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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Redshirt Army · Apr 11, 2022

Some major additions to the map. If you want to submit a system, the window of opportunity is closing fast - only 11 more systems are left to be filled.

Redshirt Army said:

Godwinson · Apr 11, 2022

Redshirt Army said:
Some major additions to the map. If you want to submit a system, the window of opportunity is closing fast - only 11 more systems are left to be filled.

Looking at the map, our Stellaris run is going solidly, and while the lack of any contacts is a bit odd, it does mean we've got a lot of space to build up in!

ExNihilo · Apr 11, 2022

Godwinson said:
Looking at the map, our Stellaris run is going solidly, and while the lack of any contacts is a bit odd, it does mean we've got a lot of space to build up in!

If we're doing a Stellaris metaphor, is the Compact a non-Megacorp-DLC polity with Corporate Dominion, or is it like the leader of a low-centralizarion Federation also containing a couple of megacorp polities, one of which we rebelled from?

Godwinson · Apr 11, 2022

ExNihilo said:
If we're doing a Stellaris metaphor, is the Compact a non-Megacorp-DLC polity with Corporate Dominion, or is it like the leader of a low-centralizarion Federation also containing a couple of megacorp polities, one of which we rebelled from?

"~~Nanomachines~~ Mods, son!"

masterofmadness · Apr 11, 2022

#GalacticSurvey

"Listen this place is a sick joke, but it is a sick joke where we can honestly make sharks with Lazer beams and use it on someone."
- Cernunnos scientists explaining Xoa to a new hire.

Map Designation: FT- 9
System Name: Toqam
Political Status: Charter Economic Zone
Charter Presence: Ares-Cernunnos joint partnership
System Population: 12,000 permanent residents, up to 50,000 depending on 'deployments'
System Bodies:
1- Tidally locked planet
2- Xoa, Terrestrial world
3- Asteriod belt
4- Jovian
5- Ice Planet.

Notable Features:
Xoa- Terraformed planet dotted with various bases and specimen storage facilities for various warbeast "tests" and "training".

Xoa Observatory Station- Space station in orbit of Xoa which provide the various facilities and labs needed for the stations permanent resident who need to be kept safe.

System History:
Toqam was initially founded with an ambitious and dangerous purpose in mind, experimentation on the creation of custom warbeast for Ares in partnership with Cernunnos. While it began as a serious endeavor in initial purpose did not prove practical for long. While some initial warbeast were created did prove useful in battlefield rolls none were ever able to match the performance or comparative cost of drones in the same rolls. The time spent truly trying to make viable warbeast for deployment proved very brief as the project was soon shook to collapse by events in the Cronus system.

With the quarantine of the system widespread fear arose that Xoa might potentially create some new biological disaster almost lead the Compact and Solnav shut down the project. However, Charter resistance at the idea of them being forced to shut down kept it open though in practice neutered. The Charters agreed to a backroom deal to not actually try to make any new serious effort warbeasts and agreed to stringent regulation to ensure nothing created could breed true were put in place and the project officially stayed open.

From then on Xoa served a new purpose, punishment detail.

Despite being totally impractical from a fiscal perspective the project remains so that various 'test' and 'training' of warbeast can occur on troops reassigned there by Ares commanders to force them to fight whatever creation is being 'tested'. It also serves as something of a playground for the more eccentric of Cernunnos scientist who wish to act out their maddest fantasies by making impractical monsters or a place for similar punishment detail taking care or planet side specimens. Deployment orders for new arrival often contain carefully wording to signal about in what state they with for those sent to come back if at all.

Ares enlisted quickly get used to threats by officer to send them to Xoa if they step out of line and some who have actually done so take great joy in watching footage of the fights. Some even go through the heavily regulated process of buying warbeasts in question as pets that must be kept under lock and key at all times. This provides a small trickle of income for the system but overall it function due to the desire of Ares officer to have such a place exist.

CyberFemme · Apr 11, 2022

masterofmadness said:
#GalacticSurvey

"Listen this place is a sick joke, but it is a sick joke where we can honestly make sharks with Lazer beams and use it on someone."
- Cernunnos scientists explaining Xoa to a new hire.

Map Designation: FT- 9
System Name: Toqam
Political Status: Charter Economic Zone
Charter Presence: Ares-Cernunnos joint partnership
System Population: 12,000 permanent residents, up to 50,000 depending on 'deployments'
System Bodies:
1- Tidally locked planet
2- Xoa, Terrestrial world
3- Asteriod belt
4- Jovian
5- Ice Planet.

Notable Features:
Xoa- Terraformed planet dotted with various bases and specimen storage facilities for various warbeast "tests" and "training".

Xoa Observatory Station- Space station in orbit of Xoa which provide the various facilities and labs needed for the stations permanent resident who need to be kept safe.

System History:
Toqam was initially founded with an ambitious and dangerous purpose in mind, experimentation on the creation of custom warbeast for Ares in partnership with Cernunnos. While it began as a serious endeavor in initial purpose did not prove practical for long. While some initial warbeast were created did prove useful in battlefield rolls none were ever able to match the performance or comparative cost of drones in the same rolls. The time spent truly trying to make viable warbeast for deployment proved very brief as the project was soon shook to collapse by events in the Cronus system.

With the quarantine of the system widespread fear arose that Xoa might potentially create some new biological disaster almost lead the Compact and Solnav shut down the project. However, Charter resistance at the idea of them being forced to shut down kept it open though in practice neutered. The Charters agreed to a backroom deal to not actually try to make any new serious effort warbeasts and agreed to stringent regulation to ensure nothing created could breed true were put in place and the project officially stayed open.

From then on Xoa served a new purpose, punishment detail.

Despite being totally impractical from a fiscal perspective the project remains so that various 'test' and 'training' of warbeast can occur on troops reassigned there by Ares commanders to force them to fight whatever creation is being 'tested'. It also serves as something of a playground for the more eccentric of Cernunnos scientist who wish to act out their maddest fantasies by making impractical monsters or a place for similar punishment detail taking care or planet side specimens. Deployment orders for new arrival often contain carefully wording to signal about in what state they with for those sent to come back if at all.

Ares enlisted quickly get used to threats by officer to send them to Xoa if they step out of line and some who have actually done so take great joy in watching footage of the fights. Some even go through the heavily regulated process of buying warbeasts in question as pets that must be kept under lock and key at all times. This provides a small trickle of income for the system but overall it function due to the desire of Ares officer to have such a place exist.

Ah, the animal cruelty planet.

Tatbee · Apr 11, 2022

These aren't complete system submissions, more writing prompts and ideas.

Feel free to expand on, or adopt them, if anyone wants to.

#GalacticSurvey

System Name: JacHAL (Jackal)
Political System: ???
Charter Presence: Omoikane and Cernnunos

Bridging the gap between AGI and human.

Significant AGI population, a center for AGI rights-groups.
Humans and Augments, with cranial implants, can "JacH-in" to cyberspace.

The cranial implant was the result of entirely ethical research... honest...
[insert Charter horror story here]

#GalacticSurvey

System Name: Exclave
+
System Name: Exodus
Political System: Charter Economic Zone
Charter Presence: Omoikane

To boldy go... somewhere else.

Decades ago, Omoikane scientists detected a distant star system with what appeared to be wormhole jump points, but displaying odd characteristics.
They theorised this newly discovered system, was not, in fact, connected to the known gate network, but a separate isolated network of jump points.

Omoikane succesfully bid for the nearest system, in real space.
Since then, a wide variety of colony ships have launched from Exodus, at STL speeds, leaving a trail of comm relays in their wake.
The first ship is believed to have reached their destination, the Exclave system, already.
Omoikane expects the first one-way communication to arrive "soon".

masterofmadness · Apr 11, 2022

CyberEnby said:
Ah, the animal cruelty planet.

Yep! to everything on 2,4 or however many legs you want on it! You want to see someone fight a baboon who shits TNT? Not sure if it is possible but we will try and let you laugh at the poor bastard who is 'testing' it.

Elero · Apr 11, 2022

#GalacticSurvey

Map Designation: FT-25 (Or any other empty system)
System Name: Prelude
Political Status: Charter Economic Zone
Charter Presence: System owned by a Cern subsidy, Eterno-Life
System Population: ~150 workers, ~80'000 people in permanent cryogenic stasis

System Bodies:
A smattering of asteroids and comets, no notable planets

Notable Features:
Pearl: A major space station housing tens of thousands of cryopods and a small number of technicians and nurses to look after their health and the station's upkeep. The majority of the station is permanently kept at extremely low temperatures. Named after the 'Pearly Gates of Heaven'.

System History:
The history of the Prelude system is really the history of the Eterno-Life Cryostasis Company. Eterno-Life was initially established as an independent company in the early days of the Compact, just as the first immortality treatments were beginning to surface, but before they truly hit the market. Many aging managers saw reports that 'Immortality will be here in 20 years', but feared they might die before that point. That is where Eterno-Life stepped in with their experimental cryostasis technology, using the exorbitant rates charged of those early adopters to perfect their patents on human cryostasis. The technology never gained widespread acceptance due to early issues, but a few thousand people successfully waited out the perfection of immortality in Eterno-Life pods.

A few decades later, when immortality was commercially available but at extreme prices, Eterno-Life acquired an entirely new customer base: Middle-managers that were relatively wealthy but could not quite afford the exorbitant immortality prices. With Eterno-Life having a proven track record, and wrongly believing that immortality would get cheaper as the technology matured, many more people signed up with the company under the following terms:

They would liquidate all their assets, transferring them into an investment fund managed by Eterno-Life, and then be frozen in an Eterno-Life pod. Over time, the natural growth of their investment (minus a reasonable management fee and all cryopod upkeep costs) would lead to them owning enough assets to afford immortality treatment, at which point the customer would be awoken and withdraw their funds from the fund.

However, immortality treatment never did reduce in price quite as expected, plateauing or even increasing in price. On top of that, several stock market crashes and bad investments by the fund ruined decades of wealth growth. The end result were thousands of people in Eterno-Life's care that expected to be frozen for a few decades, but had spent over a century on ice.

Eterno-Life was bought out by Cern when constant bad press caused their stocks to crater, the Charter mostly aiming to acquire the cryostasis patents the company had been hoarding. However, they still had a contractual obligation towards the tens of thousands frozen in Eterno-Life pods and the investment fund fees continued to turn a tidy profit, so the company and their cryopods were shifted to a system as far away from the core and its investigative journalists as possible.

In recent years, Eterno-Life management has sought new income sources to try and rise out of a perceived dead-end posting: They began to sell more short-term cryostasis stays under a new brand name. Under the new scheme, people with some passive income are frozen for a few decades at a time, allowing their investments and pensions to accumulate enough for a year or two of immortality-treatment before they go back to cryosleep for another decade, stretching out their life. Other customers are 'hodlers' and cryptoenthusiasts, aiming to skip ahead a few decades to when their 'investments' will pay off.

Persistent rumours about grift, insider trading and failing cryopods could never be substantiated, but continue to hound Eterno-Life. Some even claim that many of the company's oldest customers are long-dead, their pods containing nothing but corpses whose investment funds continue to fill the company's coffers.

clockworkchaos · Apr 11, 2022

Amorous Intent said:
Ironically, I did invent ~~the anti-fanfic regime~~ the public sector being auctioned off and the copyright violation death penalty whole cloth, as reasonable extrapolations of what continued campaigns of increased control could look like after enough iterations. Reality just found a way to disappoint me further.

Edit: So, apparently I lied! It was @clockworkchaos who invented the anti-fanfic thing! It's just been so damn long everything's blended together, and I'd somehow forgotten who had invented the particulars of which bits of Tyrants copyright law. This is so fucking embarrassing.

It isn't a lie, just a mistake.

Graf Tzarogy · Apr 11, 2022

#GalacticSurvey

"Creation without Constraint" – ad-motto for Muse

Map Designation: FT-26
System Name: Nai Gu
Political Status: Charter Economic Zone
Charter Presence: Hermes-Ishtar
System Population: 8000 workers, security staff, guests and "guests".

System Bodies:

1 – Protoplanetary Disk
1a - Muse

Notable Features:
Muse: A large, luxurious habitat, built to resemble the finest fin-de-siecle hotels. Extremely thorough security features.

System History:
There was a man from Hermes-Ishtar,
For the sake of art, the travelled far,
His ego was huge, the old crankcase,
So, he built a manor in deepest space.

A grand hotel at the end of time,
For thinking, painting, to drink, to whine,
An army of bellboys, endless food,
The basics for genius to extrude.

This peace was broken by the Godhead,
Headquarters cried "you're in the red!",
So, to pay the necessary bail,
The station was made a splendid jail.

If you dreamed a dream too bold, too bright,
Of liberty and the people's might,
Off to Muse for the rest of your days,
A gilded cage, all expenses paid.

Your works are owned by Hermes-Ishtar,
So come and visit this happy star,
Stay as long as you need or you should,
Here's a place you will be understood.

AN: A nice vacation home for artists.

The Laurent · Apr 11, 2022

Graf Tzarogy said:
#GalacticSurvey

"Creation without Constraint" – ad-motto for Muse

Map Designation: FT-26
System Name: Nai Gu
Political Status: Charter Economic Zone
Charter Presence: Hermes-Ishtar
System Population: 8000 workers, security staff, guests and "guests".

System Bodies:

1 – Protoplanetary Disk
1a - Muse

Notable Features:
Muse: A large, luxurious habitat, built to resemble the finest fin-de-siecle hotels. Extremely thorough security features.

System History:
There was a man from Hermes-Ishtar,
For the sake of art, the travelled far,
His ego was huge, the old crankcase,
So, he built a manor in deepest space.

A grand hotel at the end of time,
For thinking, painting, to drink, to whine,
An army of bellboys, endless food,
The basics for genius to extrude.

This peace was broken by the Godhead,
Headquarters cried "you're in the red!",
So, to pay the necessary bail,
The station was made a splendid jail.

If you dreamed a dream too bold, too bright,
Of liberty and the people's might,
Off to Muse for the rest of your days,
A gilded cage, all expenses paid.

Your works are owned by Hermes-Ishtar,
So come and visit this happy star,
Stay as long as you need or you should,
Here's a place you will be understood.

AN: A nice vacation home for artists.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy

Jane Dough · Apr 11, 2022

What if some the warheads are actually intelligent. We could get them to join up! Wouldn't it be great!
(Deathclaw gf! deathclaw gf!)

AKuz · Apr 11, 2022

The State of Your Sol: "Dreams"

Somewhere in the shadow of Atlanta...

He awakens for the third time that night.

Jeremy isn't sure if it's the stims he's on to try and take the edge off of his back-to-back shifts or something else, but once again he hefts himself out of his ramshackle bed and groans. He has another shift in a few hours but it's clear now that he isn't getting any more sleep tonight - so he might as well make the most of it and try to burn off all of this anxious energy.

It's been happening for a while now. Every couple of weeks or so he'd find it nearly impossible to fall asleep, despite his normally intense work schedule draining him of any energy. There weren't exactly many accredited nurses in the decaying corpse of Atlanta, but he was able to scrounge together a brief consultation with a back-alley fixer that gave him the following diagnosis:

"Shit, man, you seem strung the fuck out."

He bit back a hollow laugh. Who wasn't 'strung the fuck out' these days?

Before he knows it, he's walking the streets of the city, such as they still existed. The breaking rays of dawn filtered through the shattered city skyline, casting shadows so long and looming that they effortlessly swallowed him. For a while he aimlessly wandered, stuck in a state between exhausted and agitated, at once on guard and totally oblivious to his surroundings. Then he comes to a stop, having finally arrived at his destination.

A plinth for a statue, set into the middle of an empty, crumbling park, built shortly after the Revolution. Jeremy was only 32 - he'd never known anything but this Atlanta, the one that was gray and crumbling and full to the brim with every kind of suffering one could conjure. Where Reclamation Corps cops patrolled on the regular and beat up anyone that didn't pay rent on time, where every year it seemed like another part of the city was declared moribund and every person squatting there either evicted or left to die with no support.

But it wasn't always that way.

He'd heard the stories. How could he not? Sometimes, they were the only thing the people of Atlanta had. Tales of revolution, of attempts at reclamation and redemption and attempts to build a better world. Of a dream of a future that wasn't forever doomed to decline and decay.

He looks at the plinth and wonders what once stood there. Nobody remembered - not many records of pre-invasion Atlanta survived the long centuries of Compact domination, let alone the records of one little statue in a forgotten corner of a dying city. Who made it, and why? Did they know that their work had been reduced to rubble, little more than a curiosity for an exhausted, terminally depressed anarchist?

He always found himself back here, in the middle of this defunct park at the asscrack of dawn, staring at the ruins of a piece of art that hadn't existed for hundreds of years. It was ridiculous. This behavior wasn't helping anyone, least of all him. And yet...

What was that Atlanta like? The one that wasn't gray and crumbling and had a whole future of possibilities open before it? Sometimes he dreamed that he lived there, in that Atlanta... but he always awoke, remembering that he had another shift and another deadline and another hundred things he was obligated to do so that he wouldn't starve.

He turns away and starts to walk back to his apartment, starting to feel the weight of exhaustion come back to him. He climbs back into his bed, still groggy and dizzy. And then he closes his eyes... and he lets himself dream.

In Islamabad

It was a big, circular lecture hall with two exits, and Professor Arhan Nawaz often thought about that: having multiple exits. The class he was about to teach was perhaps the most "politically dangerous" to his career every year, though he'd been doing it since he was a cool young professor, rather than the distinguished partly immortal older professor that he portrayed himself as now. Of course, he was only anything like important in a university like Islamabad. Academics being the way they are, you had to be about 150 years old to be listened to on the Galactic stage.

In a First Colony university, he'd still be a secondary-adjunct just working his way up to "first adjunct" status, which came with rights such as the ability to use the breakroom, the copiers for a lower price, and other such amenities. And of course, any article he wrote would be owned by the university and farmed out to the Tenured Professors, many of whom had spent a century at the head of the department. If he kept his nose clean for another half century he might be able to get on something lucrative like a textbook.

But in Universities like that, he wouldn't be able to do experiments like this. There were about a hundred students who showed up today in class--with about a dozen having signed the waiver to leave--and they were crowded around. Women, men, and enbies alike, and a half-dozen Augments on scholarships, with their digital Notepads ready and notes filling them.

How it worked was simple. Today was the class on "alternate political identities." Every other person in this room had had two weeks of knowing what their ideology of the day was. (Those who opted out got an essay or three to do instead.) They were supposed to argue for their ideology based on what they'd researched about it. He learned at the last moment because he was a Professor, and he had an advantage in knowing what he'd put in the hat.

If asked about his own politics, he would have clammed up, because the Pakistani government had been terrible lately about it. "Keep politics out of children's moral education" and "We must preserve Islamic values" said by the queer alcoholic Minister of Education who tried to ban private charity donations as "economically harmful" and didn't pray… the government had been getting worse for years, ever since the disputed '51 Election.

But, if asked he'd say he might want to vote for the DMSA in galactic elections if it wasn't a wasted vote, and that he thought that welfare should be unslashed, and there should be more Augment protections and more intellectual freedom, and that things in these last few decades in Pakistan hadn't been going quite right.

But for today, he was a…

The randomizer stopped.

Oh, huh.

Council Communist. They actually had a big, semi-electoral party in Pakistan. Events had led them to being the second largest opposition party, actually. He didn't quite think Council Communism made sense in all its details, but it meant well he supposed, and seemed to actually want to make a better world… unlike half the parties out there, he could say. He could argue these things.

The students watched him, and so he cleared his throat, putting on a smile.

The ideologies were alternate, and so the furthest right it went on one end is the most extreme of the MLM-A party, and the furthest left it went on the other end were the absolute dinosaurs in the PRHL (the ones who hated Augments) and the JDAP (the ones who wished they could kill poor people.) Everything beyond it were the kind of things that don't get elected, and don't matter… or, at least, hadn't mattered to the galaxy in a hundred and fifty years or more.

"Today, we are going to debate how to organise society. I will begin by outlining 'my own ideology', but you are to challenge it with the ideologies you've been assigned, see what the ideas are and their flaws as well." It would be a little more fun than four years ago when he had to be a Fascist, or the one time six years ago when he had to be a Conservative Islamist. It at least was an ideology that didn't make his skin crawl, but he'd argued all of them as well as he could. It was only fair.

"Council Communism is an ideology that began its evolution in the distant 20th century, though it has changed much since then. It based itself on the ideals of Karl Marx, but also believed in the power of organizing workers via councils and in nesting structures to prevent a single tyrannical ruler, as happened in other 20th century communist projects. These workers' councils would govern their day to day life and appoint representatives to higher levels, who would appoint higher delegates, and so on. A regular nesting doll, I say, but one which any Council Communist would say is a virtuous one."

"How do you manage a factory without a manager in charge, Professor Nawaz?" Noor, an 'Individualist' said. He knew they were actually part of the Young Council-Communists of Pakistan, so he was pretty sure this was a deliberate gimme.

"Well, there have been studies," and he gestured to pull up the list of them and throw up a few infographics, "And for up to mid-level management, self and group management works better. It's a lot more disputed at the higher levels, of course, but another element is that it is a council of experts. It would be a council of scientists who decide on what they should do, a council of students on their part, and a council of professors… you say, I assume, that it can get messy--"

"Yeah, and what about the maintenance of social order," Masmaat asked, someone who probably did believe in traditionalist conservatism, or at least its newest version.

"And… what about having a central strongman who can--" the bored-sounding 'Fascist' chimed in.

Ah, excellent. It had begun!

****

The class was going well. A few of the teams (because he made sure that each ideology had at least two 'supporters') looked as if one or more of their members were checking out or checking their phones. But there were always a few. Most of them seemed pretty engaged, and they shot back at his points, occasionally even scoring a solid hit such as asking about bureaucracy on the Anarchist's part, or questioning about how you will be able to convince people to work. Obviously a Council Communist had an answer, but he wasn't sure how true it really was. But it was going well… then he realized, it was going too well.

He was convincing them. He was convincing them so well that the 'Fascist' was trying to incorporate councils into his arguments, the Anarchist questioning why anarchism can't be councils too? He had somehow struck some real chord, and that was very, very dangerous.

It was the third time it had happened in the 28 years he'd been doing this day. The first was in the seventh year. The ruling Coalition had just fallen over a scandal involving extorting businesses and shutting them down if they disagreed with the government, and he'd randomly been given the 'Individualist' slot. There had been accusations that he'd done it on purpose because dozens of students walked away Individualists, convinced that only through smashing the government could small-business capitalism triumph.

The second was on the fifteenth year, when he'd played a Technocratic-Authoritarian line of thinking that happened to resonate with some electoral issues and a new party in Compact's Parliament (which had collapsed just a few years later.)

And now this.

There were recordings being made that would be sent out… on top of whatever the kids did, once the buzzer rang and they ran out of time.

This could be bad, and even potentially dangerous. So as the class started to wind down, he decided he needed to break character, just to reassure people that he wasn't a Council Communist and he had real objections to...

It was in that moment that the door opened.

Professor Nawaz was a peaceful man, unfamiliar with weapons. So he could only hope that was a riot control gun being held by the beatle black Islamabad Police Department riot scarab in the doorway. It was followed by five more guns, and five more people, and then the grey and blue-clad Islamabad University Security Officer. Oh, shit, it was Azrah Sharif. He knew them. They got along well. One of her daughters actually attended the University, though he'd never had her in class.

"Hands away from your devices! We have a network alert that one of the room's computer systems has been used to download Fanfiction," the woman in front said, her face a mask… almost literally, with all the riot gear she's wearing.

"That's not against the law," the Professor said, unable to help it. He was a political scientist, he knew every Sol and non-Sol law about fanfiction as a matter of course.

"As of a special legislative session last night it is, with a five-year sentence for adult offenders," the woman said. "Whoever it is should give yourself up to spare your fellows."

A government which everyone knew cheated to win the elections had just come in here and threatened his students with a Midnight Law passed when nobody was looking.

And he could do nothing about it.

Almost nothing.

He looked at the officers, tried to gauge what they'd do, and then decided to try anyway.

He stepped forward, "I'm sorry to say, Officers, that that was me."

"You read 'Lovely Thighs' a fanfiction about two male characters from a situational comedy having intercourse?" the woman said, sceptically. Her nose wrinkled just talking about it.

"That is both my favourite thing and was meant as part of an example for class," Professor Nawaz said. "I'm the only guilty party here, and I am turning myself in."

"Nawaz," Azrah said, her voice carefully modulated, her eyes blown out wide even as her voice radiated purest truth "Is an honest person when it comes to things like this. You can trust them implicitly."

The University protects its own, one way or another. They knew what he was doing for the students, not that it'd save him. He'd probably plead out, get two or three years, and when he got out of high-security prison he'd be unemployable. He'd have nothing to show for it except one student--and perhaps more--that wouldn't have their lives ruined.

It was stupid to download it here, but probably it was just using the room's pass-through. Heck, it could even be someone paying attention, who just wanted to download some after-class reading.

Whoever they were, and whatever they were doing, they didn't deserve this: no one did.

"Cuff him, then," the woman said.

He held out his hands and let himself be cuffed. They were rough, but he just complied, didn't try to fight it. This didn't have to be any harder than it already was.

He took a deep breath, his last as a free man, and that's when one of the students yelled, "Pig!" and began throwing datapads and other things at them, soon joined by a half-dozen more. The whole room was howling in outrage!

"Deploy riot dispersal gear," the woman said coldly. "I will escort the suspect."

One of the guns spit shocking, hopefully-nonlethal electricity as he was pulled away, slamming into the wall as the buzzer prematurely went off.

Wait, did that mean… was the video of… oh.

As he was led out of the building, in the distance he saw smoke and heard screams: this was a city-wide raid on fanfiction, meant to make a statement.

It… it seems like it had. Sick to his stomach, and pushed along by a woman who looked like she was just looking for an excuse, Professor Nawaz stumbled along and hoped he made it to the station intact.

Statement by the Joint Committee of the Islamabad Council Communist Party and the Council Communist Party of Pakistan said:
We demand the release of all prisoners of the Fanfiction raids, especially our comrade and fellow Professor Arham Nawaz, whose stirring defence of the principles of Council-Communism should be required viewing for all lackies of Capital, as we begin the final and victorious struggle for communism in Pakistan…

In Misawa Aerospace Force Base, Japan

Misawa AFB was an old place, in use as an air station since the second world war three centuries ago, near the dawn of powered flight. Now it was the base for the space part of Japan's aerospace defence force.

Ichika had heard people joke that Japan was a nation where nothing worked, and indeed the environmental collapse and the second pacific war that followed had hit her country hard, driving refugees into China and off world. Everyone knew that what was left was a puppet state, a set of services paid for by the Chinese government and various off world financial interests, a tourist farm with a financial district almost as bad as England. It was to Ichika's fortune that one of the things maintained was a military. When China needed heads broken, it might not want to get its own hands dirty.

Ichika just wanted to fly. In body or in spirit it didn't matter to her. At Misawa, she might one day have the chance to do both.

You couldn't see much of the ancient past here anymore. There were parts, a small tour on one end of the base, but most everything was dominated by a dozen massive hardened shelters, domes of concrete and carbon that protected the base's combat complement, the JAESDF's ready wings of SSTO strike craft. The drone swarms that would accompany them were stored in dozens of sea floor silos and automated submarines around. The SSTOs here were command aircraft, two people and one high function VI who would, in the impossible event of a space battle around earth, ride a pillar of fusion fire up alongside swarms of combat drones to back-stop the Low Manoeuvrability Platforms of Japan's high frontier.

A ludicrous, impossible idea. One day, Ichika wished to do it for real.

She checked her flight suit one last time, making sure the air evacuation had worked properly and testing the smart suit's press. The suits used mechanical counter pressure and you did not want to find that something had failed there. Suit inspection by eye and VI complete, Ichika retrieved her helmet and made her way over to her assigned strike craft. The aircraft stood in the shadows of its hanger, a feminine shadow just visible on its hull. The anime girl nose art was almost mandatory now, but Ichika liked hers. A dark feathered angel with a bright sword.

"Hey Ichika." Her copilot, Miyaki Sakura was already present, running pre-flight checks in her seat of the open cockpit. "You got the disk?"

"Yeah." The flight instructions for the strike craft were sent wirelessly, through a fiberoptic, but procedure was you also had a backup on disk. "Tenshi, you okay?"

"I'm nominal Ichika." The delta said. "All orders received and processed."

Ichika pushed the optical disk into the slot and vaulted into the front seat. "Verify hard copy orders with uploads."

"Verification complete. Orders nominal. Profile: directed swarm attack on enemy combat orbiter." Schematics across Ichika's augmented reality display. "This is a simulation."
"Always is." Ichika began to strap in. "Will we be doing a real launch today?"

"I'm afraid not Ichika. Sims only."

Oh well. Ichika looked up at the dark ceiling of the hanger as the blast canopy closed. An alarm beeped. "Tenshin-1, this is Tower, abort simulation. New orders to follow. You're not going to believe this."

"Go ahead tower." Ichika could hear the strain in the operator's voice, the sound of something real.

"Wormholes are opening up all across earth orbit. Unknown orbiters are emerging on all vectors. They've already fired on SolNav vessels. You are to scramble and assist. New Download in the air. Detach your cables and begin to taxi."

"Roger tower. You ready Tenshi?"

"I'm ready Ichika. Will this be alright?"

"Yeah. I was born for this." Ichika pulled on her helmet.

"Ichika. You're daydreaming."

"Oh, sorry." Ichika snapped herself back to reality. "Alright, so, enemy combat orbiter. This is a simulation. Tenshi, let's go over the new swarm handoff procedure as we get to simulated altitude…"

A/N:
Atlanta by @TheArcanist , Islamabad by @The Laurent , Misawa by @BiopunkOtrera

Rhymes · Apr 11, 2022

Delenda est.

bdun140 · Apr 11, 2022

#GalacticSurvey

Map Designation: FT-4
System Name: Privacy
Political Status: Privately owned planet
Charter Presence: None
System Population: fewer than 100 permanent inhabitants

System Bodies:
1 - "Thing We Orbit" - small rocky world
1a - "Person Cave" small space colony

Notable features:
Some repurposed mining drones are making a line-art caricature of the system owner's face on the systems sole body. They are projected to finish it somewhere in the next century.

System History:
A chunk of space so astonishingly boring that it changed hands multiple times as one charter after another decided they wanted nothing to do with it, until it eventually wound up in the hands of a private individual. Said individual was a wealthy "eccentric" who had recently survived an assassination attempt of unknown providence, and he purchased the system for himself and his closest family members slash staff. Despite the system having nothing of remote value he is making enough money off of various investments to afford the upkeep of his station and the wages of those who work to let him enjoy himself there. Said wages are rumored to be surprisingly generous, but this is unconfirmed as he hasn't hired anyone new (that we know of) in several years.

Transreal Cloud · Apr 11, 2022

You had me there with the wormholes thing.

CyberFemme · Apr 11, 2022

Transreal Cloud said:
You had me there with the wormholes thing.

Aliums! The aliums are coming!

masterofmadness · Apr 11, 2022

AKuz said:
We demand the release of all prisoners of the Fanfiction raids, especially our comrade and fellow Professor Arham Nawaz, whose stirring defence of the principles of Council-Communism should be required viewing for all lackies of Capital, as we begin the final and victorious struggle for communism in Pakistan…

*A few days after*
"With the Broadcast showing proof of the success of council communism I move that for Scicom coordinator we vote for one of its most ardent defenders from even before this evidence came to light! A man willing to sacrifice for his beliefs to save others! Professor Arham Nawaz."

But more seriously Pakistan is going to be fun! Council communism is a major opposition party and right before hand they do a crackdown that just so happens to catch a professor arguing for their ideology? Followed by a galactic broadcast showing it working? I get the feel they are going to end up winning any legitimate election which of course means that it won't be legitimate hence revolt from showing the 'democracy' is not real.

Torgamous · Apr 11, 2022

My immediate reaction to the wormhole thing was "those motherfuckers in Alexander stole our thunder", but no, it's just more evidence that Rousseau is actually pretty normal.

CyberFemme · Apr 11, 2022

Torgamous said:
My immediate reaction to the wormhole thing was "those motherfuckers in Alexander stole our thunder", but no, it's just more evidence that Rousseau is actually pretty normal.

No, wormholes are too esoteric for Alexander. IIRC they get things that make shooty better - dusty plasma radiators and stuff.

Genderite · Apr 11, 2022

CyberEnby said:
No, wormholes are too esoteric for Alexander. IIRC they get things that make shooty better - dusty plasma radiators and stuff.

also that prototype Dreadnought apparently.

Model DC.14F · Apr 11, 2022

CyberEnby said:
IIRC they get things that make shooty better - dusty plasma radiators and stuff.

Is this a Discord thing? I don't recall any concrete mention of what the other Starting Systems got in the thread.

CyberFemme · Apr 11, 2022

Model DC.14F said:
Is this a Discord thing? I don't recall any concrete mention of what the other Starting Systems got in the thread.

Yeah, it was mentioned off hand on the Discord as one of the possibilities.
Alexander was the 'fight everyone all at once' option so it got projects to help with that. It's part of the reason I want to send a stealth ship their way ASAP - linking up Ascension-Radiant to Alexander-Crucible would let us combine all our unique starting bonuses and cover each other's weaknesses.

Amazing Abzan · Apr 11, 2022

AKuz said:
Academics being the way they are, you had to be about 150 years old to be listened to on the Galactic stage.

I'm kind of embarrassed I didn't even think about this before, but all the elites being literally immortal has to make the political discourse super regressive and out of touch. It's bad enough when most politicians are working off ideas that are decades out of date, how much worse must it be when the politicians are centuries older than most of their constituents?

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

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