the smallest and least defended settlements, only spawning one convoy each for a total of four. This convoy will consist of a single Scout Car out in front, followed by 4 Civilian Ground Cars. In an attempt to compensate for their near total lack of offense or defense, they will BURN HELL FOR LEATHER trying to get to their goal. Rather than try to keep up, you're going to want to turn south, to try and minimize the damage that ends up getting dealt by the enemies spawning down there.

Cave Entrances are the second smallest settlements, spawning two convoys each for a total of six. These convoys will consist of a single militia APC out in front, followed by 3 Civilian Ground Cars, with a Scout Car bringing up the rear. The APCs spawned by Cave Entrances and Hamlets are said to be loaded with civilians instead of soldiers, but they never unload their passengers where the player can see it, so it's mostly just radio chatter. Convoys from these tend to require the most babysitting, as they've neither the speed to blitz past enemy interception efforts, nor the firepower to fight through them.

Hamlets are the second largest settlements, spawning three convoys each for a total of six. These convoys will consist of an IFV out front, followed by a Civilian Logistics Vehicle, followed by an APC and two Civilian Ground Cars. Just in case anyone cares, the first convoy's CLV will be an ordinary box truck with "SUPPLIES" written on the side, the second will also be a box truck labeled "FAB FEED", and the third will be a flatbed truck hauling what is supposed to be a Fabricator, but at this resolution just looks like a weird metal box with some blinking lights on the side.

The Forward Operating Base is the largest and best defended settlement. When approached, it will spawn four convoys, each led by a Light Tank, followed by a Military Logistics Vehicle, then an IFV, then a pair of APCs. The FOB's AA turrets are said to be computer controlled, which is why they keep firing after the convoys go out and the other defenses get packed up.

Before you approach ANY of the settlements, you're going to want to make a wide circuit of the map to clear out enemy patrols and ambushes that start the mission already in play. This is also a prime opportunity to do some fly-swatting, as reducing the frequency of enemy air strikes can only mean good things for the survivability of your allies. Once you are finished, you are going to want to approach the FAR EAST Tent Camp, as the Tent Camps are the most vulnerable to attack, with this one in particular being in an unfortunate position relative to enemies spawning in. You will then want to get the southern settlements moving, again prioritising the more weakly defended Tent Camps and Cave Entrances, such that enemies are more likely to run into the stronger defenses of the Hamlets and FOB instead. After this, you will generally want to focus on evacuating whatever settlement has taken the most damage and escorting that settlement's convoys unless it was a Tent Camp… Or unless the settlement that has suffered the most damage is the FOB, which you want to leave for last in all cases. If the FOB is in danger of falling, the best thing to do is probably plant yourself due south of it, close enough to prevent further damage but far enough to avoid triggering it. This is because, when there is only one settlement remaining, the enemy attacks will significantly ramp up, and the FOB convoy vehicles are all armed save for the truck, which is better armored than either of the Civilian Vehicles. This will allow them to punch through nearly anything the east and west sides can throw at them while the player is distracted stemming the tide to the south.

The mission will end when all settlements have been destroyed or fully evacuated. Being that this is a secret mission there is no bonus objective to worry about, which is a mixed blessing as getting under the par time while avoiding damage AND keeping your allies safe is going to be a tall order. That said, you will gain bonus resources for each vehicle that makes it to safety, with an additional bonus on top of that if all 100 make it out. If you can ace this on your first go, levels 3 and 4 will never know what hit them.

Zanfib · Jun 20, 2021

bdun140 said:
snip

I want this game.

AKuz · Jun 23, 2021

[X] Plan Derpmind
-[X] [VEMP] End Implementation of VEMP Measures (auto)
-[X] [IndComm] Integrate Five Lions into ARC Economic, Planning, and Logistical Systems (auto)
-[X] [MilComm] Integrate Revolutionary Five Lions militias into MilComm (auto)
-[X] [MilComm] Formalize guidelines for MilComm pre-authorization (auto)
-[X] [MilComm] Permanent Special Forces Training Division (26/30 +4 100%)
-[X] [SciComm] Crack Five Lions Automated Systems (auto)
-[X] [SciComm] Bypass Charter Fabricator Rights Management for Omoikane (3/20 +2 30%)
-[X] [SocComm] Create All-Five Lions Commission to Combat Laning (0/30 +10 5%, 91% two turns)
-[X] [SocComm] Immortality Guarantee (8/50 +5 0%, 11% two turns, 68% three turns)
-[X] [MedComm] Counter Propaganda (0/20 +8 45%)
-[X] [MedComm] [Chinook Free Die] Broadcasting Network Focus (auto)

Integrate Five Lions into ARC Economic, Planning, and Logistical Systems 18+4=22
Convert RFS Chinook to a space station: 20+6=26/45
Build Orbital Cruiser-sized spacedock in Sheol: 3+8+2(omake)= 13/50
Permanent Special Forces Training Division: 15+4=45/30
Bypass Charter Fabricator Rights Management for Omoikane: 13+2+3 (Omake)=21/20
Create All-Five Lions Commission to Combat Laning: 15+10=25/30
Immortality Guarantee: 8+5+4(omake)=25/50
Counter Propaganda: 11+8+3(Omake)=22/20

Spending This Quarter: 39BR 19SR 28 E

Report to General Congress- Battle of Osliam [2254/05/28]

I am pleased to report that the Osliam system gate has been successfully secured. Intelligence's assessment of their fixed defenses guarding the gate was accurate, and it was only lightly fortified. A mine did moderate damage to CNS Reliant, however there were no casualties, and it is believed that it can be repaired en-route to Osliam within Choreographer.

The only other damage was a glancing blow to Revolutionary Will as a result of the fixed defense fire during transition. All other enemy defenses were neutralized before they were able to engage thanks to overwhelming firepower.

A recently constructed space-station was captured, with no resistance. Its crew was a skeleton crew for the strikecraft stationed there, but little else. Upon questioning it was freely offered that Heather Mendez was out of system, giving orders from Ascension, but that her head of security, John Martin, had ordered the defenses and was the current acting head in Osliam.

We are proceeding to the primary Planet.

Report to General Congress- Osliam [2254/06/9]

We have proceeded towards the inner system.

As we traveled, a message from John Martin identifying himself as the "Security Head of the Osliam System" was broadcast to us, informing us that this system was property of Omoikane and that any further destruction of property would result in the full force of Charter and Compact law upon us.

Pursuant to our orders, we continued to proceed further into the system.

At this point, several craft were detected on intercept courses with the Osliam Force. However, the craft in question appeared to be civilian type inter-system transports, incapable of warp and used primarily for material and drone transport. As such we broadcast that we would be maintaining an exclusion zone from our craft, and trained weapons, but did not fire. Instead Alexander was given com control to attempt to encourage a surrender, including promises of good treatment and testimonials from those captured before.

Broadcasts from several of the craft indicated that those piloting them were, as speculated, civilians, and that neither they, nor their guards, were being paid enough to die. They also informed us that the craft had been laiden with explosives and they had been ordered to make suicide runs at our craft, and that some craft were under drone control. Other craft did not respond and maintained an intercept course, and I ordered them destroyed. As best analysis can tell, there appeared to be no evidence of humans present aboard these, but given the destructiveness of spacecraft weaponry, and the explosives aboard, this cannot be 100% verified.

Those craft that surrendered were secured with smallcraft as a precaution against suicide attacks. We then resumed course into the inner system. Questioning of the individuals on-board revealed the following:

Information about our revolution had been limited until our entrance into the system and broadcasting. However, it had not been entirely suppressed.
The warp-craft that have been created since the attempted breakout are jury-rigged and not militarily powerful, but were, curiously, headed away from Osliam. Information was limited as to why, and speculations ranged from other revolutions, charter in-fighting, to wild tales of rogue AIs. Intelligence speculation is that it is best assumed to be a fleet gathering at Ascension, which would be Mendez' seat of power.
The communications network is not fully destroyed, as a switch had been installed in the buoys within the system for easy communication removal, and should be restorable.

Upon arrival, no further resistance was offered until we began our final approach to Osliam 6. Once the orbitals were secured, broadcasts to resistance groups were offered, as well as demands that the system would be turned over to the people who lived there. We informed the local Charter forces that if surrender was offered their treatment would be lenient.

At that point we were again contacted by Mr. Martin, who indicated that he had nuclear weapons. If we were to attempt to take Osliam 6 he would detonate them over the primary domes, exposing them to the atmosphere. Justification was given that they would 'never surrender' and that everyone was 'willing to lay down their lives for freedom'.

Broadcasts from other local sources indicated that much of Osliam 6's population did not share Mr. Martin's sentiment, but that security forces were, unlike previous liberations, on high alert and had been since the loss of the breakout force, when Heather Mendez returned to Ascension and Mr. Martin was left in charge.

While I am not certain if said devices would actually be detonated, we did not proceed with attempts to seize control of the further spinward systems, for several reasons:

Our orders were to focus on securing the orbitals of all planetary systems before ground securing, and direct invasion would diverge from this.
Radiological sensors indicated that the nuclear devices were real.
Any such operation would therefore require a precision orbital insertion; while this is not outside my expertise, such operations need delicate planning.
Delegate Alexander Hunter, operating in his capacity as the civilian head of mission has requested negotiation attempts before any direct intervention.
Orbital bombardment in support of this operation or of local dissident groups is impossible, as any such support would breach the domes. The inefficiency of orbital bombardment of any type on non-terraformed worlds should be accounted for in future liberation attempts.
While security lockdowns were observed to be, at best, draconian, there was no indication of ongoing fighting.

As such, for now our craft have made no move, instead focusing on securing the rest of the system and preparing for continued movement along the chain. With my support, Delegate Hunter is attempting hostage negotiations. In addition orbital observation is being conducted along with contact being made with on-the-ground resistance to prepare an operation should it become necessary.

Revolutionary Will and Revolutionary Grace have been dispatched to investigate the spinward gates and determine what, if any, defenses have been constructed.

Report to General Congress- Osliam [2254/06/17]

Negotiations continue, both scouts report no gate resistance. After refueling both were dispatched through to scout the immediate other side..

Revolutionary Will reported seeing ships fleeing through the far gate. No other ships were reported in either system. However it must be emphasised that operating a single ships detachments, neither has the data processing nor power of a fixed scanning installation, as such it cannot be said that either system is 'empty" of ships in any capacity. A solar system is huge, and the detection of ships feeling through the gate was only because Captain Hanae had the foresight to focus on the far gate.

Within Osliam itself, we have completed the direct securing of all orbitals and off-planet stations with the exception of the main shipyard, which is under nuclear threat. At least officially, unofficially, Delegate Hunter conducted private negotiations with those on-board and we were given permission to bring a specialist to help defuse the bomb. Based on the specs we can now say that the bombs are MSI brand "excavation charges'' nuclear devices, with the station on publically disarmed. Due to a wish not to spook Mr. Martin, said specialist will be working remotely rather than going directly aboard, and we did not publicly liberate the station.

Information from the station confirms previous accounts. Mr. Martin was focusing on producing and converting as many armed warp capable ships as possible, which were afterwards sent down the chain towards Ascension. At the same time, he ordered the construction of fixed defenses to hold the gate. The extremely limited fixed defenses seem to have been a result of trying to engage in two military production projects at once on a planet of 650,000 that was located in a system with limited orbital industry and very few resources.

As of right now, negotiations with groundside authorities have proven less successful, however a recent breakthrough may have given insight into why. A tertiary outpost's overseer has agreed to disarm his weapon, informing us that Mr. Martin has been assuring the other Vice Presidents' that the bombs won't need to be used, and if they are, he will detonate only the one on-board the planetary station to let us know he is serious. The overseer, however, notes that Mr. Martin has been pulling away resources from tertiary science outposts with no production or mining capacity. She believes that her outpost would be considered 'non-vital' and would be sacrificed to 'let you know he is serious' if the station did not dissuade us. If so, the other VP's may be holding out under the assumption that Mr. Martin will not actually detonate their bombs.

For now, the bulk of the fleet is preparing a course to the Waystation system. First because the Idyllia chain has no further systems, and is projected by intelligence to have little, if any orbital assets. Secondly, given our own experiences with Charter chartered colony ships, the fate of the estimated 300,000 colonists deeply concerns me.

CNS Egalite and Liberte will remain in orbit around Osliam 6 while we wait for further auxiliary craft to be dispatched from Shei. Delegate Alexander Hunter has opted to remain in Osliam for now to continue negotiations, not only with our hostage taker directly, but to negotiate with planetary subordinates who it is hoped will follow similar paths to the station. By mutual agreement, the fleet will move no more than one system away from him. Should this force a delay in swift orbital securing of the chain, he will embark aboard one of our warp craft and we will continue on, leaving an aide to continue negotiations if need be.

Report to General Congress- Osliam [2254/06/24]

Negotiations continue, currently little headway is being made with Mr. Martin, and for now, Delegate Hunter is focusing on the other domain and outpost. Currently the primary reluctance stems from either certainty that 'they won't have to use them' and we will invade without them or that our offers of shut-down are actually intended to 'hack them' to gain control. To that end Delegate Hunter and those on-board have been pursuing a two-fold strategy. First, a simple disarm package that is clearly disarmed and not secretly 'under our control', obvious enough for even charter executives. Second, pointing out that if they don't disarm, then they may be blown up, while the other bombs remain intact if they do and attempting to encourage defection. Finally an emphasis that Mr. Martin is paranoid and reporting this to him would likely result in him turning on them.

In addition, I have received contact from Waystation system. Proceeding into the inner system, longer term scanning small-craft formations were seen maneuvering around the edges of the system, but it was determined that none posed a significant threat to a proper warcraft. Revolutionary Will proceeded towards Waystation 3a where the early stages of the skeletonization of the colony-ship was underway. Upon approaching Revolutionary Will was hailed by the colony's long-range communications.

Transcript Follows (hailing was done initially 2 hours out from the the colony-ship as such there should be understood to be a considerable light-speed delay between replies):

Waystation Station: "Apologies, I see that um, you weren't kidding about feeling your wrath. I… apologize for my words before. They were the products of a young and stupid executive. However, I must emphasize that I can't change the reality of the situation. We cannot offer further supplies. The escort ships have already been donated, or the pirates have made off with them, who I assure you we tried to fight off, but we lack weapons. I would be glad to offer you the main engine, but it can't be broken down. That said, my chief engineer calling your men and especially the Security Head of Oslium 'stupid fucking know-nothing eggheads' was I recognize, completely inappropriate. I assure you he has been reprimanded. Now why don't we talk about this like civilized men?"

Cpt. Yamamoto: "This is Captain Yamamoto Hanae of the All-Radiant Congressional Navy. I do not serve Mr. Martin, who is currently cowering away on the surface of Osliam 6, nor any Charter, nor will I again."

Waystation Station: "Wait a minute…. It's you* fucks! Do you assholes know how much shit I've had to deal with? You are so lucky, you'll get a frontier posting, it will be easy. Go about and make a man out of yourself. I already did that, that's what the fucking Transtech shit was for mom. (at this point a second voice can be heard in the background) Now I'm trying to bootstrap a fuc-"

*In her transcript Captain Yamamoto describes the tone as angry, but ''more like the anger of an older sibling who had been dragged to a concert than an angry would-be-girlfriend upon realizing who you were.'

At this point the communication briefly cut off only to be restored

Waystation Station: "Apologies, I was… overly stressed. Which was wrong of me, my name is Blaze Zhang and I deeply apologize. We have no method, nor intent, to resist you. And we will not attempt to do so. That said, I would emphasize that we don't really have any statues to destroy… We do? Of me? Why the fuck did we build one of those? We didn't build it?… Well why did we keep it?"

"Okay we've got a statue of me you can smash, though it's apparently tough as shit, but um, like most of the shit here is um, important for colonization, so please don't smash. And… wait, shit, if you are going to hang me, can I, like, get a last meal of enough alcohol to get myself super-drunk first?"

Cpt. Yamamoto : "We have no intention of unnecessary destruction. Nor do we wish for execution. For now, we will be securing the local orbitals. In addition, long term charter assets will be handed over to the people, however we wish to make that process as peaceful as possible."

Zhang*: "Look, fine whatever, but we start handing shit over 'to the people' and there is going to be violence, cause this colony isn't going to survive without it. And um, frankly some people are pissed already, nearly had a riot the last time that asshole Martin demanded more."

*In a voice that as Captain Yamamoto put it ''indicated perhaps he had taken it upon himself to have his requested last meal early"

Cpt. Yamamoto : "By the people, we mean the people of your colony. They will own the colony; they will control it's destiny. We are not here to seize anything from the colony. I am including a transcript of rights that follow the flag of ARC."

Zhang: "Wait… seriously?" At this point Captain Yamamoto hears what she describes as 'hysterical laughter'. "You hear that guys? It's your fucking problem now!"

At this point the transmission was cut off, only to be restored 15 minutes later, this time by 'Chief Engineer Scott Nakhjevani'. The desire to not fight was reaffirmed and accompanied by an official declaration of surrender." Due to the light-speed lag, little else has been discussed at this point.

Captain Papadopoulos of Revolutionary Grace received his first transmission from the Idyllia colonies approximately two days out. Transcript of communications as follows. "A rescue force! Thank God you're here! We urgently need help with major riot suppression operations. We're looking at a large number of major Contractor Sub-Population Displeasure Events, complete with mass looting and violence, across the planetary surface."

Captain Papadopoulos sent back the following. "Charter forces, this is Captain Papadopoulos of Revolutionary Grace, a vessel of the All-Radiant Congressional Navy. We are not here to rescue you. There will be no rescue coming. We demand that all Charter forces stand down immediately and hand control of the planet over to the local populace. If you do not surrender, we are prepared to use force."

As of now, there have been no other messages from the planet. Revolutionary Grace is making her way to the system with all speed, and is estimated to arrive in three days. For now, I have diverted the fleet from the Waystation gate to the Idyllia chain gate.

Report to General Congress- Osliam [2254/07/01]

Revolutionary Will and Revolutionary Grace have both now entered their respective inner systems.

Revolutionary Will has continued contact with the Waystation colony, having now been able to establish conversational speed communication. While the colony has had difficulty as a result of interrupted shipments, colony ships are equipped with all theoretically necessary materials, but certain specialized components are not easily replaceable due to size limitations making them unviable for standard fabbing equipment. As of yet, however, no life-threatening components have had any problems.

A larger problem for the colony has been 'requisitions' from Omoikane fleets. The plural there is intentional, as both claim to be operating on behalf of the legitimate Omoikane chain of command and insist the other has gone warlord. One fleet is commanded by "Provisional Regional Security Operations Chief Jeannette Matheson," and is operating on behalf of "Provisional Vice President for Frontier Operations Martin" and the other is under the command of a "Captain Ethan White" operating on behalf of "The Omoikane Corporate Board".

Captain Hanae has taken up a position around the Waystation colony in order to discourage any more requisitions, while the on-board archivist and diplomat Siera Ariti has engaged in lower-tension talks. However, a secondary problem was revealed. The colony, while not making any move against us, has indicated that we… are not well liked.

There seems to be an undercurrent 'you are the assholes who stopped shit getting through', which is the primary factor. Secondarily is that the colony is new, and the promises the Charter made before departing the First Colonies are still considered at least viable. The third, and perhaps oddest was the feeling we 'removed' VP Zhang who was well liked and hesitation about who the 'new boss' would be.

Our Archivist has pursued a round of questioning on what was found to inspire such feelings. A few selected comments, from different levels of staff aboard the ship as well as Mr. Zhang's response to them.

Chief Engineer Scott Nakhjevani: Mr. Zhang is one of the most thoughtful executives I have every worked for. When the disaster happened, rather than trying to stick to the pre-set schedule, Mr. Zhang told us that we would change it, and that it was foolish to try to stick to it in the new circumstances. His focus on doing it right, not fast, may honestly have saved the colony, as our parts breakdown due to accidents has been under the official estimates. Do you know how insane that is? I have never seen that before in any project I worked on.

Blaze Zhang: Oh and like people were panicking about not being on time, but I figured any delay would be blamed on you guys, and like, it's not like anyone is really going to care if it gets done super fast, so I told them to, like, take it easy cause people were bothering me all the time, so I told them to 'redevelop a more cautious schedule' and shit.

Forewoman Sarah Varadkar (electrical): Do you know how much he is willing to be radical? When we had to deal with the realities of the electrical system against the plan, we decided to submit a limited plan, but, like, he came back with 'do it how you think best'. We submitted the plans, and like, two days later after looking at them he approved them.

Blaze Zhang: I mostly just lazed around and shit while I let them figure out what to do right? I mean they are the experts we pay, why would I want to do more?

Construction Operator Catherine Machi: He's the best boss ever. Banned all non-continuous work past 6, said we couldn't be called in again until 8 no matter what.

Blaze Zhang: Oh and I banned non-essential work past like, 6 cause like I didn't want to be bothered. It was nice. At least until Omoikane started wanting to talk to the colony… I thought you guys didn't want to talk to me?"

(When asked by Ms. Ariti why he did not simply declare that he personally was not to be bothered at those hours.) Oh fuck, that would have been a much better idea. Well, guess that's why I'm out in the boonies.

That said, Ms. Ariti has emphasised that those on board are not hard-core charter loyalists. And were certainly far angrier at, say Omoikane than us and even have considerable resentment against the compact fleet nearby for not interfering in 'internal Charter labour disputes'. If anything, it seems the year alone has created a rapid sense of loyalty to the colony itself. A process which Ms. Ariti has described as 'fascinating' and worthy of study from an anthropological perspective. Even the positivity towards Mr. Zhang is largely his non-interference, which will continue. For now, a gentle touch with Waystation has been agreed upon by Delegate Hunter and myself. Especially in light of the news from Idyllia chain

While transitioning to the inner-system Captain Papadopoulos of Revolutionary Grace received a few scattered transmissions from the "Gentle Repose Growers Association". For those unfamiliar, the Growers Association was the certification authority under which most of the non-terrestrial original foodstuff that made up Gentle Reposes's exports was sold, though a number of sub-brands were underneath it. While at the time of last contact records indicate a Mr. Petrov was listed as the CEO, the leadership rotates among the 'major growers of Gentle Repose'.

The transmissions included the following.
-Threats that further intrusion into the system would invite retaliation by Charter forces
-Emphasis that, as a producer of truly alien grain, Gentle Repose was protected under the Compact anti-biocontainment protocols, and any violation of that would be responded to by 'the full military might of the Compact'
-Offers of various large sums of money/food-stuff/tech to go away
-insistence that the 'riots' were 'out of control' and 'murderous' and 'feral and could not be reasoned with.

These offers were met with a reaffirmation of the principles of the All-Radiant Congress previously stated and a demand for the dismantlement of the Charter systems.

High resolution-camera picked multiple instances of Ares "Riot suppression" drones, as well as uniformed men and armored riot vehicles. Two instances of drones firing upon fleeing people were also recorded.

As the ship transited further into the system secondary radio transmissions, created by far less sophisticated equipment, were picked up. These were from rebel forces primarily composed of augment populations. For organization's sake, I will include a brief overview of the situation from a military standpoint, and have attached a summary of the history compiled by Revolutionary Grace's attached archivist, Laura Herst, at the bottom.

In brief summary, the rebellion is widespread, but disorganized and materially deficient.

The agricultural nature of the system has left a limited metropolis complex on the planet, and what ones there have been fortified with newly raised 'life and property protection teams'. While a large rural population is often a boon for rebellions, and indeed still offers some advantages, the mono-celled native life means a lack of forest and other foliage cover anywhere on the planet. Allowing Charter forces to use both orbital satellites and drones swarms to devastating effectiveness. Cavern systems and mountains have proved the most effective solution, but those often are not located near where the crop strings of the mono-celular organisms grow well, leaving severe food problems.

While the majority of the fleet arrives. Revolutionary Grace has begun a multi-pronged response. Firstly, while en route she has been using her orbital position to transmit propaganda, telling the rebels that help is on it's way and not to lose hope, as well as attempting to organize them using it's unassailable radio position. Once within planetary firing ranges it began to clear Charter surveillance satellites and orbit artillery. According to the Captain "we took a full day to do this, while jumping in and blasting could have done it in a hour, we weren't sure if they had any surprises, as it was, there were a few MANPODS fired, which were probably made in the last two days, but nothing serious."

Since that point Revolutionary Grace has used her control of the orbitals to destroy any outriding patrols. For now, this has resulted in patrols ceasing to be deployed outside city limits, aside from occasional drone pushes, but even those are much less efficient satellite guidance. A few key large-scale fabbers have also been identified and destroyed. However, this has been the extent of what Grace can accomplish. Her space-to-ground munitions are not infinite, and while her crew can fab a functionally infinite supply of said munitions, they cannot do so at a rate quicker than the drones can be replaced by planetary fabbers. In addition, the occupational nature of the riot squads makes them largely interspersed with civilian infrastructure, and difficult to near-impossible for them to effectively target.

The last measure that Captain Papadopoulos is undertaking is using the on-board fabbers to make arms for the planet-side revolutionaries. In doing so, a minor problem has been revealed. The Oslium force was focused on orbital supremacy missions which leaves our craft under-equipped for planetary combat operations and support. For now, he has opted to print older, simpler equipment and focused on delivery by orbital drones and shuttles.

However, this problem is likely to persist as, even with the entirety of Osliam Force on station, our onboard Naval Infantry would be hard-pressed to take a single major metropolis, much less a planet. Thankfully Gentle Repose is not a major planet, and I believe that can be taken with a sufficiently well thought out approach.

Which, in turn, brings me to my last notification. I am aware of the General Congress's orders were to establish orbital and intra-system supremacy along the entire Osliam Chain before proceeding to planetary operations. I am also aware that as of now, only the Oslium and Idyllia systems can be said to be fully secured, and the Capitata, Raphanus and perhaps most importantly Ascension have not yet even been reconnoitered. However, given the orders that the Basic Living Guarantee follows the flag, and that "Living" is the central word in that, it is my belief as the military head of the Osliam Chain that the currently underway atrocities on Gentle Repose must be urgently dealt with, and have decided to reposition most of the fleet into Idyllia.

Delegate Hunter, in his capacity as the civilian head of mission has agreed with my assessment and requested that we again offer terms of surrender upon the bulk of Osliam Force arriving, which I will do.

Despite Delegate Hunter's agreement, I recognize that the primary decision here was my own, and, if the General Congress, Military Committee, or my own crews request it, I will resign without complaint.

(Due to lag delay and assembling Congress, the vote on whether to appoint a new Oslium chain head after the next post.)

Supplemental Document: Laura Herst's Report
First, a note: While we have established direct contact and communication with Rebel groups on Gentle Repose, we have not had any such dialogue with the charter loyalists. While I was chosen for the first contact with Gentle Repose due previous experience working at a Cernunnos subsidy, the insight as to their motivations is only my own speculation.

The Gentle Repose harvest system used as a 'sale aid' system for branding purposes. Marketing officially portrayed production as a co-op like 'sharing our bounty with the workers' environment, as part of a 'we are just farmers' marketing tactic with high-end customers. In effect what this worked out to is that when sales were good, workers saw wages that were, at best, okay, but when sales were bad, the reduced profit was passed on to the workers.

With the complete elimination of trade between the Osliam Chain and the rest of Compact space, all sales stopped. As such all wages also stopped, even as executives continued to reassure workers that 'the current market disruption would be rapidly resolved'. Due to the delicate biosphere, terrestrial food is grown in special 'greenhouses' and must be bought with Cernunnos company scrip. This greenhouse produce is the primary diet of workers and contractors. In addition, due to Cernunnos hiring practices and frontier colonization initiatives, many of the workers are genetic augments and require specialized dietary supplements.

At first loans from the corporately-backed "Growers Association'' filled the gaps. Though the loans were stiff and had a requirement that, if the workers stopped working on their assigned farm, they would instantly be required to pay the loan back. However, at some point workers began to reach their 'maximum credit limit' and lost easy access to food.

And here it must be noted that Augments employees and contractors were most likely to reach the credit limits early as especially post-2090 Genelines, often require specialised micronutrients not usually found in foods intended for baseline populations. Which is not to say that non-augment populations didn't reach their credit limits, just that, in the main, most hit that limit far later.

Desperate and starving, individual actors took whatever steps necessary to feed their families. While mass theft of foodstuffs enraged the local corporate board, the primary thing that set the local Cernunnos executives off was one of their worst fears: theft of viable indigenous seedstock.

Or in this case, mono-cell stock. While the organism is portrayed in marketing as an entirely edible foodstuff, in truth, only specific strains are. When discovering exobiology, Cernunnos will typically examine and patent any interesting DNA strains found, rendering them illegal to use without permission. Despite that, the need to be 'non genetically engineered' along with the mono-celular nature meant that the traditional 'seed kill' genes could not be introduced cheaply. As such, when workers began locating and harvesting indigenous plants, it was considered an offense against capital.

As the problem continued, and more and more people fell into-debt, the problems worsened, and two new initiatives were pushed. The first were the formation of 'Life and Property Protection Teams' a great expansion of the already brutal Cernunnos security force, a force which is notably non-augment dominated and controlled, even with the hurried implementation. The reports are that of a charter occupational force, with multiple horror stories and atrocities to their name, that said, the LPPT recruits were primarily recruited with promises of guaranteed food without the need for more loans, leaving a thorny problem for reconciliation programs.

The second initiative was the 'debt-forgiveness work program'. Those with high debt loads were tracked and, before their credit ran out, picked up by LPPT teams. The work programs are large-scale semi-terraforming projects to convert parts of the land in order to be more favorable for the edible foodstuffs. The conditions inside these programs are described by survivors as horrific. Constant surveillance by wardens, and food that is a 'Scientifically Calculated Survival Diet' that leaves internees constantly on the edge of starvation. And, for some augments with higher caloric or nutritional requirements, in actual starvation.

Neither of these initiatives has helped the situation for the Charters and they've continued to escalate to new heights of brutality. Random 'Genetic Copyright Infringement Inspections' now terrorize households, not the least because the mono-cellular, nature of the so called indigenous crops 'seeds' means that having some attached to one's clothing unknowingly is a common occurrence, leading to many false arrests and deaths according to those I've talked with. At the same time the threat of the 'debt-forgiveness program' leads many to flee before credit runs out, lest they risk being picked up and brought to the plantations. Leading to a lower credit ceiling before a visit, leading to others fleeing and so forth.

This has led to the current situation described in the report. However, one supplemental note, while it is being referred to as a "Contractor Sub-Population Displeasure Events", the actual rebel groups are heavily mixed, with significant non-augment fighters mixed into the resistance. Though until we have some idea of the percentage of augments among the general population we can't be sure of what the relative ratios are, though rebels have stated that the Charter focus, and therefore pushback, has been against augments.

AN: This is where your choices on priorities really started to come into play. On the positive side, archival is a goldmine for propaganda and is what gave you such a detailed look at what exactly was going on. Had you not chosen that you would have much less information in this update. On the other hand the lack of focus on transportation resulted in no boots on the ground and McLean needing the entire fleet to scrounge up any and the level 3 one logistics meant you had ammo and fabber resources…. But maybe not as much as you wanted.

Report to General Congress- Osliam Chain [2254/07/14]

I have personally led landings on Gentle Repose and have overseen the securing of the planet's primary administration center is under ARC control, with most holdouts expected to rapidly surrender.

While my force made its way to Gentle Repose, Revolutionary Grace focused on communication and coordination with the local population. Ironically, part of that coordination was requesting they hold back on a number of proposed attacks, as freeing the guarded camps was a dangerous proposition for a still very under-equipped rebel force. Captain Papadopoulos identified two camps with some degree of isolation, large rebel forces nearby, and separated guard posts that could have Orbital artillery dropped with no risk to civilian life.

Both camps were successfully liberated, though even with the element of surprise they did not occur without casualties. Though many Charter loyalists died in the fighting, several prisoners were taken, which I find a commendable defiance against the claims that they were feral and would carry out summary executions.

Upon the Osliam Force's arrival a multi-pronged effort was launched. First the 'little speaker' HI single-system override prototype was used to take control of the broadcasting arrays inside the system, and while full data on the test is still coming, I am pleased to report that it's effectiveness was widespread on the planet's surface. The broadcasts consisted of a prepared speech by Delegate Hunter, the text of which follows:

"Greetings, people of Gentle Repose. I am Delegate Alexander Hunter, speaking of behalf of the All-Radiant Congress. I extend my most sincere greetings to all people of Gentle Repose, both corporate and noncorporate, augment and non-augment alike. Our mission here is humanitarian, we only want peace and prosperity. Yours is a farming world, your hard labour produces all that food you need, even enough for a thriving export economy.

Unfortunately, those put in charge of you by distant masters have opted to close their granaries to you, the workers, leaving many to starve. Forcing you to make terrible moral compromises to survive. I cannot judge your choices as I have never faced starvation on Elysium.

But whatever was done, it is now in the past. It is time to move into a better future, together. We promise a guarantee of good treatment and food to all who lay down their arms and surrender. I know you don't want this, because it seems impossible to see a way out of a situation once it has become so dark. But I promise you, it isn't, there is always a way out.

To be clear, this offer, the offer I make, extends to everyone who has remained loyal to Cernunnos, even the executives. The All-Radiant does not execute prisoners. Surrender, and I promise anyone good treatment and promise they will be well fed.

Unfortunately however, I am only the civilian delegate on this mission, and while I can offer you generous terms of surrender, my military counterpart is unwilling to delay the liberation. Please, take our hand in peace and goodwill, I do not wish to see any more dead."

At this point I entered the broadcast, in full military dress with my helmet off and augment features clearly visible. Transcript of my own remarks to the people of Gentle Repose follow:

"I am Commodore Shayla McLean, and I have ultimate responsibility for all forces of the All-Radiant Congressional Navy within the Osliam Chain.

"I assure you, there is no hope of rescue by Charter forces. The relief force sent to the frontier by Hermes-Ishtar and Ares was destroyed or captured in battle."

At this, official recordings of the First and Second Battle of Gaid and the aftermath were broadcast, and I continued to speak:

"The combined might of two Charters could not break us, and I now stand on the deck of a Battlecruiser captured as a prize. I also have in hand, the text of an armistice that the All-Radiant Congress has signed with the Charters, and there are no provisions within it for preventing the liberation of systems spinward of Radiant. The Charters have abandoned you, there is no rescue coming.

"You face the full might of a free people, operating under the authority of a participatory and democratic republic. If you oppose us I will not hesitate to utterly destroy any who would resist liberation. You have twenty four hours to decide."

The twenty four hour ultimatum was given so as to encourage as many surrenders as possible.

After the ultimatum came and went, our first assault began. Due to limited troops, a few key targets were chosen: specifically the greenhouses that grow non-native food and key storehouses.

While the initial fighting was fierce, the forces in question were corporate guards, unprepared for serious resistance, much less trained Naval Infantry armed with military-grade gear and drone swarms.

With the greenhouses and storehouses under our control, another request for surrender was broadcast and the psychological shock resulted in a wave of surrenders. While we have largely opted for a policy of 'waiting out' the remaining loyalist hold-outs (and encouraging local forces to do the same). The one exception was the liberation of the work-camps, as it was felt that the risk of starvation deaths within these facilities while waiting for surrender was too high. In this operation Local forces, supplemented by a handful of our own people, led the liberations.

As a post-battle note, had this crisis happened in a major world, rather than one with .1% of ARC's population, our on-the-ground forces would not have been sufficient for even the small focused assault. In that scenario we would be forced to accept an ongoing atrocity or use of orbital munitions in urban areas.

Despite this victory, the problems are far from over. Even the simplest problem, distribution, has proven more awkward than one would think, as much of the transportation infrastructure was destroyed in the previous months of fighting. This led to instances of near-starving workers carrying large amounts of food by hand back to those who could not make the trip on their own.

I have put an all-fabber priority on identifying supplements needed by the augment population and distributing (Thankfully most augments know what supplements our geneline needs, despite what many seem to think about our intellectual capacity). In addition, there are significant concerns about long-term retaliation against Loyalists, not only from the augment population, but from the human one.

For now, we have focused efforts on stopping further violence, and Delegate Hunter is leading the archivalist observers and his own diplomatic team to try to calm tensions with words, rather than direct military force. Though, in all honesty, this policy is a result of lack of available resources as much as any principles.

I would make a request to Congress. At minimum nurses and other medical experts are urgently needed, as the damage of the crisis here will result in long-term medical complications. I would, however, request a much more complete effort, as my forces are not optimized for this.

In addition, Revolutionary Will has requested certain key large-grade colony components be shipped to Waystation, as a sign of good faith.

Supplemental Document: Laura Herst's Report

WIth the capture of personal and servers, a clearer picture of how this atrocity unfolded from the Charter side has emerged.

During the initial lack of sales, there was concern about workers being unable to purchase things. As such, the Growers Association decided to extend loans. Several emails at the time congratulated them on the "Angel Investments" in response to the crisis.

The large-scale issues started when those with loans began hitting an automated 'max credit' limit that was part of the base Cernunnos script protocols. Once that happened the automated individual loans began being denied, and the automated corporate processes made it difficult for changes and complaints to work their way up the ladder even in a colony as small as Gentle Repose.

Or, at least, slower than the other issue, which was the use of patented pseudo-grain. According to records the Cernunnos colony subsidy here derives 90% of it's value on the stock-market simply by virtue of holding the patent for Humanly edible exospecies which are considered an 'investment item' As such the loss of the patent was an "unthinkable disaster" and "their greed would doom the colony (sic)". The greed, in this case being those who did unauthorized planting and harvesting, thus began the crackdowns and initial harsh response.

At some point the cause of the mass starvation was found out, and discussed. The meeting concluded that something must be done. These meetings chose work-programs, founding both the 'debt-forgiveness work program' and the LPPT teams, though the latter was implemented much faster. The emails and records show that it was seen as generosity on the part of the growers, 'ensuring that our people don't starve'. It was, however, decided that it must have the 'minimum necessary luxuries', lest people seek entry into the program when they don't actually need it. Forgiveness for those who had already violated was discussed, but dismissed, as they had to show a 'firm stance in defence of our critical patents'.

What is perhaps most disturbing about the records is how much those in charge were convinced, or convinced themselves, that they were the heroes of this, working to save the colony by making the tough choices. They believed that their actions were tough but fair, even a little generous. In the emails, the increasingly violent response to their crimes was met with shock and offense. Allegations of ARC agent provocateurs inciting rebellion were advocated by some, while many of the emails began acquiring (or more accurately increasing) anti-augment language. WIth the rebels being characterized as 'feral', 'unreasonable', or 'mad'.

The last emails are the panicked emails as Revolutionary Grace arrives, a mix of blame, anger and despair as it becomes more clear that there is no way out and no way to pass the buck. Wild, desperate escape plans and other things are discussed, before ending as the satellites in orbit above are taken out.

Report to General Congress- Osliam Chain [2254/08/21]

I am pleased to announce that ARC fleet is en route to the Waystation system, and from there onward to the remaining half of the chain.

Over the past month the Waystation colony has been relatively quiet. The arrival of parts, as well as a month going without everything breaking, as at least somewhat softened feelings. The system is less so. After securing Gentle Repose I ordered Revolutionary Grace, and Egalite to reinforce the system, though all possible ground troops were kept on Gentle Repose. Doing so has handily kept any attempts on Waystation from being attempted. A handful of smaller ships (none larger than a corvette) were detected making their way to the gate, but stopped and turned around partway into the journey when Revolutionary Grace and Egalite exited the gate.

We have identified their base, an extremely small station in the outer part of the system. Based on current analysis, the ships in-system should be able to crush it. That said, with the main fleet two systems away, no knowledge of future systems, and the inherent risk of any space battle. I see little reason to risk a direct confrontation, and have instead had the frigates poking near the station to keep their ships boxed in while broadcasting propaganda at it.

With Delegate Hunter on Gentle Repose to avoid communications delay, negotiations on Osliam have slowed, though some have come around. Others hesitate, though a few are asking for a 'deal' that would have us extradite them to Charter Space in exchange for access to their bombs. I, personally, am loath to accept such a thing, but Delegate Hunter feels it could expedite the negotiations. Either way, extraditing those across ARC space is beyond the negotiation powers we feel the original Osliam authorization gave us, as such it is Congress's choice if this type of offer may be taken up. If it is not taken up, Delegate Hunter intends to have negotiators 'present it to our congress' with the implications that it is still in deliberation. Of course, as we cannot extract them until after all bombs are disabled, we could make a deal and renege on it later.

Gentle Repose has been our biggest concern, and I am extremely grateful for the support that ARC has provided. Both at a congressional level, and at individual initiatives. While I cannot in any honestly say that things are 'okay', they are, at least, in a state where I feel that I can leave in good conscience given the support that has arrived in-system.

The biggest and obvious problem upon Gentle Repose is the famine, or rather the after-effects of the famine. The famine itself quickly ended once food was no longer held in warehouses, though, perhaps, not as quickly as I would have liked. In response to 'market forces' some of the greenhouses had been shut down, leaving the terrestrial plants that were grown for nutrients limited. While we had brought extensive feedstock, we had not brought remotely enough for an entire planet. As such a brute force solution was employed of finding the base minerals en-masse on asteroids and using what mining droids we could before breaking them down into feedstock.

With this we created mass Cernunnos 'nutrient bars' as well as specialized augment supplements. They were not particularly tasty, and, unfortunately, had been one of the 'foods of choice' for the camps. But did function as a stopgate that was extremely nutritionally complete, quickly fabbable, easily transportable, and unspoilable. This let us supplement our manpower with drone deliveries from commandeered fabbers while we worked on our improved solutions.

While the physical food deprivation has been dealt with (at least on a basic raw nutrient level), the long-term effects of deprivation are extensive. I expect some Radiant nurses will need to be stationed here long term. Had this not been a planet of 700K inhabitants (or less now), and instead one the size of, say, Five Lions, managing the long-term effects would likely have taken major SocCom resources for years.

Besides the direct famine costs, injuries from fighting and the camps will need to be treated. If you have never seen someone who has survived a drone strike with their limbs lost and eyes burned… I envy you. Our expedition's nurses were already stretched far beyond their capacity identifying the nutrient variants for those augments with uncertain knowledge (often, grimly, younger augments with parents who had died). Though I loath to say it was required, at times. As proud as I am of MilComm's efforts here, we were not, and still are not, prepared for large-scale humanitarian disasters. I am eternally grateful for the strong and quick nurse response, and especially the contributions from Sheol's Soldiers' Councils (SSC). The 10 days closer that their aid was saved lives, as did their grim experience of how to treat war injuries.

In terms of wider 'post-liberation' culture, little can be said right now aside from the widespread societal trauma. The 'government' such as it existed has been utterly (and justly) destroyed. One minor concern I have is that, as we were the only group with the ability to communicate with all rebel groups, we became the coordination center for everything. This has continued during the initial stages of the post-liberation crisis response, with an expansion of coordination with the SSC rather than local decisions. However, it has only been a month, and I am sure Gentle Repose's people will begin to take local initiative.

Finally, there is the matter of the Cernunnos loyalists. They can roughly be divided into four categories.

The first are the Cernnunos executives and direct cronies, who number less than a hundred people. These are those most directly responsible for the horrors, though they rarely got their own hands dirty. As of now they are all in protective custody. While some did surrender, and therefore are explicitly entitled to long-term protection, others did not, and Delegate Hunter has recommended that we hand them off to Gentle Repose's Judiciary system, once one has been established. While some may dislike this action, as it means we cannot guarantee a lack of executions, none of us went through what the people of Gentle Repose went through.

The second, slightly larger group, are the 'office workers'. This group is the group that kept records, data, and the other things any regime needs to survive. Though they did not set the policies, they were the ones who implemented them. The ones who kept the records of who was near the debt limits to hand to the LPPT. A handful quit, but many did not. Those who stayed have offered three defences: First, that they had little power to set the policies, and second that they would have simply been replaced otherwise (Though given the limited number of trained workers, I must offer my own skepticism here). Third, that their pay, while for a much less demanding work, was only a little better than the wages given to the workers in the fields, and quitting would have put them and their families at risk of starvation (records from our own archivists do, at least, collaborate this for many).

These workers have almost universally surrendered without any resistance, and many have offered aid in accessing records and done whatever they can to ingratiate themselves with our force, including handing over executive bank account passwords and fabber lock keys.

The third group were those directly part of the Life and Property Protection Teams. These numbered around 12,000 individuals. While that might seem low, it was around 2,000 police per 100K population. For context, between the Persephone Police Department and the other smaller planetary departments, Elysium boasted around four hundred and twenty cops per one hundred thousand people. This group was the group most involved in enforcement of starvation orders and direct killings. Their crimes were direct, numerous, and well documented by the second group.

In this I have attached sections for the compiled reports (Laura Herst, as the one who had begun the documentation, has acted as the compiler, but emphasizes that this is by no means her work alone, a full list of names is attached with the full report).

The LPPT is a messy and unpleasant business. With an interaction between the brutal atrocities, the mitigating factors of genuine need, and the very real anti-augment sentiment which formed the ideological basis of the largely baseline human membership of the LPPT brigades.

As an example of LPPT privileges, it was a common practice of the Gentle Repose administration to inform the members of the LPPT brigades who they would be taking in for "debt forgiveness" the day before the operation. As such, if a scheduled name was someone one of the LPPT members personally wished not to be taken in, they would come to them that night often with a job offer, as employment in the LPPT was valid work.

In one sense, this meant that such 'Scheduled' individuals were faced with a horrifying choice: Join the LPPT, or run that very night with the clothes on your back with the knowledge you were already being watched. Predictably, a large part of the LPPT was formed of these 'Midnight Contractors'. At the same time, those Scheduled who were not in favor, such as augments, were simply taken. Thanks to record destruction and contradictory testimony it is hard to determine the total ratio of genuine LPPT volunteers to Midnight Contractors.

The personnel contributed by the Sheol Soldiers' Councils are not helping matters. While they have accepted that McLean is the supreme commander of the mission, and agree to follow the injunction against killing or injuring former LPPT members brought into custody, they are often seen to be conducting a campaign of malicious compliance.

Several incidents have made it clear that the Sheolites cannot be trusted to guard the prisoners against civilian retaliation, though they are more than happy to step in should their prisoners ever gain the upper hand. When Sheolite guards have been interviewed they have professed a view best characterized by an attitude of "It is a shame this was an Elysian led mission, as quick and clean executions would be much more merciful. And we Sheolites are a very merciful people."

While we have quickly moved to all-Elysian guards, the Sheolites will still happily discuss their views on mercy with the inhabitants of Gentle Repose. Often to grim approval. Interactions that I find extremely worrying.

Though approval of retaliatory violence appears frighteningly accepted by a third of our people on the ground and the entire local population, only a minority of violence taking place after Commodore McLean forced a surrender has been revenge violence perpetrated by former victims. The majority of violence has been die hard members of the LPPT brigades who decided to, in the words of one prisoner, "take a feral with me".

The fourth and final group are those who participated in the "Protection Incentives Program" (PIP). This program provided a small stipend of Cernunnos cryptocurrency, with large bonuses to any who reported suspicious behavior to the LPPT brigades, thereby turning large swathes of the population into informants. Estimates are that as much as 10% of the population participated in the PIP program in some capacity.

While this group was not directly complicit in violence, and membership was often to fend off the threat of starvation, it still aided in the atrocities committed here. In addition a few have confessed that the reporting was rarely done based on actual behavior, only who they thought was most likely to be arrested, and therefore give the larger bonus. While I am not advocating for any punishment, this group has none-the-less presented a problem.

We have captured several servers with records of these payments, and several civilian organizations, including those who are forming the new local governments, have asked for the information. Delegate Hunter has requested that the information not be released right now, for fear of inciting additional retaliatory attacks. While I have obeyed civilian oversight, I must strenuously object to this secrecy.

This is no military secret. Nor a private affair of private persons. This is public information with regards to an atrocity. We have faced and examined the crimes of those on Elysium, and Gentle Repose should have the same opportunity. I do not believe we should be attempting to condescend to them like this. I urge the Congress to order a release of these and all other records.

[Additional note by Delegate Hunter: While I also believe in the ideal of a completely open society, sometimes these things must be weighed against risk to innocent life. I believe that it is in everyone's best interests to keep this information restricted for the immediate future. Commodore McLean has understated the risk of retaliation against persons that collaborated with the Cernunnos administration.

We have already had cases of retaliatory violence, and even collective punishment, of anyone that seemed still well fed as of the Liberation.

I do stress that while taken holistically violence is weighted on the loss prevention teams, and most of the time violence is perpetrated by LPPT brigade members on civilians, it is not so for informers. 'Informos" and 'Collabs' are often subject to violent cruelties by their neighbours with complete breakdowns in order prevented only by Congressional boots on the ground.

Keeping secrets is a heavy burden, but one we must shoulder for a small time longer, until cooler heads have had a chance to prevail.]

VOTE TO FOLLOW

Industrial Committee Reports

-

Integrate Five Lions into ARC Economic, Planning, and Logistical Systems

I am extremely pleased to report that we have successfully fully integrated Five Lions into the All-Radiant Congress's Economics, Planning, and Logistics systems. Admittedly we did cheat a little to start, using the fact that we have huge stockpiles of resources to just have the resources easily directed to the stockpiles areas and then out from there. Which does feel a little corporate 'hub and spoke' but no one is hurting for resources.

Otherwise the process was less painful than we'd assumed it would be, as many of the already existing tracking and planning systems used by Rhodes had already been appropriated by our own people for the Congress' use.

With this and the automated systems under our control, our current resources are 'yes'. Though we should be careful, the ceasefire agreement didn't cover Rhodes and, um, they might mind the amount of resources they lost here.

Project Completion: 22/20

Projects Results: Add +5 to Five Lions integration, speed up timetable for Five Lions resourcing

-

Build Orbital Cruiser-sized spacedock in Shei

Progress on the next orbital cruiser dock in Shei is going slower than we'd like, even dragging behind initial expectations.

The two big things, I hesitate to call them problems, that are causing our timetables to lag are the following:

One, the Sheol soldier's councils are moving heaven and earth to support the Osliam chain offensive, and are working overtime to provide relief to Gentle Repose as we know better than most in human space the all consuming hollowness that is starvation.

Two, the Governors' committees have demanded that instead of moving the work crews from the previous docks over to the new project as a single group, that instead the majority of personnel are new volunteers. While this does cause delays, the Governors are hoping that we can train up a large body of indigenous workers instead of relying on Elysian and Chinook advisors and a mere handful of home-grown experts on orbital construction.

-Barry Runner
Foreman, Sheol Orbital Works Commission

Project Progress: 13/50

Project Results: Produce a dock capable of creating frigate, cruiser, light tender and light carrier class ships. As well as large-size civilian ships. Permanent +3E upkeep.

-

Convert RFS Chinook to a space station

The enthusiasm with which the Chinookians (Chinookese? Chinookia?) have taken to the station is, like everything else they've done, almost scary. I'd say I'd worry about overwork, but it's not even that. They aren't overworking themselves, just… all working to the same goal. It's strange, and honestly I'm a little envious of how much community they have.

The Charters talk about 'survival of the strongest' but when they had to survive, they pulled together, not fought for dominance, and now… now they just all are working as one on making their once-home into a forever home. And for the first time they're working with more than the resources they can scrape together and stolen scraps. The enthusiasm is infectious, they are talking plans for vast food forests, permanent ship-yards, interstellar shipping docks, entertainment promenades, even a full pilot academy.

It's... humbling. For all that we Elysians have come so far in deprogramming ourselves from the Charter mindset and building up new communities, we still live under the long shadow of brand religion and corporate hyperconsumerist and all totalising individualism. Chinook shows what our culture might become, might… achieve, even, given time and freedom.

Project Progress: 26/45 (Nat 20, will finish next turn without a roll)

Project Results: Gain a space station in Gaid which provides a number of bonuses to projects and events in that system. Permanent +3E upkeep.

-

Military Committee Reports

-

Integrate Revolutionary Five Lions militias into MilComm

Military matters is one place where Lions seem to have their own ideas on how they want to proceed. Instead of the Elysium practice of professional military units answering to a uniform chain of command, or the Sheolite Soldier's Councils, the Lions appear to have settled on having militias as arms of existing political organizations.

The most common example of this is the Union Militia, in which most Union members pledge to either serve in, or volunteer time towards supporting.

The Five Lions System Permanent Defence Commission has established standards that each militia has to meet in the way of drill and training time requirements, as well as equipment and deportment standards that must be upheld.

Each organization that has pledged to maintain a militia is then responsible for maintaining the standards of the FLSPDC.

While this suffices for local defence on the ground and with a slowly growing inventory of strikecraft squadrons, they've decided to leave interstellar operations as the mandate of the Congressional Navy and have allowed the Military Committee to establish Naval facilities across the Five Lions system.

Otherwise the local militias are now federating themselves into a System Defence Army that is an equal partner in the Military Committee and is creating feelers to the Gaid and Radiant System Defence Armies.

Whether or not this turns into a "militia in name" permanent military force or something like a reserve corps remains to be seen.

Project Progress: Automatic

Project Results: Add +5 to Integration project, add MilComm Five Lions system bonus.

-

Formalize guidelines for MilComm pre-authorization

The General Session of the All-Radiant Congress has taken up the issue of formalised guidelines for MilComm pre-authorization and has committed to seeing through the matter before the end of the month.

Project Progress: N/A

Project Results: Unlock a special session of the General Congress for issuing guidelines to the new commission. Possible mechanical unlocks include: using a single dice to activate craft builds at multiple spacedocks, using a single die to begin construction of more than one gate defence project, permanent formalization of some VEMP Measures.

-

Permanent Special Forces Training Division

Commodore McLean is going to be a verrrrry happy Commodore slash ex-Commando. Not only will we have a properly trained special forces division, but after the news from the Osliam chain came in, we made sure that mandatory certification for orbital drops and bomb technicians were added to the curriculum. I am extremely pleased with the first class of the Congressional Liberation Army Special Operations Corps Troopers (We're still working on a forever name).

-Alonzo Shelly
Senior Training Agent, Special Permanent Operations Training School

This is not the end, nor even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning. Roosevelt said that.

With the graduation of our first group of journeymen commandos I find myself… contemplative. I am extremely proud of the success I have had as Defence Coordinator for the All-Radiant Congresses military during such a dark hour.

However, this project has taken almost all my focus, as we have only a handful of trustworthy instructors willing to participate. Even so, MilComm was able to function without me, thanks to a number of very talented young people rising to the occasion.

I was trained to do dark deeds in dark places for dark people.

I brought that expertise to this project and that concerns me. I know how bad secretive groups can become once they consider themselves elite and are hidden from the general view.

To that end I believe that special operations training should be opened up in the short term as a general certification requirement for the entire Congressional Liberation Army Corps, and in the medium term as available certification for the Congress' local System Defence forces.

In the long term we should rotate out commandos in the special operations detachment through the Congressional Liberation Army Corp and the various System Defence Armies, and rotate CLAC and SDA personnel in. Not just to spread out the training, but to prevent the commando groups from becoming brutal tumours on our military culture.

On that note:
I have spent the last few years trying to make up for my crimes and finding that I am reaching the limits of my capabilities as the leader of a rapidly expanding interstellar starfleet and army. As such I am giving serious consideration to resigning my post as Defence Coordinator in order to maintain a watch over the program and offer my direct expertise in preventing it from becoming an isolated elite brotherhood of cold blooded sociopathic murderers.

-Maria Awhine
All Radiant Congress, Defence Coordinator

Project Progress: 45/30

Project Results: Makes Awhine's personal bonus permanent and gains +1, permanent +1E cost

A Vote for a name and focus will be included with the Milcom Pre-Authorization Vote.

[Added to GOC-Revolutionary instructions]

Proposed By: Delegate @Gladsome praetorian on Discord

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Science Committee Reports

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Crack Five Lions Automated Systems

You know what the funniest thing about cracking the system is? The reaction of Lioners. Like they, understand, theoretically that anything can be cracked. But in actual practice, they took as gospel that you need the proper certification to run equipment. It was a matter of near religious faith that only certain people can use certain tools.

Which um, actually might remain an ongoing problem. Now all people can all use all the tools, but a lot of them won't. It is an issue of almost superstition that it isn't safe to use any tool without a certification no matter how much we explain that most Rhodes certifications were complete bullshit. You don't need a bit of code telling you that you can use each of a thousand different hammers. But...

I wish I could solve that, but we can't hack people… or at least I can't, the MedComm guys scare me sometimes. They're talking about just making up certificates to hand to people after desultory training in the short-term. Like, "take a five-minute video course" desultory. But what happens for the trainings that we really do need-- how do we separate the safety wheat from the red-tape chaff?

Project Progress: Automatic

Project Results: Allow workers to control their means of production. Add +5 to Five Lions Integration

-

Bypass Charter Fabricator Rights Management for Omoikane

We've got the good shit now.

I'm talking a whole lotta assistant VIs and entry level VI design suites.

And also robopets, including basically all two hundred years of iterations on the Nyandroids brand.

Buncha 'minor' neural augmentations too (mostly the kind loaded down with advertisements that Omoikane is confused over not being able to sell), along with 'productivity-enhancing cybernetics.' You know, the war crime shit they put in your body so that warehouse workers have reinforced skeletons and musculature, or the 'cognitive accelerators' that cook your brain to make spreadsheets faster. I doubt these will be of any interest except as a baseline to roll our own augs off of.

We've also unlocked a lot of nanomedical robots as well, like respirocytes, medichines, clottocytes, and vasculoids.

It will take a lot of time to disseminate this to the public, but I can see this being a huge help to the Werewolf & Grinder sets.

Callista Moreno
Professional Union of Laboratory Technicians and Coders Spokeswoman

Project Progress: 21/20

Project Results: Unlock Omoikane consumer grade 'prints
Added "VI Analysis - +1 to FRM research for every two unlocked FRMs"
Compress FRM data completion increased by 10 points
[All Unlocks added to GOC-FRM Warez]

-

Social Committee Reports

-

Create All-Five Lions Commission to Combat Laning

We started by simply unpacking how false the entire structure was.

We showed the financial incentives, we published internal Rhodes memos, we promised health care no matter the reason and we showed how it works on other planets, we showed examples of how things work for the Elysians, Chinook, and Sheolites.

We talked about taking the initiative, about talking with other professions, about everything we've learned over the last couple years.

But just talking about alternatives is just going to be the start, we need to start finding ways to break down caste barriers and let the Lions see them being broken down.

While the existing revolution in culture is helping with enthusiasm, there is still a level of baked-in superstitious trauma that we need to help the Lions process and come to terms with.

Project Progress: 25/30

Project Results: Add 10 progress to Five Lions integration. Expand BLG, Paths of Enlightenment, and other social programs to Five Lions

-

Immortality Guarantee

It really is shocking how fucking cheap the material components for immortality treatments actually are, compared to the fact that it's already saving thousands of lives. The real bottleneck is mass fabbing and distribution, which we've tried to alleviate by a staged age-based roll out based on pandemic vaccination plans.

After all, what is old age but Humanity's oldest disease?

Though we're using older formulations of longevity treatments, they have been tried and tested by centuries of use and we're already seeing centenarians and near bicentenarians returning to the bodies they had in their mid thirties and forties. In the future we'll have access to the medichines and healing vats to return them to their early twenties, but we still don't have full access to those technologies as of yet.

At the moment, we'll need repeated fabrications of medicines in the future, but some of the Advanced Cernunnos biotech has gene therapies that automatically distribute longevity treatments as a matter of course.

As of this report, over half the Elysian population, two thirds of the Chinook, a third of the Sheolite population, and a fifth of Lions have received longevity treatments, and we're on course to complete the project within the year if resources continue to be granted.

Sora Navarre
MedComm Representative to the Elysian Immortality Commission

Program Progress: 25/50

Project Results: When Project is Completed, have a permanent upkeep cost of 5BR, 5SR, and 5E per 50 million citizens, a permanent propaganda dice bonus, raise the trust floor by +10, and get one free die.
[Added to GOC-Showcase us]

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Media Committee Reports

-

Counter Propaganda

Annnd done. Mostly it's what we had already planned. Show ourselves off, make sure that our society is understood and that things like that cheap breadline trick look like the lie that it is, all in a gentle format that won't get people to immediately shut it out as 'anarchist propaganda' upon seeing it. There was one major component that we didn't have planned however...

Look, what happened on Gentle Repose was monstrous, and let me be clear, if I could make a wish to prevent it, I would. But… It's very useful for us.

Ugh, I hate saying that, I used to work for a news network, and the suit would look upon every tragedy with this 'oh it's terrible but it sure is good for us!'. So even discussing it feels icky. But… the Osliam chain was a golden opportunity for Charter propaganda, painting us as warmongering extremists.

With Gentle Repose documented, we can now play into their own common 'humanitarian mission' spiel. Which also feels icky, but sometimes propaganda is a dirty business.

Project Progress: 22/20

Projected Results: Reduce effects of Charter propaganda actions.
More effective if Hack is distributed before Charters begin their propaganda campaign
[Added to GOC-Showcase us]

-

Broadcasting Network Focus

[To be Completed in News and Rumours...]

Project Progress: Automatic

Project Results: Make sure the shows on the broadcasting network are our A-game. Give us a good name with many Charter planets.

Players will get to suggest show ideas
[Added to GOC-Showcase us]

Remaining Omake Bonuses:
IndComm:
N/A
MilComm:
N/A
SciComm:
N/A
SocComm:
N/A
MedComm:
Senior_Sarcasm's Streaming Sh*t Service

-

Vote:

Your shiny new Special Operations Detachments need a name and it's up to the General Congress to find one, please write in a name (Subject to QM veto obviously, though we've come to trust you peeps, so this is basically a boilerplate disclaimer:

[ ] [Name] Write in

-

Thanks to the Permanent Special Ops Project being completed in such style, smoothly and with time to spare, Awhina has presented several options to the General Congress for types of operations that our new groups should be specialised in. (You will gain an additional bonus in the winning area)

[ ] [Focus] Infiltration

DF Awhina has spoken at length about how much of her service as a commando was as much about slipping unnoticed into target populations and operating below the radar.

Choosing this focus will make it harder for opposition groups to detect our people when they're operating in secret behind enemy lines.

[ ] [Focus] Kidnapping

Apparently, your well trained commandos don't always have to kill. FD Awhina believes she can institute a training focus that will result in a heavier reliance on less-lethal weapons and techniques, and also on operations that seek to take targets alive.

Choosing this focus will make your special operators less lethal and more adept at taking prisoners alive. Or even on extraction operations that don't result in the VIP dying.

[ ] [Focus] Sabotage

Sometimes, you don't want to kill people, but entire industries. Sometimes it's a simple matter of putting some sand in the gears, sometimes it's putting a bracket in the wrong place. On rare occasions it can just be a massive bomb.

Choosing this focus will make your commando units better at sabotaging material processes and throwing friction into logistical chains.

[ ] [Focus] Assasination

Murder. Simple Murder. Awhina spoke frankly on this point. She doesn't like it, but there are ways to see even the most well defended person dead if you have luck on your side. And you need only a little luck if you don't expect to return from a mission.

Choosing this focus will make your special units more adept at assassination missions.

[ ] [Focus] Training

Another focus that Defence Coordinator Awhina brought forward is expanding on our current training doctrine to include the possibility of training our people to train other groups in the field. Sometimes the most important thing is enabling other people to fight by giving them the intellectual tools and experience they need.

Choosing this focus will make your special operations troops adept at training other groups in revolutionary warfare.

-

We are in talks with various Charter Loyalists in Osliam for a deal to extract them to Compact space in exchange for access to their bombs. If extraction is not allowed, negotiators will indicate that a 'decision is still being made' in order to allow for a change in position later.

Vote:
[ ] [Osliam] Do not allow extraction
[ ] [Osliam] Allow extraction
-[ ] [Osliam] And Renege

We have captured records of those who received payments in exchange for working with the Life and Property Protection Teams. Those on Gentle Repose have demanded the information be handed over. Commodore Mclean supports this release, however Delegate Alexander Hunter wished for the records to remain confidential in the near term in order to prevent vigilante violence.

[ ] [IDYLIA] Order release of Records
[ ] [IDYLIA] Deny authorization
[ ] [IDYLIA] Write in (due to communications lag, your orders will be interpreted by Mclean and Hunter as best they are able)

Thalton · Jun 23, 2021

[X] [Name] C.R.O.W (Covert Revolutionary Operations Wing)

[X] [Focus] Infiltration

[X] [Osliam] Allow extraction
-[X] [Osliam] And Renege

[X] [IDYLIA] Order release of Records

Fuck them, rule 1 of hostage negotiation, do or say whatever you need to keep the hostages safe.

Rule 2 is don't let the hostage takers escape.

It will only encourage others to do the same.

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

Been Better

Humblest in the World

Dumb is a state of existence

Theoretical Lover of Girls

Dumb is a state of existence

Theoretical Lover of Girls

"Well, I've got nothing."

THE LEGEND

Aspiring Gynoid

I have ideas. Sometimes they're even good.

Been Better