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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ScottishMongol · Sep 20, 2021

Hey folks. Finally got caught up on the Quest after a few months, surprised I only missed one or two turns but I guess that's how things go.

clockworkchaos · Sep 22, 2021

[X] Plan Tools for the Revolution
-[X] Focus: SocComm.
-[X] Begin Production Options for SR (can choose two) 20 BR
--[X] [IndComm] Begin SR mining operations on Gaid A-2 (Quality 7)
--[X] [IndComm] Begin SR mining operations on Gaid A-4 (Quality 5)
-[X] [MilComm] Begin construction projects.
--[X] [Small Craft] Cossak-class Frigate: +13 (0/3) (20BR, 12SR, 6E)
--[X] [Small Craft] Cossak-class Frigate: +13 (0/3) (20BR, 12SR, 6E) X2
--[X] [Medium Craft] Great Heathen class cruiser: +13 (0/4 Quarters) (20BR, 15SR, 6E)
-[X] [SciComm] Subvert Hermes-Ishtar Communications Network across Charter Space 5SR and 5E
-[X] [SciComm] Create A Practical Tool for (Social) Revolution 5SR and 2E
-[X] [SocComm] Create All-Five Lions Commission to Dismantle Meritocracy 6E
-[X] [SocComm] Immortality Guarantee: 10+5+26/50=41/50
-[X] [MedComm] Create All-Five Lions Commission to Combat Laning 2BR, 1SR, 2E

Begin SR mining operations on Gaid A-2: Automatic Completion
Begin SR mining operations on Gaid A-4: Automatic Completion
Convert RFS Chinook to a space station: Automatic Completion
Build Orbital Cruiser-sized spacedock: 15+8+1+14/50=38/50
Cossak-class Frigate: Automatic Progress (1/3)
Cossak-class Frigate: Automatic Progress (1/3)
Great Heathen class cruiser: Automatic Progress (1/4 Quarters)
Subvert Hermes-Ishtar Communications Network across Charter Space:
17+5+37/45=59/45
Create A Practical Tool for (Social) Revolution: 20+2+4+01/25=27/25
Create All-Five Lions Commission to Dismantle Meritocracy: 7+8+2+6(overflot)+01/25=18/25
Immortality Guarantee: 10+5+2+26/50=43/50
Create All-Five Lions Commission to Combat Laning: 15+2+25/30=42/30

Total Spending:
82BR, 50SR, 33E

Report to General Congress- Osliam Chain [2254/10/9]

The room is sleek, white and metal with wooden highlights, but nearly unadorned aside from a handful of displays that were currently tuned to show exterior views of the station the room was inside. The main feature of the room -indeed, it's main purpose- was the round table in the middle of the room. A thing of white plastic and glass, it very clearly had recessed compartments that were undoubtedly computer controlled, and atop it was a complicated array of mechanisms that were clearly intended as projectors for audio-visual equipment. Almost certainly capable of volumetric display.

At this moment, the doors to the room open with the quite literally patented Omoikane Swoosh™ to the hallway, which was far more… what one might call generously 'utilitarian' or 'rugged' and four individuals enter. Two men and two women, one man and one woman in the sleek and professional suits common in politicians across human space, one man in casual slacks and a lab coat, and the final member of the quarter was a black-furred augment woman in a black and red military uniform with a red beret tucked under one arm.

The shorter woman, a baseline human with dark skin and darker hair speaks first, "I supposed we best start this meeting off with proper introductions. Kelly Omari, Vice President of Communications and this is Doctor Elian Orr, who is, officially, the CEO of the board. We are representing Ascension." Here she indicates the man beside her. What is visible of his pale skin is sketched in some places with silver, and the black metal of some sort of cybernetic augmentation is visible wrapping around the back of his neck and tapering out on the sides. More strikingly he appears to have augmentations along his ears which extended them in an almost elfin fashion. Add in the lab coat and Dr. Orr is every bit the stereotype of what one would picture in an Omoikane scientist.

"Alexander Hunter, Delegate Representative of the General Congress of the All-Radiant Congress." Alexander says with a diplomatic smile.

"Commodear Shayla Mclean, serving the All-Radiant Congress Navy as Force Commander for the Osliam Chain Campaign." Her smile is not so diplomatic. "And outside is my command craft, CNS Kiel Mutiny."

Doctor Elian Orr raises his eyebrow. "Yes, your ship." His voice is slow, like he is carefully sounding out each syllable.

"One craft, exactly as specified." McLean's stern unmoving professionalism is as direct and confrontational as a fanged predatory grin would have been, and no one in the room could miss it. It is carefully calculated provocation without grounds for complaint.

Before anyone else can speak, a voice comes through the speaker. "Apologies everyone, but before you begin negotiations, would anyone like refreshments? Tea perhaps?" To the side, an image of a middle-aged woman in a traditionally styled Japanese kimono dress comes on.

"Ah, yes, some water would be good." Orr stateds. "Apologies, this is Sakura, the station VI."

"I'm happy to be here and serve you," a voice that is calibrated to be older and less 'chirpy' than many VI's says. A small machine by the side dings, as a water bottle falls out. "Would you like anything else?"

Commodore McLean fractionally shakes her head. "No, thank you. I appreciate the offer."

Hunter strokes his salt and pepper beard. "I'm not opposed to the idea." He looks around the table. "Does anyone have anything they'd recommend?"

Orr moves to take in a breath, but the VI smoothly moves to reply first, "There is a Atlantean Mint and Green Tea blend that many on the station enjoy, often with a dash of honey." Hunter regards the VI thoughtfully as it continues, "If I could also recommend a Social Tea Biscuit, which has also been a station favorite."

Vice President Omari coughs and covers her mouth with her hand. "Uh, yes please, uh, Sakura. That would be delightful."

Hunter nods. "Yes, of course, that does sound delightful."

There is a brief moment of awkward silence where Delegate Hunter catches McLean's eye and gives her a significant look that she returns with disguised confusion before there is a click from the middle of the table and an unadorned tea kettle with a pair of cups and a small plate with small rectangular biscuits smoothly rises up.

"Thank you, Sakura," says the Vice President with a nod. "I think, to start, it would help to make our history. Forgive me if I am mistaken, but are you familiar with the recent incident at Raphanus?" Kelly asked.

McLean kept silent as she watched the room. "No. I'm afraid we are not."

Orr nods and clasps his hands together on the table. "Then I regret to inform you that your mission to remove Charter control of all systems is not compatible with avoiding engagement with the Compact fleet." He pauses for a drink of water. "You may not be aware that, when Captain Ericson brought word of your activities, and the fall of Radiant and Shei to revolts, those in charge did their best to suppress the information."

Omari leans forward. "However, when all warp capable military ships leave the system, it will become clear to a lot of people that there is an opening for a sudden intense radical reform movement."

"Excuse me, ma'am?" Sakura interjects, cutting in suddenly, causing McLean to start and twitch in surprise, ears flicking. "I believe you asked me to remind you about the use of euphemisms."

Omari sighs, as the ghost of a smile flickers across her compatriots' face. "Ah, yes thank you, Sakura." She sighs again and shrugs helplessly at McLean and Hunter. "Apologies, far too many meetings with Raphanus. It's slipping into my everyday speech."

"If you need speech therapy, Ms. Omari, Nurse Agarwal is the acknowledged system-wide expert, helping you to reorder your vocabulary as needed. His fees are reasonable and his service is consistently rated 5 out of 5 stars for the last five years," Sakura cuts in again, at an octave far higher and more cheery than her previous speech.

"Thank you, Sakura," Kelly replies, hurrying along. "To be more exact. We learned about your own sudden independence. Omoikane has a terrible habit of treating its admin and secretarial staff as little more than VI's, and the recordings of their panic quickly entered the famous Voyageur grapevine. When Vice President Mendez left to take command of the situation from Osliam, we had our own revolution. I won't say it was easy, but the majority of the ships and upper security staff were off planet, and it is with no small amount of pride that I say that we were very well coordinated. Even so, we were not able to deal with all the holdouts until nearly a year afterwards.

"I believe that Captain White could tell you more about the space battles, which mainly consisted of attempting to keep elements at Osliam from reinforcing the hold-outs." Pride creeps across Omari's face as she speaks, "My job was to make sure that the Compact fleet in Raphanus did not interfere. At first this was not a major problem. They, bluntly, did not care about Radiant, and when Ericson first came to them, they dismissed him outright. And later dismissed Mendez's own later attempts to rally them to her side." Omari pauses briefly, watching as Hunter and McLean process the contents of her words, "That was, until disaster struck. The workers on the gate construction attempted their own…

"We, unfortunately, only have limited broadcasts. We know they were making demands of the Charters. Whether this was an active revolution, or a strike, just union organizing, or even some sort of bluff is something we still don't know. What does matter is that the Solarian Navy commander, Vice-Admiral David Visser, considered this to be a threat to the gate construction, and so the Solarian Navy intervened. Brutally. They arrested everyone they felt was blocking gate construction and conducted military executions of the ringleaders." She pauses again, watching as Hunter's face becomes grim and McLean's eyes narrow fractionally.

"Afterwards my job became a lot more difficult, and a lot more necessary. What had once been a useful case of arrogance and disinterest, especially by Admiral Visser, became far more active and focused. As such, the Omoikane Corporate Board was 'established', and any hint that we were anything other than a power-grab by mid-level management had to disappear. Thankfully, faking records showing previous mid-level management experience was not difficult. We had a few fake trials and executions and…" Kelly pauses, looking down.

"Sakura?" Doctor Elian Orr asks in his deliberate, careful manner.

"And they were still suspicious," Sakura finishes. "As a final measure, we offered to aid the other Charter colonies after their disasters, supplying tech, parts, resources and labor. We call them six month contracts. They are effectively a lottery draft. While they technically compensate us in script, this far from the chain there is little we can exchange it for, especially with Osliam bottlenecking us. Still, it has kept the Navy's suspicions in check." Alexander does not miss Kelly's tension as Sakura speaks.

Kelly gives her a grateful nod before continuing. "Officially we are a standard corporate board, chosen by shareholders. Technically, this is all true, as every citizen of Ascension is an equal shareholder in the Ascension Corporation. Unofficially, we are a parliamentary republic, with elected officials being given corporate titles. Because of this, we are not necessarily opposed to a non-corporate government. The problem as is, is that we know very little about you. All we know is the propaganda picked up by Thoroughbred during your invasion of Shei and the records we intercepted from Osliam."

Alexander smiles, in his element. "I would be happy to enlighten you."

Kelly pauses, and nods. "I don't think that anything in that, sounds… utterly incompatible with what we've been doing." She turns to her fellow negotiator. Doctor Orr?"

He is still for a moment, before mechanically shaking his head. "No."

Kelly give a quick nod. "Sakura, please run a check."

The face on the screen nods as her background shifts to that of a wall of scroll cases; one of them flies off and hovers in front of her as she produces a pair of glasses. "I do not find any deal-breakers listed, though I would make cautions on articles 1, 3, and 7."

Kelly nods. "Which brings us to this negotiation. As you stated, you are here to remove Charter control from the chain. Though we are not under Charter control, we want to continue our deception. As such our initial request is a peace agreement as well as a possible under-the-table alliance."

Alexander strokes his beard with one hand. "A treaty would need the approval of the General Congress, and while I want to believe you, we have, at this point, only talked with three citizens, two with corporate titles and the third military."

"We recognize that, and are prepared to allow observers to verify what we have told you, as well as election observers." There is a hint, just a hint, of a strain in her voice. "In such a case, we are currently in need of resources, as Ascension was a research center, its limited factories were primarily for creating computer parts, and supporting research projects, not the raw resources and production needed to mass building projects. While we have managed, the combination of our conflict with the loyalists here and in Osliam, as well as the resources we are sell-" She stops herself. "The tribute we give them has left our stockpile barren."

"What we do have is technology, we have cracked several hundred thousand Charter FRM's, and would be prepared to offer those in exchange for raw resources. To be clear, this is not a licensing agreement. Once these keys are in your hands, it would be yours to do with as you wish."

McLean has been across the table at the Ascension negotiators, a look of studious consideration on her as she let her civilian counterpart negotiate. Even so her silence speaks volumes about what she thinks of paying for technology. Alexander does not comment on this as he sips his tea, which has been refilled as needed by an attentive Sakura. "I will convey that offer to the General Congress as well."

"Finally there is one… final possibility. I want to emphasize that any treaty of this type is not under my sole authorization, and exact details would have to be reviewed, but we have been authorized to make a tentative offer of attempted unification with ARC, should it be in our judgment that doing so would not be morally outrageous, practically unviable, or unreasonably dangerous."

"That would not be something impossible. Though I think we will need to find a new name at this point." He chuckles to himself at this. "Do you have a preferred method of integration?"

"Sakura?"

There is, objectively, no need for a digital entity to clear their throat, nonetheless this one does so before launching into an analysis. "The largest burden of such a transition is the governmental systems. While both of us hold democratic elections, we would need to adapt into your more freeform approach, or receive concessions to allow our system to continue. These changes are ones we would need time to do, but we should be able to accomplish on our end. We would also need concessions to address communications lag from our planet to yours, as a five day long communications lag will hurt our voices in a government founded on an assumption of direct, instant, free-form communication between both representatives and those represented.

"The second major area is the distribution system. While we both acknowledge that everyone should have the right to a basic living standard, limited resources have left us with a more tightly controlled rationing system, with limited allowances for personal fabbing. With a reduced need for military production, this should not be impossible, but it does leave strained resources. Between our tribute and that, we would not be able to contribute resources for bigger projects, and would need assistance to implement expansion programs such as your Universal Immortality guarantee.

"Military integration is unlikely to prove as difficult, due to your previous integration experience in such matters and we would almost certainly be folding our ad hoc craft and companies into your standing forces.
"Tech transfer in large quantities may be delayed, due to limited data transfer capacities of the buoys this far out.

"The largest hurdles are the previously noted cautions regarding needed guarantees."

"Guarantees?" Alexander asks.

"There are a few guarantees that are necessary for us." Kelly supplies. "The first is that we are not willing to get into a conflict with the Compact...or more accurately, we recognize that we may not have a choice in that, but if at all possible we want to avoid it. We are not signing a suicide pact, no first strikes on the Compact. If we have to, we think it best to work together to make any war ruinous, but we will not start one if it can be avoided. Thankfully you seem to be interested in avoiding that conflict as well."

"To clarify, what would 'first strike' consist of?" McLean interjected. "Would it only be a direct invasion? If they demand certain ships stand down but do not fire, are we required to give in? What of 'provocation'?"

"We are not requesting that your ships stand down without a fight, but we… would prefer to avoid intentional provocation."

Alexander sips his tea, no disagreement in his heart for such a sensible position. "I see, and the second?"

"No citizen of Ascension can be extradited without the consent of Ascension. We have had enough of Compact judges extraditing others."

"Would this apply to crimes committed against offworld entities, such as your looting of a colony?"

Kelly winces, as Elian speaks, "Yes."

"We are prepared to offer compensation," Kelly speaks quickly. "With your defeat of the loyalists, we can return the station components. Other forms of restitution are up for negotiation. We aren't… unused to people being kept away forcibly for time."

"Well, if you join us, then we would rather be on the bill for it," Alexander adds, amused. "And the third?"

Kelly smiles. "From what you've described, I think this is the easiest. We want an absolute guarantee that all sentient beings are considered full citizens of ARC. With recognized rights, not only including the all time classic hits of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but also basic living, no discriminatory treatment, compulsory labor only by agreement of groups compelled, and the right to reproduce as they wish, regardless of augmentation, uplift, or other status."

Alexander smiles. "I don't think that one will be any problem for us. Personally I hope that we can come to such an agreement, I think we could help your resource problem, and your technology is fascinating. I've never seen a VI as responsive as her. What model is she?"

Had he not been looking for it, Hunter might have missed the slight tension. "She's a NH-RAVI, a near human VI designed for research administration, and to give the impression of humanity for ease of use."

"Better than any other VI on the market. If you want the best spec, you want SiLaTek." Sakura adds in a singsong tone.

"Unfortunately, that may be a rather large problem." Alexander leans back. "McLean?"

McLean twitches her ears in a motion of… something Hunter and the other humans didn't get, and regards Hunter cooly, "You thinking that we have an Inanna situation on our hands?" Alexander nods. McLean's next words are cool, icy, professional. "The All Radiant Congress recognizes the value of all sentients, including AGIs. We have captured a United States of America Class Fleet Carrier in our defeat of the charters at Gaid. Aboard was the NH-MAVI Inanna. Upon examination, we found that she was not a VI, as advertised by your Charter, but a fully sentient AGI, tortured into compliance. We do not accept slavery and torture. Let me be clear, any treaty where she remains a slave is dead on arrival."

"God FUCKING dammit, you mean that entire damn routine was pointless!?" Sakura's avatar's face went from the pleasant expression she'd held the entire time to a red-faced furious annoyance that quickly focused on Dr. Orr. "Also, Doc, shut up. I know it wasn't my fault, and even if it was, I can handle a little failure. I did not go through therapy to get treated like a glass doll."

There is a moment of silence, before Kelly manages to pull her words together enough to speak, looking relieved. "You are correct that Sakura is not a VI, and is instead a full fledged AGI, as well as our third delegate representing the considerable AI populace which is now liberated. However, she is not under any of the 'chaining' programs. We apologize for the deception. Your Sheol propaganda was not focused on AGIs likely due to a lack of them among the population. To be clear, our demands on the rights of sentient beings include all sentient beings, living or computer."

"Also, you should bring Inanna to us. We have the best computer therapy in the galaxy." Sakura added. "Oh… and you've probably got AGIs who knew they were people from the start. I think a lot of us would really want to meet them!"

Industrial Committee Reports:

Begin Production operations for SR

Begin SR mining operations on Gaid A-2 (Quality 7)

Begin SR mining operations on Gaid A-4 (Quality 5)

With Chinook settling down good and proper, it only makes sense to start building some permanent systemside infrastructure to help them along as they're only in the earliest phases of setting up their own logistical system. Sure, they're self-sufficient as it is, but if they want to grow, expand, and become something more than what they are now, they'll need it.

Project Completion: Automatic

Project Result: Increase SR Production Infrastructure to Level 1 on Gaid A-2

Project Result: Increase SR Production Infrastructure to Level 1 on Gaid A-4

-

Convert RFS Chinook to a space station

Chinook has finally fulfilled her original design, and has been converted into a station.

Though the initial intention was that Chinook would be situated above a habitable world or terraforming candidate to support colonization, the Chinook themselves have been drawing up plans for the craft's total conversion into a self-sufficient orbital platform for decades now.

During the conversion process, the Chinook enlisted the aid of Radiant and Five Lions unions and design teams to begin building the basic infrastructure in Gaid to support maintenance and future expansion for the station, and also imported agricultural and biology experts to help them with their plans to restore their aqua- and aero-ponics facilities to full functionality as they take advantage of the wider selection of seeds available on Elysium to begin designing and trialing new permaculture food ecologies.

As far as making Chinook a real home, these people are far more willing to accept cramped spaces than anyone from Elysium and their idea of 'expanded living space' now that they're not in emergency conditions still seems far too small to me. But they seem happy with it, and continue their practice of organizing their living spaces into 'life districts' based on resource distribution and use efficiency.

Also: did I mention future expansion? I did. Because they refitted the station with future expansion in mind. They've got whole plans based on future projected population growth, or increased growth due to immigration. At the moment the selected expansion plan revolves around limited expansion of the station to serve as a main hub, and the building of neighbouring habitats and industrial sites.

While the majority of Chinook's onboard industry is now being spun up to support infrastructure across Gaid, one third has been adapted to building the Chinook's favorite military tool: Switchblades and their attendant drone swarms.

The limited interstellar mobility of these designs can mean only one thing: the Chinook do not plan to leave this system. They are here to stay.

Project Completion: Automatic

Project Results: Gain a space station in Gaid which provides a permanent +2 to all projects and events in that system as well as a military base and the beginnings of permanent settlement. Permanent +3E upkeep.

-

Build Orbital Cruiser-sized spacedock in Shei

Sheol remains laser-focused on their own defense, and are making progress towards building a second cruiser-sized dock. Imagine going from fission-powered nuclear submarines with cruise missiles from 4 centuries ago to modern space vessels the size of a carrier with kinetic rounds. How they're going to even run two of the things is a mystery to me, but damned if they're not pulling it off.

Project Progress: 38/50 (Shei)

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

-

Military Committee Reports

Warcraft Construction:

We can hardly expect Sheolites to take on the burden of building an entire fleet all on their own. We've got enough personnel willing to serve that we could field a navy triple the size we currently have without even trying. We need the hulls to put people in.

Progress:

Cossak-class Frigate: Automatic Progress (1/3)
(Radiant)

Progress has been sure and steady, with no reported issues.

Cossak-class Frigate: Automatic Progress (1/3)
(Radiant)

There was a brief worry that the workers in cradle two were going to go on strike over coordination issues with their MilComm delegate overpromising in the General Congress and trying to use her influence to convince the cradle two workers into conducting some mild overproductivity, but the Orbital Industry Workers' Union stepped in and demanded the recall of the MilComm delegate and the election of a new representative in her place, which solved the problem.

Great Heathen class cruiser: Automatic Progress (1/4 Quarters)
(Shei)

Our first indigenously built cruiser is taking shape on schedule.

Already our workers and naval architects are noting areas where improvements could be made to the design and construction schematics. But as we're still new to the whole military shipbuilding thing, MilComm has decided to wait until the completion of this order of craft until beginning a project to produce a flight of Great Heathens modified to our own specifications.

Projected Results: Gain 2x Cossak-class Frigates, 1x Great Heathen class cruiser

-

Science Committee Reports

Subvert Hermes-Ishtar Communications Network across Charter Space

We've cracked the final ability that was eluding us until now--and we have the HI executives to thank for it! They insisted, in violation of every single cybersecurity protocol, on having a network-wide administrative back door. The network is designed so that local administrators can remotely disable connections anywhere in-system, all from the comfort of their office's quantum encrypted channel. But the HI main office can at any time override local administrators to reactivate connections or even to just collect everyone's metadata. It's impossible to maintain quantum encrypted connections across dozens of solar systems and opening and closing wormholes, which means each and every relay satellite has to act as its own endpoint, making them the obvious target for man-in-the-middle attacks. Yet they've done nothing to obfuscate the hardware function beyond the standard production-grade HI FRM! They're practically running around with their pants around their ankles!

We've managed to identify a zero day exploit to escalate privilege from local administrator to root, and attach the root security certificate--something the main office helpfully sends out on a monthly basis to retrieve every satellite's collected metadata for HI's Network Hygiene Officers to inspect--to any message we send out. A simple garlic routing script lets us piggyback our broadcast on normal traffic, with randomized delays in message passing to frustrate timing analysis. With enough map data, we can estimate how long it will take to saturate the entire network, and time the in-the-clear release of the message to match it, anonymizing the origin point of the broadcast. We've also got it smart enough to self-purge under most investigation or anti-malware programs on the private market, so H-I will need to bring in real specialists, not just local IT contractors, to nail down our code and start tackling the firmware and compatibility ins properly. The only other way to avoid it is to shut down the entire network preemptively, since our signal travels at lightspeed-- and wouldn't that put a dent in their stocks, having to cut off all frontier contacts indefinitely?

Imagine that kick in the teeth!

Project Completion: 59/45

Projected Results: Ability to send unjammable messages across Humanity's entire communications network at a time of our choosing for between several hours to several weeks per system. Once used, H-I will begin attempting to counter with their own project.

-

Create A Practical Tool for (Social) Revolution

Planning the Box itself wasn't too hard.

It was a simple matter of figuring out the smallest, simplest, and most robust blocks and modules that you could print from a normal fabber, including designing some parts that were slightly inefficient in order to be used in multiple ways.

Now the final work begins: deciding which prints are important enough to convert to work directly in the micro-manufacturer and which can be left until the Box builds its bigger brother. Bigger fabricators will get tracked and shut down more often and faster, so it's worth putting in basic defense and avoidance tool prints into the nanofabricator itself. Unfortunately, the small size and need for quick, somewhat clandestine production of the Box have put hard limitations on its throughput and size. It's not just a smaller copy of a normal fabricator. But it's not not a smaller fabricator either.

But which are worth adding? For that matter, which designs aren't going to be prohibitive in time, precision, and materials to build from what's essentially a bootleg mobile printer? It's like asking your car to run supercomputer simulations.

In any event, The Box is ready to go.

Project Progress: 27/25

Projected Results: Create 'The Box' allowing off-the-grid fabbers
Effectiveness of The Box is tied amount of cracked FRM data
The box is snazzy looking as fuck
[Added to GOC-FRM Warez]

-

Social Committee Reports

Create All-Five Lions Commission to Dismantle Meritocracy

Our next step to dismantling the Rhodes "meritocracy" is to implement our own educational systems, to provide the certifications and training that actually does matter for a given profession. Handing out bullshit certs for unimportant filler is all well and good, but there's still plenty of heavy equipment, complex programming, and chemical work that needs proper safety and handling work, and to teach important humanities and general education to a population who has until now been hyperspecialized and intentionally kept ignorant of history and any context beyond that required for their immediate field.

While this industrial vocation training disguised as a comprehensive education was likely a cost cutting measure it did also have the secondary effect of creating students of staggering ignorance of matters outside their field except for what they picked up from the cultural zeitgeist and pop culture. Naturally they were also not taught the intellectual tools necessary to educate themselves or critique their environment.

Rhodes' courses beyond basic elementary school topics like literacy or essential mathematics are so bloated and dependent on rote memorization of approved techniques and systems they're totally useless to us. We've had to rebuild what's essentially an entire high school to technical school and undergraduate education system using Radiant-native programs adapted to Five Lions' unique situation.

Now we have to actually get people into and through our crash courses to prove our way works, and works better. Luckily the Medcom guys finished their bit early and offered to help campaign, so we actually got a good batch of sign-ups at the end).

Project Progress: 24/25 (Project will automatically finish next turn)

Projected Results: Add +10 to the Five Lions Integration project.

-

Immortality Guarantee

We've had to begin upgrading many local healthcare clinics across Radiant, as well as building modern hospital systems across Five Lions, Sheol, and on the Chinook station. Many former doctors and healthcare workers were never intended to administer life-extension treatments or deal with the rare side effects and maintenance afterwards, so we've also had to put together a cadre of those who were to train everyone who wasn't.

Now, we need to build logistical chains of specialty drugs, gene therapies, and nanotechnology to the clinics we've built and come up with a plan to process hundreds of millions of people within the next year, rather than the thousands a month the HI built medical system could handle.

Sora Navarre
MedComm Representative to the Elysian Immortality Commission

Program Progress: 43/50

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

-

Media Committee Reports

Create All-Five Lions Commission to Combat Laneing

It's just parties. Social engagements, public bashes, watch parties, roving squads of entertainers.

It's such a wild idea. And it's been working as our flagship program. And it isn't everything we do. We still have educational programs, we still make certain to mix classes and meetings so that people can meet people from other castes.

But once we had the intellectual grounding down and saw that for a lot of people, who had been badly miseducated, that the reality of Laneing was fake still hadn't landed, we realised that we had to smash down barriers.

And so the Elysians had the brilliant idea of luring all social castes into a bunch of gatherings. To force people to meet.

Or as some would say, to lure people into meeting and getting wildly drunk together.

Of course we also sat down with Union and political party organizations and convinced them to back large gatherings for every occasion. When we expanded the BLG we threw a party to celebrate and demonstrate the equipment. When the first classes started with Paths of Enlightenment, we threw a childrens' party to get kids from all castes to mingle. Every milestone was marked with some sort of event to break down barriers.

I mean, it's not perfect, and now the Commission to Combat Laneing is snidely referred to as the 'Commission to Throw All Night Ragers', and is contributing to some wild stereotypes that Lions and Sheolites have about Elysians, but if it works…

Well, it's certainly a start.

Daniel des Rosiers
Deputy Coordinator for the Commission to Combat Laneing in Five Lions

Project Progress: 42/30

Projected Results: Add 10 progress to Five Lions integration. Expand BLG, Paths of Enlightenment, and other social programs to Five Lions
Half overflow goes to Dismantle

-

Remaining Omake Bonuses:
IndComm:
N/A
MilComm:
N/A
SciComm:
N/A
SocComm:
N/A
MedComm:
Senior_Sarcasm's Streaming Sh*t Service, Upside Down (Show Summary)

From Delegate Alexander Hunter's Report to the General Congress:

Conclusion.

In summary, Ascension has offered friendship freely, and joining Ascension has three major demands for joining. (resummarized)

No first strikes against the Compact without their consent.
No extracting Ascension citizens without a vote by Ascension.
Guarantee of both citizenship rights, and the right to reproduce for all citizens.

How the broadcast figured into the first demand is uncertain, as we cannot ask if it is considered a first strike without revealing its existence. In addition these options were created with limited knowledge of us, and they have indicated a willingness to discuss other options.

[ ] Accept joining demands. Accept the demands of Ascension for joining. If done, Ascension will begin joining ARC. Ascension will begin integrating itself, though projects are available to help this, progress will be made automatically each turn as Ascension works to integrate, and there is no need to take actions. (access to Ascension system, Ascension controlled science die that will become player controlled once further in integration. Take on Ascension's obligations to Compact.)
[ ] Accept peaceful coexistence. Ascension will continue its current deception, the Omoikane Corporate Board. They will allow inspections from ARC to ensure that their elections are democratic, though they do reserve the right to keep military secrets. They are, however, very interested in trade. (Hidden alliance, unlock option to trade resources for Ascension tech, this option will not cost dice to use)
[ ] Accept neither.
[ ] Negotiation: Write in
-[ ] Fallback

If a treaty is reached, then the Osliam main chain event will be considered over, and both dice invested will be available next turn. If you accept neither, your fleet will treat the current Ascension government as a continuation of Charter Rule.

For negotiations, you may make demands or offer alternatives to the treaties given. In such a case, due to the communications lag, you must include a 'fallback' option from one of the other three. This option is the option your diplomats will take if the alternative treaty/demand is not accepted by Ascension. Negotiation Votes without a fallback option included will not be counted.

Jane Dough · Sep 23, 2021

Either accepting Ascension or coexiexieting would be fine.
I see literally no reason to treat them as a continuation if charter rule at this point. Though we may learn things about them later I suppose.

trooperist · Sep 23, 2021

Well that's a surprise. And here I was wondering how we were going to assault, hold, and care for a world who has a population in the millions with our ships that can only transport a few thousand soldiers at a time. But looks like that problem solved itself.

Quite a diverse bunch all the ARC members and potential ARC members are shaping up to be.

If we accept Ascension joining, would we get all their tech without having to trade for it?

Amazing Abzan · Sep 23, 2021

From a purely mechanical perspective, integration seems to be the superior option. Dice are the biggest bottleneck by far, any chance to gain more of them is a big deal.

From an in-universe perspective, it's slightly more complicated. I'd still prefer integration, but it might not actually be possible. Our broadcasting plan seems like it'd be a bridge too far for them, and there's no way we can ditch it at this point. Maybe if we stressed that we see it as a necessary defensive measure... I don't know. They seem pretty scared, and they're very focused on trying to stay under the radar. I doubt that's a viable strategy for them long-term, but they probably don't see it that way.

CuriousRaptor · Sep 23, 2021

Ok option 1 needs a definition of a first strike, is propaganda targeting the abuse of charters or charter methodology as portrayed by the Arc channel a first strike? A red brush can splash a bit of paint on adjacent targets after all. Would not giving up land, or failing to meet an unreasonable compact demand count as a first strike? Would somehow in the future Cracking Compact technology (such as gates), if such a thing be theoretically possible count as a first strike? Would having AGI or Vi snoops on comms array that happens to pick up sensitive information from charters or compact count, etc? Would releasing a trump (like that one action our navy was vehemently against but there was no rule against written) to stall out Ares or HI that could draw compact involvement count as a first strike?

Second also has issues, namely who counts as citizens? I don't see any issue hanging from this but if someone was involved say gentle repose made their home here? That's not great. That needs some definition too. Also what would the vote be for necessary extradition? how many voters, what percentage, etc.

Could we show them the so far gathered list of charter sins, and analysis reports of likely actions of both Compact and Charters? That might make them give some ground on 1 when they see it's very likely that the Charters alone would likely glass their planet simply for possibly being in cahoots.

spiritualatheist · Sep 23, 2021

The broadcast and especially the Box count as a first strike by any reasonable measure, which means that we either need them to drop point one or integration is impossible.

TheArcanist · Sep 23, 2021

I'm leaning towards coexistence. I'm getting a distinct impression that Ascension is quite internally focused and is very much not interested in being involved with the Compact conflict we are hurdling towards(and we're going to have it whether we want to or not). Taking the integration deal means we're committing towards a conciliatory stance towards the Compact and I am not interested in supporting that. They are not interested in negotiating. They will raise a fleet and burn Radiant to the ground the first chance they get. We have to keep any options we deem necessary on the table, up to and including a first-strike use of the Broadcast.

So if they don't want to be directly involved in that, fine. I'm happy with knowing that they're not a dagger in our back. McLean and Hunter's expedition is complete either way, as far as I'm concerned.

Derpmind · Sep 23, 2021

clockworkchaos said:
Create All-Five Lions Commission to Dismantle Meritocracy: 7+8+2+6(overflot)+01/25=18/25

This should be 24/25, not 18/25.

clockworkchaos said:
We would also need concessions to address communications lag from our planet to yours, as a five day long communications lag will hurt our voices in a government founded on an assumption of direct, instant, free-form communication between both representatives and those represented.

We do happen to have a research project for this. If we'll ever get around to it...

clockworkchaos said:
The box is snazzy looking as fuck

A very lucky natural 20 means The Box is significantly fashionable, in addition to completing in one turn.

clockworkchaos said:
With enough map data, we can estimate how long it will take to saturate the entire network, and time the in-the-clear release of the message to match it, anonymizing the origin point of the broadcast.

Being able to make the broadcast anonymous? Now that sounds interesting. However, both the Showcase Us and the Document Charter Abuse sections of the planned broadcast fairly obviously point their fingers directly at us. The broadcast would be significantly ess effective without those. (Or with some weird half-measure to try to anonymize that information.) But it'd also be super-duper safer for us and all our citizens if we didn't post a giant "shoot me" sign.

clockworkchaos said:
'Commission to Throw All Night Ragers'

What was it Abraham Lincoln said? "Be excellent to each other, and party on dudes!"

clockworkchaos said:
If you accept neither, your fleet will treat the current Ascension government as a continuation of Charter Rule.

I would like to avoid a completely unnecessary invasion, thanks.

On the vote, I'm really in favor of just accepting the demands as-is. The advantages of accepting are really, really big. Ascension's making a massively advantageous offer here. The only point of contention I can see is if the broadcast would count as a first strike against the Charters, but I'm not that interested in trying some overcomplicated negotiation plan there. And with the possibility of an anonymous broadcast, I don't see it being impossible to convince Ascension to go along with it.

Cassiemouse · Sep 23, 2021

I think we should agree to integration, build up our technological, industrial and military base as much as possible while we send a diplomat to Sol to try to arrange a deal to keep them off our backs. If the deal falls through then we hit the Broadcast button but I would at least like to try diplomacy before we set the galaxy on fire. In the mean time we can work on sharpening our propaganda efforts and creating an organization to catch Charter spies in our worlds because that will be the main way they try to threat us in the near future.

Joppe · Sep 23, 2021

We could just tell the Ascension that we believe HI is already working towards manufacturing consent for an invasion and we already commited to a course of action which will reduce chance of Compact intervention while eventually forcing Charters to divide their attention, at the expense of almost certainly provoking a large retaliation strike from the Charters. They can either help us or let us do it on our own.

TheArcanist · Sep 23, 2021

Joppe said:
We could just tell the Ascension that we believe HI is already working towards manufacturing consent for an invasion and we already commited to a course of action which will reduce chance of Compact intervention while eventually forcing Charters to divide their attention, at the expense of almost certainly provoking a large retaliation strike from the Charters. They can either help us or let us do it on our own.

"Hey, wanna join us? We're about to be invaded!" is not a sterling pitch for an alliance

spiritualatheist · Sep 23, 2021

Cassiemouse said:
I think we should agree to integration, build up our technological, industrial and military base as much as possible while we send a diplomat to Sol to try to arrange a deal to keep them off our backs and step up our propaganda efforts on surrounding systems. If the deal falls through then we hit the Broadcast button but I would at least like to try diplomacy before we set the galaxy on fire.

Why tho? The Charters and the Compact are an incredibly evil regime that has built it's foundation on the misery of countless billions. The goal of the revolution should not be simply the preservation of Radiant as a city on a hill, but the overthrow of the entire rotten system. Revolution will inevitably be a messy, bloody affair, but allowing the status quo to continue when we have the power to stop it is absolutely intolerable.

Derpmind · Sep 23, 2021

spiritualatheist said:
Why tho? The Charters and the Compact are an incredibly evil regime that has built it's foundation on the misery of countless billions. The goal of the revolution should not be simply the preservation of Radiant as a city on a hill, but the overthrow of the entire rotten system. Revolution will inevitably be a messy, bloody affair, but allowing the status quo to continue when we have the power to stop it is absolutely intolerable.

That doesn't mean we should make the revolution a suicide pact. Any obligation to do a revolution isn't also an obligation to sacrifice the ARC in the process. If there's a way to do the broadcast without directing every Charter fleet to our doorstep, we should do so. (Such as the update mentioning the possibility of an anonymous origin for the broadcast.)

Jane Dough · Sep 23, 2021

TheArcanist said:
"Hey, wanna join us? We're about to be invaded!" is not a sterling pitch for an alliance

To be fair, It's really more: "Hey wanna join us? We're about to be invaded and you'll be next!"

Tatbee · Sep 23, 2021

clockworkchaos said:
"There are a few guarantees that are necessary for us." Kelly supplies. "The first is that we are not willing to get into a conflict with the Compact...or more accurately, we recognize that we may not have a choice in that, but if at all possible we want to avoid it. We are not signing a suicide pact, no first strikes on the Compact. If we have to, we think it best to work together to make any war ruinous, but we will not start one if it can be avoided. Thankfully you seem to be interested in avoiding that conflict as well."

"To clarify, what would 'first strike' consist of?" McLean interjected. "Would it only be a direct invasion? If they demand certain ships stand down but do not fire, are we required to give in? What of 'provocation'?"

"We are not requesting that your ships stand down without a fight, but we… would prefer to avoid intentional provocation."

No first strikes, or intentional provocation, against the Compact.

They make no mention of first strikes, or intentional provocation, against the Charters.

Our HI-hack broadcast will be fine, as long as it only decrys the Charters, and either ignores or supports the Compact.

That seems easily doable.

Derpmind · Sep 23, 2021

Tatbee said:
No first strikes, or intentional provocation, against the Compact.

They make no mention of first strikes, or intentional provocation, against the Charters.

Our HI-hack broadcast will be fine, as long as it only decrys the Charters, and either ignores or supports the Compact.

That seems easily doable.

That sounds... technically correct. Somehow I don't think Ascension would see it that way, though.

Cassiemouse · Sep 23, 2021

spiritualatheist said:
Why tho? The Charters and the Compact are an incredibly evil regime that has built it's foundation on the misery of countless billions. The goal of the revolution should not be simply the preservation of Radiant as a city on a hill, but the overthrow of the entire rotten system. Revolution will inevitably be a messy, bloody affair, but allowing the status quo to continue when we have the power to stop it is absolutely intolerable.

Sure, they are very awful but we don't become better by dismissing diplomacy outright. We should present our demands and offer a deal. They can choose to take the deal or not and then everyone knows where they stand. Going full steam on belligerent aggression without a thought for diplomacy is really not ethical at all.

spiritualatheist · Sep 23, 2021

Tatbee said:
No first strikes, or intentional provocation, against the Compact.

They make no mention of first strikes, or intentional provocation, against the Charters.

Our HI-hack broadcast will be fine, as long as it only decrys the Charters, and either ignores or supports the Compact.

That seems easily doable.

Thats not going to work. The box is going to rip the beating heart out of the Compact's economy: their rent-seeking. It is an act of economic warfare by any reasonable definition.

Cassiemouse said:
Sure, they are very awful but we don't become better by dismissing diplomacy outright. We should present our demands and offer a deal. They can choose to take the deal or not and then everyone knows where they stand. Going full steam on belligerent aggression without a thought for diplomacy is really not ethical at all.

Our demands are nothing less than the destruction of capitalism itself. There is no chance whatsoever that they would ever agree to them, and negotiation is not axiomatically ethical. To negotiate now, to leave our brothers and sisters in bondage when we can free them from the tyranny of capitalism is, in fact, profoundly unethical.

Tatbee · Sep 23, 2021

Derpmind said:
That sounds... technically correct. Somehow I don't think Ascension would see it that way, though.

We only have to be technically correct, right up until Ascension signs the deal.

At that point they're ARC members, and can freely vote/lobby/protest in Congress, to not send the HI-hack broadcast.

If they didn't want to oppose the Charters, they should have said so.

Godwinson · Sep 23, 2021

Ascension's worries largely come down to having a Compact Naval force on their doorstep -- do we know how much longer they're going to be around? Do we know how much they're extorting from Ascension?

Pyro Hawk · Sep 23, 2021

Derpmind said:
Being able to make the broadcast anonymous? Now that sounds interesting. However, both the Showcase Us and the Document Charter Abuse sections of the planned broadcast fairly obviously point their fingers directly at us. The broadcast would be significantly ess effective without those. (Or with some weird half-measure to try to anonymize that information.) But it'd also be super-duper safer for us and all our citizens if we didn't post a giant "shoot me" sign.

Honestly, considering the other things that have been discussed... I think we really need to truly think of the Broadcast as consisting of two separate parts. The first, most dangerous and controversial part is giving everyone The Box and all the cracked FRMs they need to pull off a revolution and build a society. This is widely seen as what's going to cripple the Charters and get the Compact involved in the war against us.

However the second part is the Showcase Us. And whilst we're planning on releasing that in the broadcast... It's not as incendiary as the first part. What I'm wondering is if perhaps we can do two phases of things. The first phase is to release the Showcase Us once our existence becomes known to the Compact without triggering the Broadcast. Aka just to Earth and the Daughters. And then we push the diplomacy war hard. Make it seem like we are happy with the Compact (which admittedly, we are of it's ideals, just not the reality) whilst we're very against the Charters because they've oppressed us and done everything they can to deny us what we should have as Compact citizens. Wait, we are Compact Citizens as human beings with access to things like Immortality and basic lifestyle guarantees, yes? Huh, we're not Compact Citizens? And citizens aren't guaranteed immortality or basic lifestyle guarantees? But... We were able to pull those off without too much build up once the Charters were no longer holding us back...

In the meantime, we keep the broadcast in reserve for when it becomes clear that the Charters, and the Compact, is going to war to crush us. Because I do find it unlikely there's not at least one more major war ahead of us. All the while we make sure that the discussion of going to war to crush us is loud. That is when we fire off the anonymized broadcast. A broadcast that uses what we've already released to the Compact's public sphere of Showcase Us but not anything that's provably only possible to come from us for further Showcase Us content whilst still having the full Revolution in a Box part. So it's got The Box, it's got the cracked FRMs and it's got what's publicly known of how much we've flourished since kicking out the Charters. All the while trying to be good Compact citizens.

But then the Charters and the Compact decided they were going to go to war with us. However there was someone around who couldn't stand that, and had been cracking FRMs to help with revolts. Did they have our help? Probably. But consider that Earth and the Daughters are supposedly frequently rocked by Black Summers. So there might just be sufficient doubt cast to make us no longer Priority Number One to crush. Instead they want to ensure that their own territory is secure, all the while the frontier goes up in flames. Once they've secured their own backyard, are they going to prioritize us who are a known hardpoint, or the weaker revolts that are likely to still be fragmented and all over the place? Well, that's up to how good the PR war has gone for us versus them.

Krall · Sep 23, 2021

Cassiemouse said:
I think we should agree to integration, build up our technological, industrial and military base as much as possible while we send a diplomat to Sol to try to arrange a deal to keep them off our backs. If the deal falls through then we hit the Broadcast button but I would at least like to try diplomacy before we set the galaxy on fire. In the mean time we can work on sharpening our propaganda efforts and creating an organization to catch Charter spies in our worlds because that will be the main way they try to threat us in the near future.

Agreed 100%.

Derpmind said:
That doesn't mean we should make the revolution a suicide pact. Any obligation to do a revolution isn't also an obligation to sacrifice the ARC in the process. If there's a way to do the broadcast without directing every Charter fleet to our doorstep, we should do so. (Such as the update mentioning the possibility of an anonymous origin for the broadcast.)

Did the update say that? I re-read that section but didn't see it, but it seems reasonable. Though I'm not sure it'd help much if we're including propaganda about the ARC specifically.

Tatbee said:
No first strikes, or intentional provocation, against the Compact.

They make no mention of first strikes, or intentional provocation, against the Charters.

Our HI-hack broadcast will be fine, as long as it only decrys the Charters, and either ignores or supports the Compact.

That seems easily doable.

Also agreed 100%. There's been some discussion on the Discord and I proposed trying to drive some sort of wedge between the Charters and the Compact, then taking out the Charters and liberating the Frontier, before moving to overthrow the whole capitalist neoliberal order. It might be doable, if diplomacy with Sol goes well?

Tatbee said:
We only have to be technically correct, right up until Ascension signs the deal.

At that point they're ARC members, and can freely vote/lobby/protest in Congress, to not send the HI-hack broadcast.

If they didn't want to oppose the Charters, they should have said so.

I think they definitely want to oppose the Charters. They're just worried about provoking the Compact. They don't necessarily like the Compact either - they're just scared of them.

Godwinson said:
Ascension's worries largely come down to having a Compact Naval force on their doorstep -- do we know how much longer they're going to be around? Do we know how much they're extorting from Ascension?

Gooood question. Releasing the full broadcast when they're in our backyard might not be ideal, considering they probably could wipe the floor with us. I was kind hoping they'd be gone by now...

Godwinson · Sep 23, 2021

Considering that we've learned that the Compact Navy fleet past Ascension is quite willing to engage in summary executions against 'anarchists', I think we might need to re-examine the Broadcast including a "focus on us" element at all. We might need the protection that plausible deniability would give us.

spiritualatheist · Sep 23, 2021

Pyro Hawk said:
Honestly, considering the other things that have been discussed... I think we really need to truly think of the Broadcast as consisting of two separate parts. The first, most dangerous and controversial part is giving everyone The Box and all the cracked FRMs they need to pull off a revolution and build a society. This is widely seen as what's going to cripple the Charters and get the Compact involved in the war against us.

However the second part is the Showcase Us. And whilst we're planning on releasing that in the broadcast... It's not as incendiary as the first part. What I'm wondering is if perhaps we can do two phases of things. The first phase is to release the Showcase Us once our existence becomes known to the Compact without triggering the Broadcast. Aka just to Earth and the Daughters. And then we push the diplomacy war hard. Make it seem like we are happy with the Compact (which admittedly, we are of it's ideals, just not the reality) whilst we're very against the Charters because they've oppressed us and done everything they can to deny us what we should have as Compact citizens. Wait, we are Compact Citizens as human beings with access to things like Immortality and basic lifestyle guarantees, yes? Huh, we're not Compact Citizens? And citizens aren't guaranteed immortality or basic lifestyle guarantees? But... We were able to pull those off without too much build up once the Charters were no longer holding us back...

In the meantime, we keep the broadcast in reserve for when it becomes clear that the Charters, and the Compact, is going to war to crush us. Because I do find it unlikely there's not at least one more major war ahead of us. All the while we make sure that the discussion of going to war to crush us is loud. That is when we fire off the anonymized broadcast. A broadcast that uses what we've already released to the Compact's public sphere of Showcase Us but not anything that's provably only possible to come from us for further Showcase Us content whilst still having the full Revolution in a Box part. So it's got The Box, it's got the cracked FRMs and it's got what's publicly known of how much we've flourished since kicking out the Charters. All the while trying to be good Compact citizens.

But then the Charters and the Compact decided they were going to go to war with us. However there was someone around who couldn't stand that, and had been cracking FRMs to help with revolts. Did they have our help? Probably. But consider that Earth and the Daughters are supposedly frequently rocked by Black Summers. So there might just be sufficient doubt cast to make us no longer Priority Number One to crush. Instead they want to ensure that their own territory is secure, all the while the frontier goes up in flames. Once they've secured their own backyard, are they going to prioritize us who are a known hardpoint, or the weaker revolts that are likely to still be fragmented and all over the place? Well, that's up to how good the PR war has gone for us versus them.

The issue with all this is that we have no realistic way to release our showcase or documentation of Charter abuses without the broadcast;
Charter media (which is basically all of it) is going to just not run our stuff. We aren't going to win a conventional propaganda war against HI, not when they have so many more resources and infrastructure. There is no unbiased media, and all of it will be manufacturing consent. If we do use the broadcast, then we've shot our bolt and the charters can take steps to prevent us from sending the box.

Edit: we are Cuba with no USSR, and the Compact is the US. Alternatively, we are Iran during the hostage crisis. Then think about how either of those nations could win a propaganda war with the US and you've got the basic idea. We can only win the war of words by bypassing the government and media and appealing to the people directly.

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