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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The Laurent · Jul 19, 2021

We currently have all the Basic FRM and also the Advanced Ares. I think the Box and getting to at least 20 progress with the FRM-compression is more valuable next turn, since in the very short term what they (revolutionaries across the galaxy) need to survive is enough to function (so ideally all the Basics) and also fight Ares (so Ares Advanced.)

More than that's great, don't ever doubt it. But...

Shard of Victory · Jul 19, 2021

veteranMortal said:
I Am Galt John!

It's so bad! It's the worst thing I ever saw. I love it.

veteranMortal · Jul 19, 2021

Review of "I Am Galt John" in The Colonial Mirror
By Emma Sheet

2 out of 5 Stars - Bland Political Polemic barely warrants attention.

"I Am Galt John" is fundamentally uninterested in telling a compelling story. Brazenly chauvinistic, Galt John imagines the world through a chauvinistically Sister viewpoint, in which Earth is selfishly dragging down the free market, and the typical fearmongering that Earth - and Daughters in general - wish to impose draconic taxes on the daughter worlds.

Furthermore, the plot is the typical thin gruel that marks a Sister-influenced production. "John Bronstein" is a capitalist from the daughter colonies, who finds himself tremendously oppressed by corporate forces from Earth, and joins a resistance. There is no growth, no nuance. The show appears to exist purely to exposit the Sisters view of the world, and nothing more. Furthermore, it has no desire to interrogate the violence of its protagonists, part of a disturbing trend of violence from the Sisters in general.

I unenthusiastically await the inevitable second season.

Review of "I Am Galt John" in The New Washington Orbital
By Hugo First

4.5 out of 5 Stars - Biting political analogy pushes envelope.

"I Am Galt John" is an excellent drama, marrying monologues to stir the heart with pulse-quickening action and brutally effective political satire.

IAGJ pulls no punches, showing from the outset the corrupt nature of Earth-dominated politics, the threat this poses to the free market, and the need to shake off Earth's cloying maternal impulses.

It indulges in the delightfully sharp edginess typical of RBC productions in rejecting the - generally considered necessary - condemnation of radicals, recognising that when it comes to the need for small government and freeing the markets of the sister colonies, radicalisation is the lesser enemy. Fears of "Black Summers" have no place here, and come only from online cancel-culture Daughters blinded by political differences, conflating Sisters with Anarchists for cheap political point scoring, as though they are not the party of taxation and government overreach.

All told, IAGJ is a riproaring success, and certainly well worth a binge. Ending, of course, on a cliffhanger - which I shall not spoil, but suffice to say, the fine Sister spirit of free association in the showrunner is readily apparent - the question must be asked; will H-I renew this show for a second season? Surely there is more to tell!

Tumblr User johank-trash posted:

[gifset of John Bronstein and Hank Ilyich]

I'm yours, John. Until the end. - Hank Ilyich, S1E5

#johank #gifset #iagj #shouldve been canon #maybe season 2 #when will i learn

[1,095 notes]

this is dumb but i wrote it before i wrote the synopsis so i thought id post it anyway

Cyanblackstone · Jul 20, 2021

In this event, you are playing as the Tartarus Subcommittee of the Law Enforcement and Rehabilitation Congressional Group (LEaRCG). Assume the following:

Any option presented by the QMs will pass the Social Committee given wrangling and other parliamentary procedures, which you don't need to worry about.
All the costs of the options presented are minimal on the level of an interstellar polity and will not be represented.
Members of the committee are free to propose write-ins but are subject to QM veto, representing something that will not pass in the LEaRCG or the general congress.
The effects of your decisions will not be made explicit until the end of the event. Decisions may affect future events, but you will have to use your own reasoning and guesses on the ramifications of your actions.

---

There are two small protests outside Congressional Hall tonight. Small, but loud, and very angry at each other.

Both hold placards: "Free Dennis51_VOD," "No Security State," and "Give the Fat Cats Their Due," on one side; "End the Tropical GULAG," "Fighting Words Aren't Free Speech," and "Even Execs Have Rights," on the other.

You can hear the arguments through the windows as the Subcommittee sits to address the issue that has protestors outside.

A pair of streamers, led by Dennis Mbala, screen name Dennis51_VOD, and his cousin Tori, screen name CoolAnarkiddi3_X, have blown past Tartarus' security air and boat patrols on a custom printed hydroplane. Livestreaming the whole way, the two landed on one of the minor inhabited archipelago islands, confronted a well-known former Persephone police officer, and began to castigate him for his conduct before the revolution, centering around the death of a close relative while in police custody. Words on both sides led to blows, and before security arrived Dennis had a broken arm, Tori a mild concussion, and the former cop a sprained ankle and several broken teeth.

The stream did not capture the first exchange, and witness testimonies do not agree on who swung first.

All three are now being held in detention, but word has rapidly spread all over Radiant. The inhabitants of Tartarus are obviously furious at the abject failure of security, but a significant minority of ARC citizens think they deserved it, and another large fraction have reawakened to the existence of Tartarus and are decrying its existence at all.

The issue of Tartarus has been lying quietly for several years, but this altercation seems to have reopened the original divide before its establishment—and revealed how evenly split the population is over its existence.

The subcommittee needs to decide how it is going to handle the three participants in the fight as well as improve Tartarus security, and a public announcement needs to be made before the yells outside escalate to rocks or bats.

Pick one option for each side of the fight:

[Streamers] [ ] Throw the Book at Them: The pair built a custom boat to trespass in a sensitive area and did so with the explicit intent to start a fight. They need to reflect seriously on their choices and make amends, and this means a lengthy regime of counseling, community service, and restrictions on printer access, followed by probation to make sure they don't try a repeat.

[Streamers] [ ] Give Them a Deal: These two are barely out of their teens. This was a stupid, impulsive decision based on a personal matter, but one that's had serious consequences. With the promise they'll not do it again, you'll settle for community service, probation, and locking out the plan for their boat.

[Streamers] [ ] Slap on the Wrist: These two are barely out of their teens. This was a stupid, impulsive decision, and you're sure they're already regretting taking personal matters this far. A stay in hospital to deal with their injuries and a probation watch and there won't be any reoffending.

--

[Ex-Cop] [ ] Give Him a Deal: Most of the committee members think that the ex-cop, known for physical abuse before the revolution, was the one to throw the first punch. Regardless, you can't separate the fact that a pair of kids came to his home—his prison—to insult him and went right through the security that's supposed to separate Tartarus from the rest of Radiant precisely to avoid revenge attacks (and escapes, but that's not the point tonight). Make him take some anger management courses and lower his leisure supply allotment for a few weeks and he'll get the point.

[Ex-Cop] [ ] Slap on the Wrist: The issue of who started the fight is muddled. The Tartarus resident has a decent case, one that might have let him off in the pre-revolution courts even with an unsympathetic jury. With no available evidence to suggest the precise allocation of fault, relocating him to a new area should avoid a repeat event and cause enough inconvenience to suggest being more circumspect.

[Ex-Cop] [ ] Let Him Go: Regardless of who threw the first punch, it's hard to fault him given the circumstances preceding the fight. It would be unfair to punish him more than, well, already being on Tartarus in the first place. What are you going to do, create a double prison on the exile islands for offenses on Tartarus?

--

No matter what the debates have settled on, all agree that security has to be stepped up. The fact a pair of young hobbyist streamers could actually make landfall on Tartarus in a printed boat and have a good half hour to get into a fight says embarrassing things about the quality of your security. Imagine if a Charter agent or a more organized group wanted to do the same? Hell, imagine if someone who designed boats for a hobby had designed the boat in the first place?

Pick as many options as desired.

[Security] [ ] More Patrols: You have to close the gaps in your patrolling screen. Additional cutters and helicopters need to be added to move towards a continuous coverage of the security zone perimeter and end the possibility of slipping through the cracks.

[Security] [ ] Local Response Stations: There were no security personnel stationed on the island. In fact, there are only a handful of central bases for supplying the islands and the patrols. Any response to trouble in a minor or outlying island, whether brought in from outside or originating inside Tartarus, has to have personnel travel a significant distance by boat or helicopter. Placing small stations on most islands should provide much better oversight for dealing with minor issues and containing more major ones while help arrives.

[Security] [ ] Geolocation Efforts: If anyone in the right position had known about the stream, patrols could have been vectored to catch the pair a hundred miles away from their destination. Adding an algorithm that flags streams, air and water vehicular prints, and device tags near the exclusion zone for manual review could prevent any further incidents before they set foot in the archipelago.

[Security] [ ] Mechanical Oversight: The fact you can't simply rely on cameras or other media to give you the truth of the matter has made the committee keenly aware of the fact that Tartarus is the only place on Radiant without a robust network of recording devices, intended to avoid unreliable eyewitness testimony and a legacy of the intense media focus and presence of Radiant's founders and population. This needs remedying.

A/N: Have fun all, this is intended to be somewhat opaque to make Congress (that means you, readers) to grapple with choices that do not have stated immediate mechanical effects. This is up to your own reasoning and ethics, and we're interested to see the final product of your debates. Voting moratorium will end in just under 5 hours and will last for 36 hours.

The Laurent · Jul 20, 2021

[Security] [ ] More Patrols: You have to close the gaps in your patrolling screen. Additional cutters and helicopters need to be added to move towards a continuous coverage of the security zone perimeter and end the possibility of slipping through the cracks.

[Security] [ ] Local Response Stations: There were no security personnel stationed on the island. In fact, there are only a handful of central bases for supplying the islands and the patrols. Any response to trouble in a minor or outlying island, whether brought in from outside or originating inside Tartarus, has to have personnel travel a significant distance by boat or helicopter. Placing small stations on most islands should provide much better oversight for dealing with minor issues and containing more major ones while help arrives.

These look good: Camera sand Geolocatin are considerably more intrusive. Though the Local Response Stations might become centers for problems if not done right.

LucidProp · Jul 20, 2021

Cyanblackstone said:
CoolAnarkiddi3_X

Oh god I hate him already. This is among the worst internet names I have ever seen.

[Streamers] [ ] Throw the Book at Them: The pair built a custom boat to trespass in a sensitive area and did so with the explicit intent to start a fight. They need to reflect seriously on their choices and make amends, and this means a lengthy regime of counseling, community service, and restrictions on printer access, followed by probation to make sure they don't try a repeat.

[Ex-Cop] [ ] Give Him a Deal: Most of the committee members think that the ex-cop, known for physical abuse before the revolution, was the one to throw the first punch. Regardless, you can't separate the fact that a pair of kids came to his home—his prison—to insult him and went right through the security that's supposed to separate Tartarus from the rest of Radiant precisely to avoid revenge attacks (and escapes, but that's not the point tonight). Make him take some anger management courses and lower his leisure supply allotment for a few weeks and he'll get the point.
[Ex-Cop] [ ] Let Him Go: Regardless of who threw the first punch, it's hard to fault him given the circumstances preceding the fight. It would be unfair to punish him more than, well, already being on Tartarus in the first place. What are you going to do, create a double prison on the exile islands for offenses on Tartarus?

No matter who threw the first punch, the situation is clear. 2 people broke into a prison with the intent of starting a fight for clout, and act surprised when they got it. Is the ex-police officer a terrible person? Yeah, but if two people broke into your room and started harrassing you and you can't just ignore them, what are you supposed to do? Just sit there? Not everyone has the patience of a saint, and considering how embarrasingly anemic our security around Tartarus is, chances are, no one was going to come to break it up anyways. This is an embarrassment on all levels.

I believe everyone, even execs, can be better people if given a opportunity and reason to be. Prison ought to be rehabilitative rather than punitive. The ex-cop is a terrible person but he's serving his time in jail, a gilded jail but a jail nonetheless. Let the man serve his time in peace.

The Laurent · Jul 20, 2021

Hannz said:
Oh god I hate him already. This is amonh the worst internet names I have ever seen.

[Streamers] [ ] Throw the Book at Them: The pair built a custom boat to trespass in a sensitive area and did so with the explicit intent to start a fight. They need to reflect seriously on their choices and make amends, and this means a lengthy regime of counseling, community service, and restrictions on printer access, followed by probation to make sure they don't try a repeat.

[Ex-Cop] [ ] Give Him a Deal: Most of the committee members think that the ex-cop, known for physical abuse before the revolution, was the one to throw the first punch. Regardless, you can't separate the fact that a pair of kids came to his home—his prison—to insult him and went right through the security that's supposed to separate Tartarus from the rest of Radiant precisely to avoid revenge attacks (and escapes, but that's not the point tonight). Make him take some anger management courses and lower his leisure supply allotment for a few weeks and he'll get the point.
[Ex-Cop] [ ] Let Him Go: Regardless of who threw the first punch, it's hard to fault him given the circumstances preceding the fight. It would be unfair to punish him more than, well, already being on Tartarus in the first place. What are you going to do, create a double prison on the exile islands for offenses on Tartarus?

No matter who threw the first punch, the situation is clear. 2 people broke into a prison with the intent of starting a fight, and act surprised when they got it. Is the ex-police officer a terrible person? Yeah, but if two people broke into your room and started harrassing you and you can't just ignore them, what are you supposed to do? Just sit there? Not everyone has the patience of a saint, and considering how embarrasingly anemic our security around Tartarus is, chances are, no one was going to come to break it up anyways. This is an embarrassment on all levels.

I believe everyone, even execs, can be better people if given a opportunity and reason to be. Prison ought to be rehabilitative rather than punitive. The ex-cop is a terrible person but he's serving his time in jail, a gilded jail but it a jail nonetheless.

I'd be against letting him go, but think a Deal might make sense. He absolutely has anger-management problems and if his pre-revolution record is any indication he could use it. Though honestly, I could do without lowering leisure supply allotment, even.

[Ex-Cop] [ ] Give Him a Generous Deal: Most of the committee members think that the ex-cop, known for physical abuse before the revolution, was the one to throw the first punch. Regardless, you can't separate the fact that a pair of kids came to his home—his prison—to insult him and went right through the security that's supposed to separate Tartarus from the rest of Radiant precisely to avoid revenge attacks (and escapes, but that's not the point tonight). Make him take some anger management courses.

Maybe? Dunno.

LucidProp · Jul 20, 2021

The Laurent said:
I'd be against letting him go, but think a Deal might make sense. He absolutely has anger-management problems and if his pre-revolution record is any indication he could use it. Though honestly, I could do without lowering leisure supply allotment, even.

[Ex-Cop] [ ] Give Him a Generous Deal: Most of the committee members think that the ex-cop, known for physical abuse before the revolution, was the one to throw the first punch. Regardless, you can't separate the fact that a pair of kids came to his home—his prison—to insult him and went right through the security that's supposed to separate Tartarus from the rest of Radiant precisely to avoid revenge attacks (and escapes, but that's not the point tonight). Make him take some anger management courses.

Maybe? Dunno.

Yeah, there's the optics to be considered too. We can't let the man get away scot-free, he still did engage in violence, and the last thing we want is to make heroes out of 2 dumb internet clout chasers by looking "harsh" against them and lenient against the prisoner.

A deal sounds good and rehab should be enough for the ex-cop.

BiopunkOtrera · Jul 20, 2021

[Streamers] [ ] Slap on the Wrist: These two are barely out of their teens. This was a stupid, impulsive decision, and you're sure they're already regretting taking personal matters this far. A stay in hospital to deal with their injuries and a probation watch and there won't be any reoffending.

We shouldn't go hard on people who were mad at one of their relatives getting killed in police custody IMHO.

The Laurent · Jul 20, 2021

Hannz said:
Yeah, there's the optics to be considered too. We can't let the man get away scot-free, he still did engage in violence, and the last thing we want is to make heroes out of 2 dumb internet clout chasers by looking "harsh" against them and lenient against the prisoner.

A deal sounds good and rehab should be enough for the ex-cop.

Though to be fair, considering it involved the death of a close relative at his hands, it was probably not just clout chasing. Oh, it was absolutely clout-chasing as well, mind.

BaseDeltaZero · Jul 20, 2021

Personally, I vote a deal for the teens and maybe anger management but not reduction in leisure supplies for the cop. (So somewhere between options #1 and #2).

More patrols (drone carriers should not be an insane expense and can also carry incident response teams) and geolocation (not spyware, not wiretaps - just monitoring public streams for relevant activity.
If we have recording devices everywhere else in Radiant... are those public operated recording devices or just 'civilian recording devices that could theoretically be subpoenaed/submitted as evidence or whatever our courts have'? If the former, then I see no reason we make a have less security for Tartarus. If the latter... well, perhaps we should consider some kind of connectivity, possibly limited in Tartarus? I think this incident makes public opinion clear enough and Charter loyalists don't actually have mind control powers. Limited external media access, maybe. These would otherwise be subject to the same restrictions as other device (i.e. we can't randomly go through their data).

Speaking of, as much as Tartarus was an appropriate solution in the moment, I would like to avoid creating a permanent prison colony, and preferably do something in the lines of reform where possible? Or are we already doing that? We're probably doing that.
... are we also (temporarily?) sterilizing the inmates?

Cyanblackstone said:
What are you going to do, create a double prison on the exile islands for offenses on Tartarus?

We should probably do this though, for people who commit like, murder? It doesn't need to be life sentences, or anything near like that, but sometimes you need to separate people from the public when they're being... irrational. Or is house arrest sufficiently robust/we imprison them on the mainland?

TheArcanist · Jul 20, 2021

[X][Streamers] Give Them a Deal: These two are barely out of their teens. This was a stupid, impulsive decision based on a personal matter, but one that's had serious consequences. With the promise they'll not do it again, you'll settle for community service, probation, and locking out the plan for their boat.

[X][Ex-Cop] Let Him Go: Regardless of who threw the first punch, it's hard to fault him given the circumstances preceding the fight. It would be unfair to punish him more than, well, already being on Tartarus in the first place. What are you going to do, create a double prison on the exile islands for offenses on Tartarus?

I may not like cops, but even assuming he threw the first punch I don't think we're in any position to punish him for it. A couple of kids broke into his de-facto prison cell with the intent of picking a fight with him. No matter how it started, the fact it was allowed to get to that point means that we failed not only those kids by preventing them from doing something very dumb, but also him for not actually guaranteeing his safety. Like, what if they were coming there with the intent to lynch him instead?

The kids, on the other hand, need some kind of punishment, and it needs to be seen in public. I'm not comfortable with essentially putting them through juvie-lite, but a rigorous slate of community service and some probation will send the message that the ARC is not going to tolerate accosting people we are holding in a prison.

Cyanblackstone · Jul 20, 2021

BaseDeltaZero said:
More patrols (drone carriers should not be an insane expense and can also carry incident response teams) and geolocation (not spyware, not wiretaps - just monitoring public streams for relevant activity.
If we have recording devices everywhere else in Radiant... are those public operated recording devices or just 'civilian recording devices that could theoretically be subpoenaed/submitted as evidence or whatever our courts have'?

Yes.

The ARC inherited a simply ludicrous number of recording devices intended for use in news, commercials, as B-reel footage, reality shows, "real life" livestreams, etc., not even counting the old security apparatuses. People also independently rented or owned their own devices, and more are being made all the time. The system is practically awash in cameras, microphones, and sensors of all kinds. So on the small chance the government doesn't catch anything, they're very much capable of requesting data from others who might have.

BaseDeltaZero · Jul 20, 2021

Cyanblackstone said:
Yes.

The ARC inherited a simply ludicrous number of recording devices intended for use in news, commercials, as B-reel footage, reality shows, "real life" livestreams, etc., not even counting the old security apparatuses. People also independently rented or owned their own devices, and more are being made all the time. The system is practically awash in cameras, microphones, and sensors of all kinds. So on the small chance the government doesn't catch anything, they're very much capable of requesting data from others who might have.

Hmm. Assuming the implication that 'this is generally accepted' is correct, I see no political reason not to expand this to Tartarus, even if I'm not particularly enthusiastic about constant public surveillance. It's much more justified in Tartarus, at least.

Worth some thought, perhaps.

LucidProp · Jul 20, 2021

The Laurent said:
Though to be fair, considering it involved the death of a close relative at his hands, it was probably not just clout chasing. Oh, it was absolutely clout-chasing as well, mind.

I'd say it's 90% clout-chasing. If they truly had a massive grievence they needed to say to their relative's killer, so much so that they broke the law and built a vessel for it, they wouldn't have live-streamed it.

It's similar to those people who live-stream incidents and sad moments for attention. Such things, if they truly cared, are kept behind closed doors where the people involved can sort things out away from the internet's drama-addicted eyes who they knew would eat this up.

They just strike me as very insincere, using the dead as a ladder to fame.

The Laurent · Jul 20, 2021

Hannz said:
I'd say it's 90% clout-chasing. If they truly had a massive grievence they needed to say to their relative's killer, so much so that they broke the law and built a vessel for it, they wouldn't have live-streamed it.

It's similar to those people who live-stream incidents and sad moments for attention. Such things, if they truly cared, are kept behind closed doors where the people involved can sort things out of the internet's drama-addicted eyes.

They just strike me as very insincere, using the dead as a claim to fame.

I don't actually agree, especially if we're talking about a generation so used to being watched at all times that...

Cyanblackstone said:
Yes.

The ARC inherited a simply ludicrous number of recording devices intended for use in news, commercials, as B-reel footage, reality shows, "real life" livestreams, etc., not even counting the old security apparatuses. People also independently rented or owned their own devices, and more are being made all the time. The system is practically awash in cameras, microphones, and sensors of all kinds. So on the small chance the government doesn't catch anything, they're very much capable of requesting data from others who might have.

These are people who have been taught basically from birth to record their whole lives and that at no point will they have any privacy.

Angelform · Jul 20, 2021

Streamers should not get off lightly. They set out with the explicit intent to do harm. While being young and stupid may warrant some leniency, it does not excuse.

The Ex-Cop… while anger management would probably be good for them I don't see the point in anything directly punitive.

For security I think it is worth highlighting "The only place on Radiant without a robust network of recording devices." Radiant does not fear cameras, we just didn't bother to put any on Tartarus. So Mechanical Oversight at least. Probably the guard station too.

On a side note, does anyone know if the Immortality Guarantee extends to prisoners? Particularly those ones that, at least currently, have an indefinite sentence.

The Laurent · Jul 20, 2021

Honestly, I think they set out with an idea that the confrontation would be like a movie in some way. Some sort of catharsis that would solve their inner demons while also looking good on film. They probably didn't expect it to turn into a physical confrontation.

Doesn't make it not monumentally stupid, of course.

BaseDeltaZero · Jul 20, 2021

Hannz said:
It's similar to those people who live-stream incidents and sad moments for attention. Such things, if they truly cared, are kept behind closed doors where the people involved can sort things out away from the internet's drama-addicted eyes who they knew would eat this up.

Or maybe they felt that, for whatever reason, they felt they needed the world to know their grief and to receive its sympathy.
Still 'clout chasing' in a way, but understandable.

Angelform said:
On a side note, does anyone know if the Immortality Guarantee extends to prisoners? Particularly those ones that, at least currently, have an indefinite sentence.

I would assume yes, also including the euthanasia clause.

TheArcanist · Jul 20, 2021

Angelform said:
On a side note, does anyone know if the Immortality Guarantee extends to prisoners? Particularly those ones that, at least currently, have an indefinite sentence.

If it doesn't, I will have to insist that it does. So long as these people are our prisoners, we are responsible for their well-being, and that includes their medical well-being.

DocSpooky · Jul 20, 2021

I'm happy with any of these for the brawlers:

[Streamers] [ ] Throw the Book at Them: The pair built a custom boat to trespass in a sensitive area and did so with the explicit intent to start a fight. They need to reflect seriously on their choices and make amends, and this means a lengthy regime of counseling, community service, and restrictions on printer access, followed by probation to make sure they don't try a repeat.

[Streamers] [] Give Them a Deal: These two are barely out of their teens. This was a stupid, impulsive decision based on a personal matter, but one that's had serious consequences. With the promise they'll not do it again, you'll settle for community service, probation, and locking out the plan for their boat.

[Ex-Cop] [ ] Give Him a Generous Deal: Most of the committee members think that the ex-cop, known for physical abuse before the revolution, was the one to throw the first punch. Regardless, you can't separate the fact that a pair of kids came to his home—his prison—to insult him and went right through the security that's supposed to separate Tartarus from the rest of Radiant precisely to avoid revenge attacks (and escapes, but that's not the point tonight). Make him take some anger management courses.

[Ex-Cop] [ ] Slap on the Wrist: The issue of who started the fight is muddled. The Tartarus resident has a decent case, one that might have let him off in the pre-revolution courts even with an unsympathetic jury. With no available evidence to suggest the precise allocation of fault, relocating him to a new area should avoid a repeat event and cause enough inconvenience to suggest being more circumspect.

As for security, these:

[Security] [ ] More Patrols: You have to close the gaps in your patrolling screen. Additional cutters and helicopters need to be added to move towards a continuous coverage of the security zone perimeter and end the possibility of slipping through the cracks.

[Security] [ ] Local Response Stations: There were no security personnel stationed on the island. In fact, there are only a handful of central bases for supplying the islands and the patrols. Any response to trouble in a minor or outlying island, whether brought in from outside or originating inside Tartarus, has to have personnel travel a significant distance by boat or helicopter. Placing small stations on most islands should provide much better oversight for dealing with minor issues and containing more major ones while help arrives.

Seem fine and I'm not sure what this one actually entails:

[Security] [ ] Mechanical Oversight: The fact you can't simply rely on cameras or other media to give you the truth of the matter has made the committee keenly aware of the fact that Tartarus is the only place on Radiant without a robust network of recording devices, intended to avoid unreliable eyewitness testimony and a legacy of the intense media focus and presence of Radiant's founders and population. This needs remedying.

Pyro Hawk · Jul 20, 2021

Honestly, my thoughts would be that we do need to punish the kids, though likely not throw the book at them. As for the police officer, I like the 'Generous Deal' write-in. It both warns him to try and avoid any escalation like this in the future, whilst also giving him the tools needed to do that de-escalation hopefully.

As for the security improvements... I think that Local Stations is absolutely needed, because now that how weak our security was has been revealed, I think we're going to have to deal with both external, internal and quite possibly foreign disturbances in there. Which is what the local stations help with. As for what comes after, I'm not actually sure.

Mechanical Oversight sounds good considering everyone expects it so isn't thought of as an infringement of liberty... But on the other hand, it makes me think of police state tendencies because we're deliberately having someone watch over these, rather than just looking over them if something happens. Geolocation is something I definitely don't want, as that sort of thing is likely to bring back very bad memories of the Charters whilst also likely being easy to work around if you wanted to. More patrols is more unclear. Something I think would be useful, especially if we take the local stations. But on the other hand, it's likely to be seen as more overtly 'aggressive' policing. Which probably brings back even more bad memories.

LucidProp · Jul 20, 2021

The Laurent said:
I don't actually agree, especially if we're talking about a generation so used to being watched at all times that...

These are people who have been taught basically from birth to record their whole lives and that at no point will they have any privacy.

While true that there is a culture of cameras on Radiant, I'm not so sure that it's so pervasive that everyone livestreams or records 24/7. From the other interludes of daily life that we saw, there wasn't much of a indication that your average citizen actively participates in recording unless it's their job. The assumption seems to be that somewhere, somehow, there's always a camera watching you, but the two still had a choice, livestream it themselves or let some other camera catch it, and they chose the former.

This wasn't a emotional outburst in the heat of the moment, it was deliberate and plotted out.

BaseDeltaZero said:
Or maybe they felt that, for whatever reason, they felt they needed the world to know their grief and to receive its sympathy.
Still 'clout chasing' in a way, but understandable.

It's understandable, but considering the nature of the internet and how using sympathy for clout is so common, I'd still advocate not letting them get away scot-free. We can never truly divine their intentions, but considering the demographic and their actions, we can't divorce clout chasing from it either.

A lot of our people are former Charter employees, some directly or indirectly complicit in perpetuating or ignoring the crimes the Charters commit. That does not mean people are free to harrass them for their past, especially when they're already being punished such as the case with the cop here, or working to redeem themselves like most of our Ares military personnel.

I hope if we choose the rehabilitation program for the ex-cop, we can begin earnestly trying to reform the people in Tartarus. Maybe give them a choice at the end of their rehabilitation if they wish to have a new identity or brave the world with their old face and name.

Diomedea · Jul 20, 2021

[Streamers] [] Give Them a Deal: These two are barely out of their teens. This was a stupid, impulsive decision based on a personal matter, but one that's had serious consequences. With the promise they'll not do it again, you'll settle for community service, probation, and locking out the plan for their boat.

[Ex-Cop] [ ] Give Him a Generous Deal: Most of the committee members think that the ex-cop, known for physical abuse before the revolution, was the one to throw the first punch. Regardless, you can't separate the fact that a pair of kids came to his home—his prison—to insult him and went right through the security that's supposed to separate Tartarus from the rest of Radiant precisely to avoid revenge attacks (and escapes, but that's not the point tonight). Make him take some anger management courses.

I think this is where I'm leaning. I'm not a big fan of retributive justice, so the aim here should be to help everyone involved. Honestly, I'm a little unhappy with the deal option for the streamers, because locking out that particular boat doesn't do much of anything, and they don't need to go to counseling? They clearly have some level of unprocessed grief here. I'd prefer an option with fewer punishments and more counseling.

Something like this?

[Streamers] [] Give Them a Generous Deal: These two are barely out of their teens. This was a stupid, impulsive decision based on a personal matter, but one that's had serious consequences. With the promise they'll not do it again, you'll settle for probation and anger management and grief counseling.

buli-buli · Jul 20, 2021

I would prefer to keep our response balanced. I don't want to be seen as taking sides or making a martyr out of any group. At the same time, we do need to make it clear this sort of BS won't be tolerated.

This is the combo where everyone is wrong. I'm not exactly a fan of it, but I wouldn't be upset if it won. Let's be honest, counseling and anger management would do both parties good, though I'm hesitant at making such measures a punishment.

[Streamers] [ ] Throw the Book at Them: The pair built a custom boat to trespass in a sensitive area and did so with the explicit intent to start a fight. They need to reflect seriously on their choices and make amends, and this means a lengthy regime of counseling, community service, and restrictions on printer access, followed by probation to make sure they don't try a repeat.
[Ex-Cop] [ ] Give Him a Deal: Most of the committee members think that the ex-cop, known for physical abuse before the revolution, was the one to throw the first punch. Regardless, you can't separate the fact that a pair of kids came to his home—his prison—to insult him and went right through the security that's supposed to separate Tartarus from the rest of Radiant precisely to avoid revenge attacks (and escapes, but that's not the point tonight). Make him take some anger management courses and lower his leisure supply allotment for a few weeks and he'll get the point.

The below is my preferred combo. Though it's a close thing. The streamers are punished without making them victims and the ex-cop is moved for his own safety.

[Streamers] [ ] Give Them a Deal: These two are barely out of their teens. This was a stupid, impulsive decision based on a personal matter, but one that's had serious consequences. With the promise they'll not do it again, you'll settle for community service, probation, and locking out the plan for their boat.
[Ex-Cop] [ ] Slap on the Wrist: The issue of who started the fight is muddled. The Tartarus resident has a decent case, one that might have let him off in the pre-revolution courts even with an unsympathetic jury. With no available evidence to suggest the precise allocation of fault, relocating him to a new area should avoid a repeat event and cause enough inconvenience to suggest being more circumspect.

As for security...

[Security] [ ] Local Response Stations: There were no security personnel stationed on the island. In fact, there are only a handful of central bases for supplying the islands and the patrols. Any response to trouble in a minor or outlying island, whether brought in from outside or originating inside Tartarus, has to have personnel travel a significant distance by boat or helicopter. Placing small stations on most islands should provide much better oversight for dealing with minor issues and containing more major ones while help arrives.
[Security] [ ] Mechanical Oversight: The fact you can't simply rely on cameras or other media to give you the truth of the matter has made the committee keenly aware of the fact that Tartarus is the only place on Radiant without a robust network of recording devices, intended to avoid unreliable eyewitness testimony and a legacy of the intense media focus and presence of Radiant's founders and population. This needs remedying.

Dang. We literally just plopped them all on some abandoned islands huh? Cameras are ubiquitous all over the planet. Placing them on Tartarus means we can actually monitor the situation on the island. Maybe provide evidence either way as to how well or poorly the prisoners are treated.
Local Response Stations are another thing that should have always been there just to keep the peace among the prisoners if nothing else, or, heck, if there's a fire or something.

Extra patrols feels like a waste of money and time. Unless we have evidence that people leaving and entering is a problem.

Geolocation Efforts would be helpful, but I OOC have worries about Algorithms. Feels too invasive.

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