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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LucidProp · Jul 10, 2021

[X] Plan Budget Limits (Fixed Version)
[X] Plan Budget Limits

TheArcanist · Jul 10, 2021

clockworkchaos said:
[ ] [Authorization] Implement Security Measures

The treaty between the ARC and the Charters allows for third party observers and journalists to enter. They will almost certainly use this for spying. We need to increase security measures by implementing passcards and other checks in vital military installations. This process would be implemented by a joint MilComm and SocComm oversight commission to provide base level security training and white hat testing at key facilities.

Add a penalty to any Charter spying attempt.

...we didn't already have passcards at secure facilities?

Like, normally I'm really wary of security apparatus bullshit, but this is really simple stuff. We should really be putting locks on our doors, especially doors that are marked 'super top secret DO NOT ENTER FOR REALS'.

So long as the language for implementing this is very narrow and specific to securing well-defined facilities(and possibly secrets, to be reviewed by a committee from within the ARC to prevent internal state shenanigans), I actually think this is okay. Since a lot of our upcoming anti-Charter strategies rely on the element of surprise, it's in our best interest to not make it easy for them to steal our secrets.

[X] Plan: Securing the public safety

Solarstream · Jul 10, 2021

[X] Plan Defence and Aid

ThatGazzer · Jul 10, 2021

[X] Plan Budget Limits

clockworkchaos · Jul 10, 2021

TheArcanist said:
...we didn't already have passcards at secure facilities?

Like, normally I'm really wary of security apparatus bullshit, but this is really simple stuff. We should really be putting locks on our doors, especially doors that are marked 'super top secret DO NOT ENTER FOR REALS'.

So long as the language for implementing this is very narrow and specific to securing well-defined facilities(and possibly secrets, to be reviewed by a committee from within the ARC to prevent internal state shenanigans), I actually think this is okay. Since a lot of our upcoming anti-Charter strategies rely on the element of surprise, it's in our best interest to not make it easy for them to steal our secrets.

[X] Plan: Securing the public safety

Quick note on me asking if you didn't have those already to @AKuz

Akuz said:
no we do, these are just universal standards
instead of it being up to the recognisance of local facilities
we implement a minimum

notbirdofprey · Jul 10, 2021

So would there be a classification system as part of those standards?

Constal · Jul 11, 2021

[X] Plan Budget Limits (Fixed Version)

Aerrow Shadow · Jul 11, 2021

[X] Plan Budget Limits (Fixed Version)
[X] Plan Budget Limits

The Laurent · Jul 11, 2021

[X] Plan Budget Limits (Fixed Version)

Joppe · Jul 11, 2021

[X] Plan: Securing the public safety

Mellowfellow · Jul 11, 2021

[X] Plan: Securing the public safety

Graf Tzarogy · Jul 11, 2021

[X] Plan Budget Limits (Fixed Version)

Elero · Jul 11, 2021

I heard we're still looking for content for the RBC?

The Ninti Initiative is a rather quirky game published via the Radiant Broadcasting Channel that's gained some popularity through its highly unusual premise and complete lack of combat (at least accessible to the player).

Story
In the game's main story mode, players take the role of a young officer initially commissioned in the Compact navy that is charged with rendering emergency humanitarian aid to an impoverished frontier sector plagued by a mix of natural disasters and piracy. On arrival, the players find the situation far worse than they expected, as the local colonial governors downplayed their problems in their reports home.

Faced with far more severe problems than expected, the player character still rises to the occasion and saves countless lives. The first chapter of the game ends when the comically incompetent and corrupt sector CEO, who generally makes missions harder for the players with his unreasonable demands, gets arrested while a relief fleet arrives with additional supplies.

Between missions, players get to watch a report by journalist and reporter Jane Mattocks, who was attached to the player's flagship in the tutorial as a PR gig by the Compact navy. Her on the ground reports of human suffering and the relief the people feel when aid arrives help connect the player to what's actually going on planetside and reward the player for especially good mission successes, since they change depending on how well the player did.

What's more, apparently her reports are very popular back in the core worlds. Several politicians, in an effort to ride this popular sentiment to reelection, quickly announce the creation of the so-called Ninti Initiative, named after an ancient Goddess of healing. The player character, who expressed his eagerness to command a battlefleet, gets instead promoted to head this humanitarian initiative, tasked with rendering aid to any other sector should such a thing become necessary.

This is where the game opens up considerably and players can invest goodwill, earned from doing well on missions, into purchasing new ships, infrastructure and upgrades which they then take on various missions or mission-chains in the frontier. In the lategame, players can even design and build entirely new shipclasses suited to their needs, rather than purchasing military surplus or civilian freighters. For those less skilled in using the built-in ship designer, designs can be shared and downloaded from others.

As the story unfolds, players get drawn into what's increasingly obvious as a proxy war between several Charters in the guise of piracy that leaves worlds ravaged, starved for food, water, supplies and more. The war eventually goes fully hot, ramping up the threat even as the Initiative's budget gets cut. In later missions, players must work around roving fleets of npc's that are hostile to each-other and devastate planets and installations in their war. Controversially, none of the player's ships can fire on those npc's, or will be fired upon. Instead, players are forced to watch their destructive handiwork and must try their best to keep civilian loss of life to a minimum by rendering swift aid to destroyed stations and ravaged planets. Throughout the entire game, it keeps track of the total number of human lives saved by the player, to proudly display at the end.

Aside from its main campaign, the game also features a series of custom scenarios, the ability to play procedurally generated scenarios and challenges as well as a level editor and the ability to share created levels with others.

Gameplay
In actual missions, players control the ships of their relief fleet within one or several star systems and must manage their limited resources as efficiently as possible. Worlds might need food or water, medicinal aid or even infrastructural aid. Resources like food can be shipped in on fast transport ships, manufactured on the spot by mobile production ships from saved-up fabber feedstock, or brought along in gargantuan mega freighters. Or you can aid the locals in getting their own production set up ASAP by bringing along industrial personnel and machinery. In the planetary view, players must decide where to set up distribution points for aid, where to land their shuttles, if they should repair a bombed railway to make further distribution of aid easier at the cost of construction time and so on.

There are often various approaches to any one problem and players are encouraged to think on their feet. Often, missions do not even state what exact issues the planet in distress is suffering from. Players can hedge their bets and bring a bit of everything, or hold back a few fast transports at a nearby supply depot where they can quickly load what's needed.

The game offers four predefined difficulty settings: Easy, Normal, Realistic and Unfair. However, custom settings can also be created, to for example have the large number of negative random events of unfair coupled with the increased starting resources of easy and so on.

Background
The Ninti Initiative actually grew out of an attempt by several wargamer guilds on Radiant to simulate the conditions encountered in the Osliam chain, so that better ways of giving aid can be found and practised. They quickly found that no simulation software or wargame had the kind of details they needed, abstracting away civilian loss of life, especially that not directly caused by weapons fire.

The project quickly grew thanks to countless volunteers and eventually resulted in a rather workable, if rough, framework for such simulations. When the call for RBC content went out, some of the programmers that worked on the simulation decided to adapt their work into a game. Of course, many things were cut from the simulation, while other systems were added, but the game still can claim to be fairly close to reality, especially on the 'realistic' difficulty setting. Overall, the game presents a fairly clear anti-war message, as countless lives are being put into danger by the main story's war and the importance of humanitarian aid is, needless to say, stressed quite often.

bdun140 · Jul 11, 2021

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you... 2600 words of pure self indulgence clumsily repackaged as content for the RBC. Please note that all of the following can also be found here, under the spoiler in the "word documents" section under my name. Enjoy.

One Against the Swarm: Open world survival sandbox pitched as "what would happen if Just Cause and Subnautica had a drunken one-night stand and called Breath of the Wild for advice on what to do after". Game opens with the players on an aircraft, learning that someone else on the aircraft tried to submit an official report to off-world authorities that the colonial administration was "too harsh, borderline draconian" in its enforcement of discipline, and that for this crime the aircraft will now be shot down to punish the one person and any collaborators they might have. After the black screen of explosions and screaming, players wake up at the unimaginatively named Crash Site zone, and are subsequently guided over radio to the conveniently close by Rebel Supply Cashe, which serves at the players first home base. Name of the game derives from the hostile Drone Swarm, the planetary administration's primary way of exerting their authority.

From here, the gameplay loop consists of going out in search of supplies and blueprints, the latter of which can be used to unlock new designs in the base fabricator, up to and including how to make more fabricators so you can start establishing new bases. Players will primarily be limited by their hunger, thirst, and tiredness meters, the lattermost of which can only be replenished by sleeping in a bed in a safe area, albeit with fairly generous definitions of "bed" and "safe". Unlocking vehicles with internal cargo storage (invariably more than what the player's rather meager backpack can contain) and building certain pieces of equipment in order to navigate hazards such as extreme temperatures or lingering toxic gas/radiation are both major turning points in the player's ability to explore the world, and a major turning point in the plot is locating and completing enough missions for The Rebel Alliance that orbital bombardment stops being a thing you need to constantly worry about, allowing you to far larger and more elaborate bases without the game telling you not to do that.

Endgame goal has you gaining access to the decaying ruins of the rebellion's former HQ, and finding the secret room containing the blueprints for the Rebel Beacon. From there, it's a simply matter of building the beacon in one of the plot-mandated locations, building a fortress around it bristling with auto-turrets and swarming with friendly drones, then firing up the beacon and watching the planetary authorities lose their damn minds. Fight your big climactic set piece battle with the set you have designed yourself, then learn than the bad guys have decided to load up an orbital transport with nuclear "excavation charges" to turn it into an improvised ICBM, and finally hopping onto your ground vehicle of choice for the big cinematic escape sequence. And then after that you get to go into creative mode and fuck around building pretty stuff. AAA Game of the year 10/10.

No Plan Survives: High Realism FPS game closer to Arma 3 or Squad than to Call of Duty. Single player/ Co-Op multiplayer campaign is fairly simple, there's been a rebellion, Compact Forces have been called in to deal with it, colonial administration be shady as fuck, WHOOPS they've been violating the law left and right and are now going to try and kill the protagonists before they can report this back to their off-world superiors. The PvP multiplayer has all of the FPS multiplayer greatest hits, but it's the Horde Mode where the game truly shines. Up to 10 squad leaders are given a short period to survey by UAV either a hand-crafted "standard" map or a randomly generated "mystery" map, and choose where to put down their Forward Operating Base. Once established, they must fortify their base to the greatest extent they are able to against endless waves of enemies. Among the standard Nazis, Zombies, and Nazi Zombies there is also the option to square off against a textbook perfect Charter Drone Swarm, widely considered the most challenging of the bunch.

Blockchains, Bank Accounts, and Brain Eaters: HEAVILY satirical office politics drama about an office on a planet whose authorities are trying and failing to deal with a zombie outbreak, that eventually goes from office politics to survival bunker politics to post-apocalyptic society politics. 90% of the blood and gore is implied / offscreen, and buried somewhere beneath the "John is not a zombie but I want to shoot him anyway" jokes are a surprisingly deep meta-plot about camaraderie in the face of adverse circumstances, and an examination of how misplaced priorities and simple apathy can do far more damage than deliberate malice given the right conditions.

Also, in the last season, John steals a bunch of supplies and fucks off into the wilderness, but is then later seen among the walking dead, finally giving Dwain the chance to shoot him.

Happy Hive Helpers: Cutesy not-quite-RTS where you can't directly control your units, but instead control the general rules they obey while wandering around the world, while occasionally plonking down beacons or structures to influence their behavior in more precise ways. Help your little dudes work together to solve puzzles and fend off enemies in this lovely little game inspired by real world anthives!

Rust and Blood [European Offensive]: Because the WW2 cash cow will not stop being milked for as long as people remember what a World War Two is, here comes another. Main gimmick is the branching storylines for the campaign, depending on who lives and who dies. You're still visiting the same places in more or less the same contexts, but the dialogue is different.

The American Campaign, Feet First into Hell, is more or less your bog standard "America Good Nazis Bad" romp outside of the chance to save your squad-mates from what would be unavoidable cutscene bullshit in a COD game, but it must be noted however that they really didn't pull their punches when it came to reminding people that the Nazis did a whole lot more than commission uniforms from Hugo Boss. The Russian Campaign, Reign of the Grandfathers, is also a fairly standard "Commies bad, but they're fighting Nazis so yay?" plotline, but a closer examination of WHY the Russians have it so shitty as well as the historical policy the campaign is named after are both fairly blatant shots across the bow for Ares and the practices it uses for "toughening up" it's recruits, especially in the context of the American campaign where certain combinations of people living or dying can lead to the survivors expressing grief or survivor's guilt and subsequently receiving emotional support from their squad-mates.

One constant across both campaigns is the player character being described as "twitchy" or "jumpy" if the player has successfully averted a large number of deaths, implying that what the player has accomplished through meta-knowledge, the character is accomplishing through a combination of reflexes, keen senses, and sheer paranoia.

Mission to Earth [> 4 & X]: Feature length animated film about a planet cut off from humanity for 100 years trying to figure out what the fuck happened. Film starts with a timeline, detailing a world with a Gentle Repose-like "profit sharing" system, as the problems that arise when contact with Earth and the daughter worlds unexpectedly ceases. Said timeline only lasts for about 60 seconds, but it quite cheerfully contrasts the attitudes of the planetary leadership with the consequences of their actions. For example: A statement that the camps established by the Debt Forgiveness Work Program should have minimum luxuries lest people seek entry without needing it, followed by a frank statement of how many people going to these camps wound up dying of disease, starvation, unsafe working conditions, etc., followed then by a reminder that, since people are being forced to work for free due to the lack of profit from sales, but are still being charged money for food and rent, EVERYBODY is in debt unless they're an executive. Timeline states how the rebel alliance officially forms, and the planetary authorities respond "When the Compact arrives, you'll all be sorry!"

The very next entry on the timeline speaks of decades of brutal fighting ending in a rebel victory, with absolutely no sign the rest of humanity even still exists. After that it talks about subsequent decades of the new government un-fucking the planet, with the actual plot starting on the one hundredth anniversary of the last known contact with the rest of mankind.

Story starts off with the protagonist raising the idea of the titular expedition, and while some folks don't like it, they find the support to get it launched. Cast is introduced, people get to know each other, gratuitous money shots of the cool spaceship, nice little adventure, right? Well, the question of what happened to the rest of humanity actually gets answered before the movie even reaches its half-way mark: They were devastated by a swarm of brutally efficient, self-replicating war machines designed by the charters to be the ultimate means of ensuring their own control. Predictably, the machines went out of control, not due to becoming self-aware or anything like that, but due to a simple glitch followed by a whole bunch of systems doing EXACTLY what they were meant to do. The reason the protagonist's ancestors were kept in the dark about this? An automated subroutine designed to keep bad news from getting out "so as to avoid market panic", doing exactly what it was programmed to. The robots were prevented from destroying ALL of mankind by (SPOILER REDACTED), but now they're coming back, and the heroes have to stop them before they become strong enough as to be unstoppable. Heroes save the day, humanity starts recovering, roll credits.

Repossession: "Stalked by a Monster" style horror movie about a Debt Collection robot that starts trying to "repossess" a person's body-parts due to a glitch which the robot's makers refuse to acknowledge. Police are useless, first because they don't believe the protagonist when they try to explain they're not in any debt, then later because the company in charge starts pressuring them to ignore what's going on for fear of bad press. They end up suffering bad press anyway when a second robot suffers the same glitch and goes after someone who isn't nearly as good at running, and then the cybernetics made by this company (including those of the protagonist) start malfunctioning in ominous ways. The hero's salvation comes from the company VERY RELUCTANTLY shutting down the robots to try and figure out what the hell was wrong with them, but the malfunctions are explicitly swept under the rug, leaving the implication they could happen again at any time…

Gob Squad [Fantasy Adventures in Real Time Strategy]: The fact that the subtitle spells out FARTS should tell you half of what you need to know, and here's the other half. Goblin Anarchists with "historically accurate" (really crappy) early black-powder firearms save the world from demons. Meanwhile, the elves are slavishly devoted to a book of laws that hasn't been updated since the bronze age, the humans are ruled on paper by a senile king and in truth by a court of hedonistic backstabbing nobility, and the dwarves are a bunch of alcohol fueled sociopaths with an obsession for impractical wunderwaffe. Gameplay is somewhere between Pikmin and Overlord, your player character can fight better than your minions but honestly not by much, and a lot of the humor derives from you and your gobs being your worst anarchist selves to a bunch of people who unquestionably deserve it.

Heartbeat Gentle: Audiobook series in the Young Adult Dystopia genre, you know the ones. The protagonist is a teenage girl who is special because reasons, she has two improbably attractive boys her own age orbiting her, the antagonist, one Chadwick Roman Jr., is too incompetent to stop them, blah blah blah OH WAIT! Right as the rebellion is really gathering steam and the horribly undertrained goons not used to shooting people who actually shoot back are failing to stop them, the Chad goes and breaks out some fucking NERVE GAS. Smart guy BF dies, bad boy BF doesn't receive a fatal does but does get a crippling one, and Chad's right-hand man has a moment where he looks at his boss smugly declaring his authority to have been asserted, listens to the screams of non-rebels and allied troops who didn't evacuate in time, and has a very Rousseau-like realization he is working for a monster. Also, the reason the bad guy's full name is Chadwick Roman *Jr.* is that there's a C. Roman Sr. off running some other world straight into the ground, and you better believe the heroes are going to have to deal with that asshole once they're finished dealing with the current asshole.

Also, here's a rant that Chad Jr. goes on some time after the nerve gas strike, when the heroine and her posse are hiding in the jungle or whatever:

"They just don't get it. This is my planet. I. OWN! Everything on this ball of dirt! If someone picks an apple out of a tree without paying, that is theft! If a waitress drops a plate and it breaks on the floor, that is littering and vandalism! IF A CHILD IS BORN, AND I DO NOT GIVE THEM MY BLESSING, that is trespassing! These motherfuckers just don't get it! I am the GOD of this world! And I think it's high time they got a reminder, what happens when MERE MORTALS, try and FUCK with divinity!"
[presses button on intercom]
"Captain, you are clear to begin orbital bombardment mission. Happy hunting."

The Lucky Goodbyes: Audiobook series in the crime drama genre, grizzled detective who smokes a lot and solves crimes people don't want him solving. Setting is in a fictional USA city at the height of McCarthyism and the HUAC's power, first book involves a crooked politician trying to use the fear of communism as a scapegoat/distraction from the problems really being caused by his own greed. Shocking twist, there are communists in the city, but they're keeping their heads down as best they can because they know they're being prosecuted, and when they actually do commit a crime it's after enough other people have falsely accused them that it looks like a red herring. Real boy who cried wolf hours.

Appletree Incorporated: Weekly Office Drama. You know that one plotline the charters love? The one where the smart and hardworking everyman manages to overthrow a corrupt and self-serving boss, thus proving that the meritocracy works and it's your own fault you're poor? Remember how Fix it by February had vague pretensions to being a parody of this, but then ditched that after one episode in favor of a dramatic retelling of the March Days? Well, this is a much more dedicated parody, where the antagonist takes multiple seasons to bring down, and has a faintly alarming array of tools and techniques for putting upstart proles back in their place. Furthermore, once he finally does go down, we now get an examination of the social and economic pressures that made him, as they try and break our protagonist and turn them into the same kind of monster they usurped. You can only get so many bad apples before you start to suspect the tree…

Toy Makerz [Masters of Bulls#!t]: Weekly comedy about a fictional company running a toy-line called "Galaxy of Sorcery", complete with 30 minute animated toy commercial posing as a children's TV show. The show-within-a-show is difficult to describe. The plotlines are nonsensical, the budget is nonexistent, and the live-action characters complain bitterly about the executive meddling that is now forcing them to introduce a character with an extendable neck, because someone had a neat idea for a toy gimmick and wants to hype it up.

Godwinson · Jul 11, 2021

bdun140 said:
dwarves are a bunch of alcohol fueled sociopaths with an obsession for impractical wunderwaffe

Is this why questers identify so strongly with dwarves? 🤔

Anyway, excellent stuff!

Elero · Jul 11, 2021

What's that? Another RBC content idea that's probably longer than it has any right to be? It's more likely than you think!

Mind for Rent is a series about Sam Leons. Sam is an ML-class lawyer. What does that mean, you ask? A Memory-Lock™ class lawyer is the newest and best in confidential technology, spearheaded by Smith, Smith and Partners, an independent law firm and Sam's employer.
All ML-class lawyers possess a patented cranial implant that interfaces with the way the human brain forms memories.
When with a client, said client can use a unique electronic key provided to them to put their lawyer into Memory Lock Mode. In this mode, all memories the lawyer forms will be locked away and are only available during Memory Lock Mode activated by this particular client. In this way, the client is assured complete confidentiality no matter what. Once a case is fully completed, the client destroys their electronic key, sealing the lawyer's memories of corporate secrets away forever.

Using this technology as a selling point, Smith, Smith and Partners has had great success in the patent law business, getting hired for numerous highly delicate cases. Sam themselves is a young, excellent and promising lawyer with a broad technological knowledge base to help them understand complex tech patents. If they keep doing well, they could make partner in as little as fifty years more years, or so their boss tells them.

Mind for Rent begins fairly episodic as we are introduced to Sam and their daily life. They seem happy if hard-working at first, but it quickly becomes apparent that the ML process bothers them more than they let on. Not remembering their workday at all is tough. They feel worn-out and mentally tired, but can't recall any of the work they did. The viewer, too, does not get to see what happens during ML mode, only the aftermath. We get introduced to Sam's coworkers, old friends and explore the consequences of the ML process for a bit.

Then, in episode 3, Sam meets a prospective new client. The highly attractive and utterly brilliant Dr. Ivanya Chekov. Sam and Ivanya have a great deal of chemistry, even just in the brief moments before and after their meetings. Some time is spent building this up, with Ivanya implying more and more directly that in their frequent meetings, they go even further than just light flirting.

Sam starts to suspect that she isn't just asking for the meetings to talk about her newest invention she wishes to patent, but to spend more time with them. This suspicion is further strengthened when Sam starts noticing some strange occurrences. Someone seems to follow them home on a few occasions, they feel watched. Then, they get a video call from an utter asshole of a guy that identifies himself as Ivanya's husband, angrily accusing Sam of having an affair with her.

Ivanya does not do much to dismiss this motion, implying that she must keep any hypothetical affair incredibly discreet until her divorce goes through, lest she lose a great deal of money due to a marriage contract she unwisely signed in her youth.

Then, one day, after another long ML meeting that Sam does not recall, an excited Ivanya says she has waited long enough, her divorce is now complete. She confesses her love, asks Sam to remember her and return her love. Sam, of course, has no memory of actually loving her, only the vague attraction that developed before and after the ML meetings and says as much, afraid of breaking Ivanya's heart. Hesitantly, Ivanya makes Sam an offer: She can let them access their locked-away memories, give them back their memories of their love, their relationship so far, all those hours she's missing.

Increasingly frustrated by missing so many memories, and definitely attracted to this woman, Sam agrees. They take a week of unpaid sick leave and travel to a private clinic that Ivanya recommends, confident they will wake up remembering a loving affair with a rich, brilliant and beautiful girl.

Instead, they awake with a killer headache, hundreds of memories flooding their mind. Ivanya is nowhere to be seen, either. The clinic turns into a prison as they get interrogated on the countless valuable secrets in their head and Ivanya's whole plot becomes clear to them.

The genre of the series shifts into an agent thriller as an ARES asset protection team attacks the clinic and its surprisingly well-armed security guards. But far from heroic rescuers, they seek to terminate Sam and the secrets in their head. Our heroic enby must flee, making use of the chaos and a surprising amount of technological knowledge suddenly flooding their head. For example, they recognise a top of the line surgery robot from a patent they were involved in and can quickly reconfigure it on the fly as a distraction. Sam meets Ivanya again in the chaos, the woman fleeing the destruction as well, especially when a third party begins attacking the clinic on top of ARES to snatch Sam and their secrets.

Begrudgingly, Sam has to work together with the woman that betrayed them. Season one ends with Sam and Ivanya escaping together, with hints of a real relationship not built on lies blooming between them. They are both renegades now, Sam because they are a walking repository of charter secrets and Ivanya because her employer denies any knowledge of her plot, declaring her a rogue agent guilty of attempted industrial espionage. They decide to lay low and find ways to turn the knowledge Sam holds into money, fucking over the Charters in the process.

BlueTwinkleToes · Jul 11, 2021

[X] Plan: Securing the public safety
[X] Plan Defence and Aid

AKuz · Jul 11, 2021

Scheduled vote count started by AKuz on Jul 8, 2021 at 9:42 PM, finished with 51 posts and 26 votes.

securingthepublicsafety defenceandaid budgetlimits budgetlimitsfixedversion [authorization]

Total voters in this category

14
14 people have voted
[X] Plan: Securing the public safety
-[X] [Authorization] Implement Dedicated Budget
--[X] Maximum Budget of:
---[X] No Maximum
--[X] Allow budget access for repairs to ARC vessels
--[X] Allow budget access for repairs to captured vessels
--[X] Allow budget access for Aid to civilian populations in liberated systems
--[X] Write-in: Allow budget access for emergency defense construction
-[X] [Authorization] Implement Security Measures
-[X] [Authorization] Humanitarian aid
- Model DC.14F
- Angelform
- Dermon
- tankdrop24
- HeroCooky
- Travler66
- Elero
- bdun140
- Derpmind
- TheArcanist
- Joppe
- Mellowfellow
- Winged One
- BlueTwinkleToes
Total voters in this category

6
6 people have voted
[X] Plan Defence and Aid
-[X] [Authorization] Implement Dedicated Budget
--[X] Maximum Budget of:
---[X] No Maximum
--[X] Allow budget access for repairs to ARC vessels
--[X] Allow budget access for repairs to captured vessels
--[X] Allow budget access for Aid to civilian populations in liberated systems
--[X] write-in: Allow budget access for construction, repair, and upgrade of gate defences designated as Permanent Sites of Fortification
--[X] Write-in: Allow budget access for emergency defense construction
-[X] [Authorization] Implement Security Measures
-[X] [Authorization] Humanitarian aid
--[X] Write-in: Create designated corps of humanitarian aid workers within MilComm with the appropriate training and procedures to respond to humanitarian crises
Total voters in this category

5
5 people have voted
[X] Plan Budget Limits
--[X] Maximum Budget of:
---[X] 20% of Income.
--[X] Allow budget access for repairs to ARC vessels
--[X] Allow budget access for repairs to captured vessels
--[X] Allow budget access for Aid to civilian populations in liberated systems
-[X] [Authorization] Implement Security Measures
-[X] [Authorization] Humanitarian aid
Total voters in this category

6
6 people have voted
[X] Plan Budget Limits (Fixed Version)
--[X] Maximum Budget of:
---[X] 60 BR, 30 SR, 24E per quarter:
--[X] Allow budget access for repairs to ARC vessels
--[X] Allow budget access for repairs to captured vessels
--[X] Allow budget access for Aid to civilian populations in liberated systems
-[X] [Authorization] Implement Security Measures
-[X] [Authorization] Humanitarian aid
Total voters in this category

1
1 people have voted
[x] [Authorization] Implement Security Measures
- astergremlin

Kirook · Jul 12, 2021

Omake: In the Land of the Blind...

"Ms. Weissmann, the executives will see you now."

I took a deep breath as I stood in front of the sleek metal door. I'd always been a little intimidated by H-I's visionaries. It took true genius to shape art and culture for huge swathes of the galaxy. And while the regional committee behind that door was only responsible for part of it, they were still the highest authority I'd ever presented one of my analyses to. I could only hope that I'd make a good impression, because it was imperative that they listen to what I had to say.

The door slid open with barely a whisper, and I stepped into the boardroom.

The place was designed in a sweeping, chrome-brushed art-deco style much like the rest of the building, and I could hardly turn without catching a glimpse of my reflection, blonde hair and pale skin flickering back at me from chairs and doorframes. The four members of the committee, sitting around the glass conference table, turned their attention to me.

I remained standing as I started my presentation. My height puts my view above most people even when they're standing up, so by rights I should have towered over the sitting executives, but somehow I still felt tiny under their watchful eyes.

"Mr. Choi, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Khan, Ms. Beaumont, thank you for having me," I said, trying to keep my voice level. "As you requested, I've compiled a report on the operations of our far-frontier subsidiaries. Most of them are running quite smoothly, as the information I've gathered will illustrate, but there's one item I'd like to bring to your attention. I brought in some emotional futures experts to look over some of the content being issued from the frontier—"

"Enough of that, now," said Mr. Johnson, waving his hand. I noticed as I looked up at him that he was starting to show some wrinkles in his face, some gray in his close-cropped brown hair. Had he refused genetic anti-aging treatments, I wondered idly, or was he deliberately modifying himself to project the image of a dignified and wise elder?

"Details can wait," he continued. "If you've got something big to tell us, go ahead and drop it on us. I like a straight talker."

I nodded once, steeled my nerves, and said: "It's my carefully considered opinion that Hermes-Ishtar should immediately revoke the license of the Radiant Broadcasting Corporation."

Eyebrows went up all around the table. Mr. Choi leaned forward, adjusting glasses which he almost certainly didn't need, but which made him look erudite and professorial. "What circumstance could possibly justify shutting down an entire subsidiary and eating the associated loss?"

"The circumstance where the whole thing is a Trojan horse for anarchist propaganda," I replied, a little more sharply than I meant to.

Ms. Beaumont looked over at me from across the table, the bright light casting shadows off her high, aristocratic, genetically-altered cheekbones. "I think you're exaggerating, Miss Weissmann. As I'm sure you're aware, H-I has the final say in whether or not the RBC's works are fit for public consumption. A few of the radicals who whipped up the riots there tried to insert their ridiculous political screeds into the corporation's broadcasts, but we put a stop to it."

I shook my head. "I'm glad you stopped that from reaching impressionable ears, Ms. Beaumont, but I think the problem goes deeper than that. Remember the emotional futures crash a while back? Part of the reason that happened was because a bunch of the media that came out of Radiant had unexpected plot twists or new story developments that the market didn't adjust to in time. So, once I was assigned to look over the corporation based out of there, I brought in a team of EF experts to analyze their output and make sure nothing like that would happen again."

"Smart thinking, Ms. Weissmann," praised Mr. Johnson.

"Thank you, sir," I said, nodding at him gratefully. "But what I found was...well, I'll understate the case a bit and say 'concerning'. We discovered repeated thematic constants threaded through RBC media that run strongly against meritocracy, intellectual property, and the free market. Charter leaders or their in-story analogues are universally portrayed as incompetent, outright malicious, or both. Games and media portrayed by the Radiant Broadcasting Corporation are forty percent more likely to portray riots or rebellions in a neutral to positive manner and eighty-five percent more likely to feature Charters or clear metaphors for Charters in an antagonistic capacity than their counterparts in Compact space. In short, the entire enterprise is fundamentally shot through with anarchistic ideas and needs to be shut down before it can spread them any further."

I lapsed into silence, taking another deep breath to fill my lungs after all the speaking I'd just done. Now was the moment of truth—would these visionaries see the danger they were opening the door to?

"Okay," came Mr. Khan's voice down the table. He was a broad-shouldered, full-bearded man with a deep infrasound rumble modded into his voice, and he seemed to loom over the table as he spoke. "Let's say you're right, and the bigwigs on Radiant were insane enough to let the rioters run their whole media operation. Who's even gonna buy their shit? What's the target audience for anarchism? Nobody wants to hear that their boss is out to get them. Even if your EF guys were perfectly on the money, all we have to do is wait for the whole house of cards to fall down."

"The agreement we negotiated for the foundation of the RBC was so well-executed that the share of the profits flowing back to Radiant is essentially a rounding error," Mr. Choi added. "In the unlikely event that their works manage to reach a mass audience, they still won't reach a high enough profit margin to keep it running in the long or even medium term."

"Exactly," Mr. Khan rejoined. "And when it goes under, we buy up the whole thing and sweep out the trash."

I thought about that for a moment. They might well be right. Even anarchists had to obey the laws of supply and demand. And yet, something was still bothering me. Some of what I'd witnessed in the RBC, some of the messages they were trying to send…

"What if...they don't care about the money?"

Oh. I had said that out loud.

Everyone else at the table just looked at me, with expressions ranging from curiosity to disdain. After a moment, I realized they wanted me to elaborate. I hastily scraped together a few of my thoughts. "I'm just saying, if I were an anarchist radical trying to make propaganda for the masses, I might not worry too much about my, uh, profit margins."

Blank, uncomprehending states all around. How was this happening? Some of H-I's best and brightest were gathering here in this room, and yet they just weren't getting it. I sighed and gave it another go. "I think they'll funnel money into the RBC and keep it running at a loss, in order to try to recoup their investment later as their ideas spread further."

"Oh," said Mr. Johnson, understanding finally dawning on his face. "Why didn't you just say so before?"

"Regardless, if they try that, they still lose," Ms. Beaumont said with a sneer. "I'd like to see the expressions on the faces of the people of Radiant when they realize that their so-called liberators are funneling money into their propaganda machine rather than trying to arrest their society's slide into collapse."

Now it was my turn to be nonplussed. I blinked in confusion. "Do we have intel saying Radiant's in a state of collapse?"

She looked at me as if I were extremely stupid. "They're anarchists."

"We appreciate your advice, Ms. Weissmann," said Mr. Johnson, "but I'm afraid we're going to have to deny your request."

Kirook · Jul 12, 2021

Omake: ...The One-Eyed Woman Is Queen

The rest of the meeting was picayune, report after report on this auteur studio or that game company. There are only two things I remember thinking after the committee shot me down. The first was, We're arranging our lawn chairs while a funnel cloud gathers on the horizon.

The second was, I need a fucking drink.

I said my polite goodbyes to the committee members once the meeting was over and headed down to the bar, a little hole-in-the-wall downtown that I passed by every day on my way to work. I could have afforded to drink at a far classier place, but something about the authentic, unassuming environment of the place appealed to me.

The dim light of the red industrial lamps and the distorted music were oddly soothing as I slid in and pinged the bar's computer to open a tab. The bartender—one of the few humans in that job who hadn't been displaced by a computer, another reason I liked this place—wandered over, raising his eyebrow at me. "The usual?"

"Double it," I grumbled.

He nodded and poured me two tall glasses of a lager so dark it was almost black. I stared into them morosely, so lost in thought that I almost didn't notice someone sliding onto one of the barstools next to me.

"Hey, Emily. Rough time at the meeting?"

I glanced over to see my friend Kai Cohen sitting next to me. His round, tanned face was wearing its usual friendly smile, and his mop of dark hair was even more of a mess than usual, which was saying a lot. He sipped a fizzy, fruity drink I couldn't identify as he waited for my answer.

Instead of using my words, I just knocked back a deep draw of one of my beers, letting it settle heavily in my stomach.

Kai winced. "Wow. That bad, huh?"

"Pretty much," I said. "Is it weird that I'm kind of envious of your job right now? At least down there in maintenance you're allowed to fix a problem when you see one staring you in the face."

"Trust me, Emily, no matter how shitty things seem right now, you do not want my job," Kai said with a slightly strained laugh. "Count your blessings."

I shrugged noncommittally, not willing to argue the point, and took another swig of beer.

"So, what problem have you run into exactly that you're not allowed to do anything about?" Kai asked, tilting his head towards me curiously.

I glanced over at him. "You know the RBC?"

"Yeah, I'm a big fan, actually," he replied. "For once we've got an HI project that's not afraid to take some risks with its stories. But hey, what do I know? I'm not a visionary, I'm a maintenance worker." He shrugged elaborately.

"I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Kai," I said, "but the RBC's run by anarchists."

He almost choked on his drink. "Ha! Nice one. You almost had me for a moment there. Okay, what's the real problem?"

I stared at him with no humor in my eyes. "Kai…"

"My God, you're serious," he said as the smile faded from his face. "So you think, what? Those guys who started the protests on Elysium a year or two ago all just...gave up and started making video games?"

"That's just it. I don't think they did give up. That's what I was trying to tell the regional executive committee. And I think some of them believed me, too! But even though they did, they basically told me to fuck off." I took another long drink, emptying my first glass of beer and moving on to my second.

"You think the protests are still going on?" Kai frowned, setting his glass aside. He always tried to make sure his hands were free when he was thinking. "I haven't heard anything about demonstrations in Radiant in a while."

He paused. "Come to think of it...I haven't heard anything about Radiant in a while."

"Kai, I think…" I stopped. "Never mind. I shouldn't be telling you this."

This was the kind of leak that ended careers if it ever got traced back. I couldn't share it, even with a friend as close as him.

"Emily," Kai said, his voice quiet. "You can trust me. You know I'd never sell you out."

He was right—I did know that. I'd always been able to count on Kai.

"Okay," I said. "You didn't hear this from me, but I think something weird is going on in Radiant. When I talked to the execs about shutting down the RBC, the way they acted when they talked about how anarchist propaganda would never succeed...it was the standard line on that kind of thing, you've heard it before, except this time it almost seemed like they weren't trying to convince me as much as they were trying to convince themselves."

Kai was leaning forward on his stool, staring at me intently. "Go on."

I tried to focus my memories through the slight haze of alcohol buzzing in my brain. "One of them thought Radiant's society was falling apart. I guess it'd have to be if anarchist revolutionaries were running around, but...there was something she said. When I asked her how she knew that was happening, she said 'they're anarchists'. And the way she said it, it didn't sound like she was talking about the rioters, or the RBC." I turned to look Kai in the eye. "It sounded more like she was talking about the entire system."

Kai, for the first time since I'd known him, was totally silent. He just stirred his drink slowly as he processed what I'd said.

"Kai." I grabbed his arm. "You have to swear to me you'll never tell anyone I told you this."

He nodded gravely. "I swear."

Mollified, I let out a sigh of relief and sat back. "Okay. Thanks. I've gotta go. I'm gonna sleep off these beers and then try to find someone in the H-I food chain who will listen to me about this. If we act quickly to deal with this threat, maybe we can stop them before it's too late." I stood up and waved goodbye as I headed out.

"Yeah," I heard Kai murmur from behind me as I headed for the door. "Maybe you can."

Constal · Jul 12, 2021

You know, I kinda want these omakes to be canon.

Traehgniw · Jul 13, 2021

another RBC thing: a platformer game where you're playing as a dragon, and the dragons are dying out.

they need a certain amount of various rocks etc around them and their nests- cut gems etc work best - in order to reproduce successfully, and something's been vanishing dragons and their eggs for centuries now; there's just a handful of dragons and a few eggs left, and then one day you wake up, shards of crystal all around you, and all the others are stiffening and crystallizing and vanishing and someone is making off with the eggs. (there's some other people around too, not just dragons, but you have no idea where they live or where they come from and your best guess is that they're the fae or evil spirits or something since they come from nowhere, look really weird to dragon eyes, seem to have mastery of time, and are usually taking your people's stuff, but recently one of them gave your people an hourglass-studded necklace)

you've been missed (you think), and when the thief/kidnapper leaves you tail them, trying to get the eggs back. (rushing in too fast will likely result in broken eggs, but if you wait too long they'll freeze to death.) they hop through a portal and you chase after them into some crazy fancy place. while there, trying to find the thief/kidnapper, you stumble across one of the kidnapped dragons, displayed like a piece of art, like the prime jewel in someone's bower-nest, in some kind of glowing magitech thing that prevents you from at least moving their remains, and then suddenly in a fit of desperation you try something different and your necklace's hourglasses glow and the dragon unfreezes.
Alive. Not in any shape to help you much with your quest but alive

so you help them get to safety and your quest becomes not just retrieving the eggs (which are very colourful and pretty) but also retrieving and reviving the other dragons and eggs that have been kidnapped over the centuries.

it turns out that the reason people have been disappearing is the same reason it's been getting harder and harder to find suitable gems and metals and rocks for a bower-nest; the other people have been taking them out of greed, stasising your people and their unhatched children to use as art, pretending that they're sculptures and polished rocks. you find works of art made from dragonhide and dragonbone. its played very much for horror.

so you're racing around these levels - some are on the ground, some are in the air like a flight sim, you can take off in the grounded levels but they're usually inside and not built for flying in - working with a few of the other world's people (including the one that gave you the hourglass necklace) to get your people back. the hourglass necklace is also your healthbar - there's several little hourglasses on it and the sand changes colour and shade and drains from the top to the bottom as you take damage. reloading a save is called "rewinding" and the protag can comment on stuff that happened before a load. as the game goes on you unlock more and more time-related shenanigans, like speeding up or slowing down time in various areas.
also, you're immune to being stasised for more than a couple of seconds and some puzzles rely on you freezing yourself on purpose to get past something that'd otherwise kill you. this means that the majority of security forces, btw, can't do anything to you since their handheld stasistech isn't strong enough to break through your anti-stasis field.

near the end it reveals that the necklace prevents you from being frozen in time, and enough time shenanigans have gone on that it allows you to do mental time travel.

the main villains at the end are some of the uberrich, ageless people who've been driving the demand for dragons-as-products; it's not just dragons, either. every species of person you see, there's a time-frozen 'statue' or body-part-material artwork somewhere. the portals go to hundreds of worlds, and yours is not the only one where a once-thriving people have been decimated, slaughtered for parts and frozen alive like art.

oh, and the hourglasses? your people made them. theyre not supposed to be so versatile and powerful, but their magitech reacted in unpredictable and useful ways with your magic and the magitech that the invaders used on you. the invaders ret-goned the civilization your people would have had without them using a mixture of their interuniversal portals, your people's time-magitech, and a few other things - in something that can only be done once per universe.

ETA: probably there's sections where you play as various other allied characters, plus when i say "every species of person you see, there's something made from them" i mean every species including the dominant culture. probably there's a bunch of ads for various cosmetic products, surgeries, etc for each species where from an out-of-universe perspective they're clearly aimed at making the bodies better-suited for various uses as products - though the details of what the ads say are probably locked behind some kind of translation thing you have to find which also allows you to talk to non-dragon NPCs

Traehgniw · Jul 14, 2021

more thoughts on that idea: considering i'd had the dragons as bowering i have the thought of their societal gender structure being bowerer/judge primary, male/female secondary

...the protag is judge gender because cannot resist the idea of there being an overarching theme of them grousing about the terrible ethics and aesthetics

Strunkriidiisk · Jul 15, 2021

Traehgniw said:
another RBC thing: a platformer game where you're playing as a dragon, and the dragons are dying out.

they need a certain amount of various rocks etc around them and their nests- cut gems etc work best - in order to reproduce successfully, and something's been vanishing dragons and their eggs for centuries now; there's just a handful of dragons and a few eggs left, and then one day you wake up, shards of crystal all around you, and all the others are stiffening and crystallizing and vanishing and someone is making off with the eggs. (there's some other people around too, not just dragons, but you have no idea where they live or where they come from and your best guess is that they're the fae or evil spirits or something since they come from nowhere, look really weird to dragon eyes, seem to have mastery of time, and are usually taking your people's stuff, but recently one of them gave your people an hourglass-studded necklace)

you've been missed (you think), and when the thief/kidnapper leaves you tail them, trying to get the eggs back. (rushing in too fast will likely result in broken eggs, but if you wait too long they'll freeze to death.) they hop through a portal and you chase after them into some crazy fancy place. while there, trying to find the thief/kidnapper, you stumble across one of the kidnapped dragons, displayed like a piece of art, like the prime jewel in someone's bower-nest, in some kind of glowing magitech thing that prevents you from at least moving their remains, and then suddenly in a fit of desperation you try something different and your necklace's hourglasses glow and the dragon unfreezes.
Alive. Not in any shape to help you much with your quest but alive

so you help them get to safety and your quest becomes not just retrieving the eggs (which are very colourful and pretty) but also retrieving and reviving the other dragons and eggs that have been kidnapped over the centuries.

it turns out that the reason people have been disappearing is the same reason it's been getting harder and harder to find suitable gems and metals and rocks for a bower-nest; the other people have been taking them out of greed, stasising your people and their unhatched children to use as art, pretending that they're sculptures and polished rocks. you find works of art made from dragonhide and dragonbone. its played very much for horror.

so you're racing around these levels - some are on the ground, some are in the air like a flight sim, you can take off in the grounded levels but they're usually inside and not built for flying in - working with a few of the other world's people (including the one that gave you the hourglass necklace) to get your people back. the hourglass necklace is also your healthbar - there's several little hourglasses on it and the sand changes colour and shade and drains from the top to the bottom as you take damage. reloading a save is called "rewinding" and the protag can comment on stuff that happened before a load. as the game goes on you unlock more and more time-related shenanigans, like speeding up or slowing down time in various areas.
also, you're immune to being stasised for more than a couple of seconds and some puzzles rely on you freezing yourself on purpose to get past something that'd otherwise kill you. this means that the majority of security forces, btw, can't do anything to you since their handheld stasistech isn't strong enough to break through your anti-stasis field.

near the end it reveals that the necklace prevents you from being frozen in time, and enough time shenanigans have gone on that it allows you to do mental time travel.

the main villains at the end are some of the uberrich, ageless people who've been driving the demand for dragons-as-products; it's not just dragons, either. every species of person you see, there's a time-frozen 'statue' or body-part-material artwork somewhere. the portals go to hundreds of worlds, and yours is not the only one where a once-thriving people have been decimated, slaughtered for parts and frozen alive like art.

oh, and the hourglasses? your people made them. theyre not supposed to be so versatile and powerful, but their magitech reacted in unpredictable and useful ways with your magic and the magitech that the invaders used on you. the invaders ret-goned the civilization your people would have had without them using a mixture of their interuniversal portals, your people's time-magitech, and a few other things - in something that can only be done once per universe.

ETA: probably there's sections where you play as various other allied characters, plus when i say "every species of person you see, there's something made from them" i mean every species including the dominant culture. probably there's a bunch of ads for various cosmetic products, surgeries, etc for each species where from an out-of-universe perspective they're clearly aimed at making the bodies better-suited for various uses as products - though the details of what the ads say are probably locked behind some kind of translation thing you have to find which also allows you to talk to non-dragon NPCs

Now this is the kind of gritty Spyro reboot I wanna see.

Traehgniw · Jul 15, 2021

Strunkriidiisk said:
Now this is the kind of gritty Spyro reboot I wanna see.

That's exactly what I was going for! Except I was also thinking that we didn't have the rights to Actual Spyro so it's a different purple dragon with a different design (i'm thinking of having the wings as also being the walking forelimbs so they can vault into the air like a pterosaur but that's like the Only change).

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

Been Better

Pocky Eating MafiaDoka

It's all in the cards

Minds Eye Bind

I have ideas. Sometimes they're even good.

"Well, I've got nothing."

Been Better

THE LEGEND

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