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 18, 2022

spiritualatheist said:
God, everything is going to explode in a week, isn't it?

You think it'll take a whole week?

Ambit · Apr 18, 2022

Foxboy Lenin is fucking living the dream. Please somehow make it to camera to spout more speeches again, I believe in you Santiago

spiritualatheist · Apr 18, 2022

Redshirt Army said:
You think it'll take a whole week?

A week is when the first wave of box fabbers comes online. Before that I think they might be able to keep a lid on stuff, but afterwards all bets are off and everything goes up in the air.

Derpmind · Apr 18, 2022

clockworkchaos said:
Wouldn't be a Box proper probably, but a hacked fabber. (though maybe the just refer to all fabbers as Boxes now). Boxes take about a week to set up a proper fabber and pretty much are lazer focused on making that fabber. Otherwise canon.

Sure, but what if you have a fabber just printing Boxes constantly, and you're using all of your Boxes to try and build a, ah, liberatred fabber?

frostgiant · Apr 18, 2022

By a week there will probably have Vtols up and contesting air if they can find the pilots, Hell Heavy vehicles to if not sooner. It only took pedros group an hour or 2 to build betterguns and armour.

BiopunkOtrera · Apr 18, 2022

buli-buli said:
.22 less-lethal rounds? .22? And no reported casualties the fuckers.

In fact a real thing people did IRL.

Kirook · Apr 18, 2022

Omake: When You Eat Of It Your Eyes Will Be Opened:

Straight.Outta.Kaifeng: So why'd you get fired?

artofthedeal: lol your guess is as good as mine

artofthedeal: "but why am i losing my job?"

artofthedeal: "lol", said the at-will termination statutes, "lmao"

Straight.Outta.Kaifeng: Oof. Not even knowing what happened to make them give you the boot. That's rough.

Sword Lesbian: Not to go all Suffering Olympics on you, but, uh…at least you didn't go to prison.

artofthedeal: wait WHAT

artofthedeal: what'd you do 👀

Sword Lesbian: I wrote some fanfiction.

artofthedeal: oh lmao yeah that'd do it

Straight.Outta.Kaifeng: Not that this matters, like, at all, but what was it about?

Sword Lesbian: Robespierre/Reader enemies to lovers.

Sword Lesbian: I still can't fucking believe how good it was. Years and years searching fruitlessly for my writing muse only for it to suddenly jump my ass in the middle of a fanfic about a steppy anarchist dominatrix who tilts your chin up with her sword.

Straight.Outta.Kaifeng: "Anarchist dominatrix?" Isn't that an oxymoron?

Sword Lesbian: You'd think so! But I worked it into the character. Her instinctual desire for power in her relationships contrasted against her deeply-held belief in equality at all costs…and I'm rambling again. Sorry. If anyone's got anything to say about our actual topic, fire away.

artofthedeal: so what was prison like

Sword Lesbian: […]

Sword Lesbian: They threw me in Discordia Corrections for a couple of years. It was badly overcrowded. Apparently they used to send the worst offenders on to this prison planet in the Far Spinward, but something happened down there and they stopped doing that a little while before I was arrested.

Straight.Outta.Kaifeng: Wait, did you say the Far Spinward?

Sword Lesbian: Yes, why?

Straight.Outta.Kaifeng: It's probably nothing. Just something a friend mentioned to me a little while ago. Anyway, keep going if you like.

Sword Lesbian: […]

Sword Lesbian: Actually, on second thought, I'd prefer not to go into any more detail if it's all the same to you.

artofthedeal: fair fair

blorbo-from-your-shows: Hey uh

blorbo-from-your-shows: I know I've been kinda quiet in here but I think I've worked up the nerve to talk about my thing

artofthedeal: feel free

Sword Lesbian: Seconded.

Straight.Outta.Kaifeng: You don't have to if you don't want to, though.

blorbo-from-your-shows: No I think this should be talked about

blorbo-from-your-shows: If nothing else I need to get it off my chest

blorbo-from-your-shows: Ok so, you know Rusted Spurs?

Straight.Outta.Kaifeng: I think so. "Gritty realistic" Western made by the King of Hearts people?

blorbo-from-your-shows: That's the one

blorbo-from-your-shows: So I landed a pretty important role in the show

blorbo-from-your-shows: Not the main character but a secondary character with a fair amount of screentime

blorbo-from-your-shows: And you know, they marketed it as "gritty and realistic" so I knew it was going to be at least a little bit horny but uh…

Sword Lesbian: Oh no.

blorbo-from-your-shows: Yeah it's pretty much what you're thinking

blorbo-from-your-shows: I didn't want to show off that much on live holo but the director kept insisting it was necessary for "historical accuracy"

artofthedeal: what a fucking jackass

artofthedeal: cant believe youre the one who ended up fired somehow

blorbo-from-your-shows: Yeah

blorbo-from-your-shows: I filed a complaint with HR and he backed off for a while, a couple weeks maybe

blorbo-from-your-shows: Then I kind of ended up in the same boat as you

blorbo-from-your-shows: They told my "services were no longer required" and then a month after that I found out they'd trained a VI on my voice patterns and deepfaked me getting naked

blorbo-from-your-shows: Nothing I could do about it—I signed away the rights to my image to Aitch Eye when I signed up for the role

Sword Lesbian: What the actual fuck?!

artofthedeal: wtf

[after the pale has joined the chat.]

after the pale: Wow. What a thing to step into right after joining a server.

Sword Lesbian: @blorbo-from-your-shows That's awful. I'm so sorry that happened to you.

blorbo-from-your-shows: Yeah, I get that a lot

after the pale: We all do. Everyone who loses their job hears it often. "That's terrible, I'm so sorry" etc.

Sword Lesbian: I know. I just don't know what else I can say or do.

artofthedeal: yeah its just like

artofthedeal: a thing that happens

artofthedeal: stars shine, water flows downhill, HI fires people for bullshit reasons

artofthedeal: and also throws them in jail or makes revenge porn of them i guess

Sword Lesbian: @after the pale So what's your story?

after the pale: Nothing special. I was doing some market research, basic analytics stuff for the emotional futures market. Not visionary stuff, grunt work. I sent out some survey questions to try to find out whether there was a pay gap between augments and baselines, and, well…goodbye analysis job.

after the pale: That was a while ago, though. I've gotten back on my feet a bit since then.

after the pale: Actually, I know some people who might be able to help all of you do the same.

blorbo-from-your-shows: I suppose beggars can't be choosers

Sword Lesbian: Is that what we are now? Beggars?

artofthedeal: if we don't find new jobs soon, pretty much

Sword Lesbian: […]

Sword Lesbian: @Straight.Outta.Kaifeng, you've been pretty quiet for a while now. What do you think of all this?

Straight.Outta.Kaifeng: Look. Getting back on my feet is all well and good, but after what happened to me, and hearing what's been happening to all of you…

Straight.Outta.Kaifeng: I kind of want to make someone pay for this.

[after the pale sent a direct message to Straight.Outta.Kaifeng]

[Message is E2E encrypted. Decrypting…]

[Message reads: It's not wise to talk like that on unsecured channels.]

Straight.Outta.Kaifeng: Sorry, got a little carried away there. It's just…this is all so frustrating, you know?

blorbo-from-your-shows: That's one word for it

artofthedeal: ugh, and now an emergency alert on top of everything

artofthedeal: wonder what fucking idiot set a cooking fire that im probably gonna be blamed for

blorbo-from-your-shows: I don't think this is a local alert

blorbo-from-your-shows: I'm getting it too, and IIRC we're nowhere near each other

Sword Lesbian: So am I.

Sword Lesbian: […]

Sword Lesbian: Nobody panic, but…I think it's the EAS.

Straight.Outta.Kaifeng: Wait, that makes no sense.

Straight.Outta.Kaifeng: Since when does the EAS play "Mother Anarchy Loves Her Sons"?

after the pale: […]

after the pale: I have to go.

[after the pale has logged out]

Tatbee · Apr 18, 2022

clockworkchaos said:
Community Liaison officers as well as all other Task force members will be collected at convenience. It is preferred that planets provide transportation themselves to a designated pick-up location to allow for quicker transition.

How similar in appearance are transport ships, compared to Hellburner fireships?

trooperist · Apr 18, 2022

On further reflection, I must say it was top level trolling to make the ring tone for the Broadcast "Mother Anarchy Loves Her Sons".
Some officals somewhere probably pitched a fit after it got identified.

AKuz · Apr 18, 2022

trooperist said:
On further reflection, I must say it was top level trolling to make the ring tone for the Broadcast "Mother Anarchy Loves Her Sons".
Some officals somewhere probably pitched a fit after it got identified.

The main reason why the Chiptune Mother Anarchy was chosen (by us, the QMs) was because the opening bars are so distinctive

TheArcanist · Apr 18, 2022

The Laurent said:
Fourteen Days In Sol--May 18, 2255

Cope and seethe, Compact.

TheSleeper · Apr 18, 2022

buli-buli said:
.22 less-lethal rounds? .22? And no reported casualties the fuckers.

I am happy that someone else saw this.

BiopunkOtrera · Apr 18, 2022

I am wondering what will happen to all our previous earth Omake characters.

AKuz · Apr 18, 2022

Patch Notes for [May 18, 2255, Immortality Awaits]:

Voice Acting Added for Ambassador Theodore Santiago's speech as originally intended.

BaseDeltaZero · Apr 18, 2022

Derpmind said:
I'm pretty sure the gate blueprints are a massive red line for them. Just mentioning them will likely turn SolNav against us. (And it's not like we don't have wormhole tech ourselves already.)

Hannz said:
Do we really need Gate Tech? We're already working on wormholes and from what I understand, those are just outright better.

We uh... don't have wormhole tech yet, and they aren't better. They can't send ships through, for one. Getting gate tech would be... extremely useful. If we can convince them to surrender, or hell, blow them to pieces, we can try to get it. We could (and probably should) take apart the gate in Raphania to see how it works, SolNav is pretty much at maximum pissed level now.

Derpmind said:
Sure, but what if you have a fabber just printing Boxes constantly, and you're using all of your Boxes to try and build a, ah, liberatred fabber?

You get a lot of fabbers in about a week. It's like nine women working together to give birth in one month.

TheSleeper said:
I am happy that someone else saw this.

There's such a thing as an underloaded .22 soft-ball round that's basically an overgrown airsoft round, as well as baton rounds that go on the front of a gun like a rifle grenade, but... I have a slight suspicion that's not what they mean.

Oh, and demand surrender, hold. Confronting 12.7 sucks. Letting them through sucks. Letting them through only for them to suddenly go loud on something sensitive really sucks. If we get really lucky they retreat to Ascenscion expecting a suitably warm welcome and then fall apart in mutiny and subversion.

Rockeye · Apr 18, 2022

Omake: Tech Support

To Andrew Cooper, it didn't feel real. The 'broadcast', talk of revolution, of the compacts being more heinous than everyone thought... It just did not feel real. It felt like a dream. Just some nonsense that will go away with a focused response. A bunch of uppity anarchists grabbing the microphone. He watched the fiery speeches and announcements and lurid tell-tales of Ares's brutality and Rhodes's blatant cheating. Maybe the frontier really does need better oversight, but there's nothing he can do about it from here, now is there? The rumors-

Well, the rumors are going fucking crazy, of course they are. Even on Ziskind, the academy cylinder, the heart of the Solarian Navy's future, there are plenty of civilians. It's an entire city, and SolNav's presence is strong but not universal. Support techs for everything from the reactors to the networks to the plumbing. All the megamalls. Managerial towers and local headquarters. Menials working in the hydroponics bays and kitchens, teamsters loading the ships, morale services ranging from restaurants and bars to gaming centers and incentivized dating.

He's nominally an independent contractor, running low level tech support for everyone on Ziskind who doesn't want to pay premium for an Omoikane Certified Desktop Support Technician and doesn't really need top-secret clearance either. The word from the bosses came down like law: Everything will be fine. Don't panic. Offcylinder travel and messages are temporarily restricted for a comprehensive security review, but everything will go back to normal very soon.

It doesn't feel real. He watched the broadcast, and then put it all away. Out of sight, out of mind. He took a shower and tried to sleep. He went down to the cafeteria the next morning and bought his usual, MSI Chicken Flavored NutriPack Plus, then after a moment's hesitation, the indulgence of a can of Pepsi Classic Zero NEO. Staring at his account balance after the purchases something pushed its way into his head, but-

He'd been fussing over a banner ad for a client when the Broadcast itself came. He ignored it, knowing he had to get the revision in within the next ten minutes - twenty minute response times are a key metric for MarkDesign. He fucking hated graphic design work, honestly, it stinks like the worst of HI's insipid obsessions, he much preferred fixing problems buried deep in the code somewhere or writing up a quick VI script to solve someone's issue and then sitting back and relaxing, watching over his solution and not having to talk to people. He was good at getting VIs to do things when people don't quite want to shell out for a TLI or one of Omoikane's advanced solutions, it's the only work that really feels productive instead of trying to talk some abusive clerk through resetting their system settings or whatever.

He sat down and started eating his meal, trying to ignore the couple talking in low tones two tables away. Lisa Streiss and Mei Xian, as far as he knew, just another couple of gig jobbers like him. He doesn't really know them - or anybody, really. Xian's got those cute ears and tail, he'd just love to scratch them and have her purr into his chest and- But he's got no chance with her, and now is not the time to be thinking about that anyway.

"It's sort of like a seed. Not a real fabber. It makes fabber parts and only fabber parts, so we need some raw materials to make the actual miracle box. The reading circle've all given up some of our water rations and I got some biowaste from 'ponics to cover the carbon, but we don't have any metals or electronics that won't be missed."

"Can get some waste from the recycling program. I think we can get away with it if we distract Jacques. I know you don't like him, but he keeps making passes at you and-"

"Not on your life, Lisa. That bastard-" The string of insults devolved into a Mandarin pidgin of some sort he couldn't follow.

They could be LARPing or something. Definitely not building an unsanctioned fabricator... Somewhere. Drawing power and taking up space in a forgotten corner of someone's office, or maybe an old storage closet that hasn't been officially opened in years. Even on a station, places like that pop up. That's right. If he's pretty sure they're just taking the joke too far, he won't have anything to report. Nothing is wrong everything is fine he didn't hear anything la la la la la-

His NutriPack tasted more disgusting and slimy than usual. He left the cafeteria quickly, before they realized he could overhear them.

More design work. More announcements of travel restrictions, rationing, messaging restrictions. He had about a dozen MarkDesign gigs for support on pro-Compact media on his dashboard, but he-

-He-

God. It was going to kill his metrics, but he really couldn't give a damn. He messaged the coordinators for all four of his gig platforms, told them he was taking a mental health day, yes he knows it'll be murder on his metrics, but he just. Can't.

He keeps the junk clients don't want anymore sometimes, broken beyond unlicensed repair or hopelessly outdated and incompatible. Old tablets, old screens, broken routers and rusty server rack rails and decayed batteries and PSUs. The recyclers give you such a tiny pittance it's barely even worth hauling them down, especially when he might be able to resell them some time. It's not like he has a lot of personal effects to take up his tiny storage locker. As for why he's pawing through it all now of all times-

It's incredibly stupid. Everything will go back to normal soon, all he has to do is keep working and the Compact will sort everything out. No violence can possibly reach here to the heart of their power. He'll be safe and provided for and his career trajectory might even go upward if he performs well and puts in the hours in these unprecedented times.

It doesn't feel real. Nothing feels real. He's like a drone or a TLI, going through the motions as a tiny part of the great machine. Make the pretty colors. Tidy up the spreadsheet. Make the blinky light go away. Tell a manager her idea is stupid and get screamed at, just so she doesn't have to fire her own staff.

Mei Xian needed metals and electronics.

He has a duffle bag full of junk now. He's walking through the halls of Housing Block 1GA55, to unit 3312. Lisa's place that he once spent ten awkward minutes at. He doesn't remember anything at all about Lisa, but he still remembers her problem. Driver issue, with HI mandatory security policy conflicting with the default software on her MSI work phone. It was tricky and interesting to fix, and technically illegal given how he didn't have a license for the 6 year old version of the same HI software, but as long as the XAPI monitoring routine was still out it would be fine and-

He shakes his head. God. Computers and software, that's all his memory is good for. There's a word for it, he knows, in one of the seventy million psychological treatment schemes. But those pills are expensive and honestly he doesn't really need them. He's fine like this, for all that his head is chaos, a random walk through the halls of psyche, it works for him. The jack of all trades, the everyman, random dispenser of random knowledge. For example, he knows the cameras in this area are monitored by an automated system because he worked with the security company last month, tidying up some of the recognition thresholds. It feels like he's doing something horribly wrong, like an Ares security team will smash through the door and put handcuffs on him at any moment, but they won't. He's a resident here, and this place isn't expensive enough to be a gender segregated block. There's no possible way the system could have flagged him.

He still feels numb as he presses the buzzer on Lisa's unit door.

"Who is it?" Comes the wary demand through the door comm.

"I, uh. It's Andrew."

"...Andrew who?"

"I fixed your phone once? With the Hermes-Ishtar compliance policy and-"

"Oh! Right. Andrew. Um, I'm kind of in the middle of something, what do you want."

"I, uh." He takes a deep breath and shuts his eyes.

Talking to people is the worst.

"I heard. You and Mei Xian talking. About a tech problem?"

Silence.

"Maybe I can help? I, uh, do lots of hardware support."

"You're pretty active on MarkDesign and RentaTech, right? Didn't get that job in Omoikane after all?"

"N-no. They said they were not looking to expand with my skillset at this time, and, uh, disappointing, but there's always RentaTech, always more work to be done there even if some of the clients don't pay out, so- Um, yeah."

"Right. Right."

Lisa sounds almost as terrified and anxious as he feels.

"T-The cameras and microphones in this hab unit are heuristic only," he offers. "Automated. I did a gig for the security company, that's- That's how they set it up. Cheaper."

More silence on the other side of the door.

"And what do you think about the Amaranth people?" She asks after a long wait.

"It doesn't feel real," he recites the same words repeating in his head. "But- I have some old hardware I don't need. It's barely worth running down to the recycling kiosks, and I thought I might fix it one day. If. If you want to take a look, in case any of if can help with your, um, tech problem..."

The door opens, revealing Lisa dressed in the standard issue padded flight suit-style station garb, a hopelessly cluttered small-form studio apartment directly behind her. There are bags under her eyes. She smiles thinly. Mei Xian sits on the bed, frowning, and Andrew brightens up as he sees her. Lisa glances back and forward again.

"I think we'd both love some help with our hardware issues. Why don't you come in and talk about it?"

Pt. 2 For The Tyrants Fear Your Might (A quest of interstellar rebellion) Original - Sci-Fi

LucidProp · Apr 18, 2022

BaseDeltaZero said:
We uh... don't have wormhole tech yet, and they aren't better. They can't send ships through, for one. Getting gate tech would be... extremely useful. If we can convince them to surrender, or hell, blow them to pieces, we can try to get it. We could (and probably should) take apart the gate in Raphania to see how it works, SolNav is pretty much at maximum pissed level now.

We don't have wormhole tech yet, but we soon will. Besides, it can be used for personal transportation and FTL comms, so upscaling it to be able to send ships isn't that big of a stretch.

AKuz said:
[ ] [SciComm] Assist with Prototype Wormhole research -Personal Wormhole

Developing on the already established laboratory work conducted on Elysium, it may be possible to create a fixed location interstellar travel device large enough for a single individual to travel through. Once we have the prototype in hand, we can begin iterating on this technology. It is likely that this project will require large amounts of SR and E to see to completion.

But yeah, surrendering Gate Tech from their data banks while ideal, isn't realistic. We'd have a better chance of doing so when we take apart the Raphania Gate as you've suggested and if we're lucky, we'll be able to salvage data from the wrecks of SolNav ships and whatever engineers we capture to assist in that endeavor.

As such, asking for Gate Tech as part of the surrender terms is suboptimal, as it only decreases the chance of success in our negotiations for rewards that we could have gotten through other methods at 0 cost to ourselves.

Spart117MC · Apr 18, 2022

Could the hack used to make the broadcast happen be used to reach the crews of the Task Force 12.7 via their personal devices and make mention of how Radiant integrated into their society surrendering Ares personnel after Sheol retook their world?

As I understand it a great chunk of those crew consist of those picked up through the poverty draft. I figure they would be less willing to throw away their lives if they knew they had an alternative not just to partaking in a deadly engagement but also their exploited lifestyles.

DecaffeinatedOwl · Apr 18, 2022

Derpmind said:
Sure, but what if you have a fabber just printing Boxes constantly, and you're using all of your Boxes to try and build a, ah, liberatred fabber?

I suspect that runs into a situation of 'nine women trying to make a baby in one month'.

If it takes a week for a Box to print out a Liberator Fab™️, then it takes a week for the first generation of Liberator Fabs™️ to come online. There'll be a lot of them, but they're not coming any sooner than that.

Traehgniw · Apr 18, 2022

A lot of the week-long time is just, assembly

clockworkchaos · Apr 18, 2022

AKuz said:
The light lag means that you can only issue an order, if you hesitate there'll be fighting. A Write in would be to tell McLean to condcuct negotiatiosn

Fuck I missed this. You should absolutely, 100% tell Mclean to negotiate. That would be amazing.

Graf Tzarogy · Apr 18, 2022

Omake: From Their Graves They Shall Hasten On

Somewhere on Akasha:

In a grey desert under a black sky, a dead man stood over a grave.

This is horseshit, Ali thought. He didn't regret his promise to Yeol, the vow he had made on that long-ago midnight when both of them had been drunk - half on whiskey, half on love. They had been so young, and the future had seemed limitless. But now, Ali was old, and his future was in a hole exactly twelve feet by four.

Ali felt a tear roll down his cheek and shuddered as he tried to keep himself from sobbing. He wanted to scream. Here he was, at the ass-end of space, the last man. He had made his promise to Yeol the summer before the riots. Had he known, Ali wondered? Back then, both of them had been aware of the danger; they had felt the atmosphere, anticipated the tension, knew an explosion was about to go off. But Ali at least had disregarded the coiling worry in his gut, excited about the possibility of change. Yeol had always been smarter. He had been the leader of their little band, always planning and replanning. The promise of the burial was one of many absurd contingencies. It was only the more miserable, Ali thought, that it was the only one their schemes ever properly put into practice.

Yeol had been swept up in the first police raids and disappeared into the oubliette. The last time Ali saw him alive was in the joke of a trial. Yeol had been beaten black and blue, could hardly speak, but he had spent what energy he had to mouth an "I love you" trapped in the convict's box. Ali had never known what he had done to deserve that affection. He would do his part to repay what he could. Even if he was too late, which Ali always was. Late to the meeting where Yeol and their friends had been caught, late to the trial and almost locked out, late to the death that had taken everyone but him.

He wasn't sure about that last one, though. Though his body still functioned, Ali was sure he wasn't alive. He was a revenant, driven only by the desire to let his friends rest in peace. And now, last, and dearest of all was Yeol, and Ali had completed his duty. Now, he was empty, and alone.

Suddenly, Ali's phone rung with a strange chime. He was surprised – he wasn't sure anyone alive had his number. He unlocked his cell, and watched in wonder, as bright color lit up his screen.

A long while later, Ali put away his phone.

Kneeling down, he kissed Yeol's grave.

Then and there, a living man made a new vow.

A spectre was haunting the galaxy.

And the dead would rise.

BiopunkOtrera · Apr 18, 2022

TripleTango said:
I suspect that runs into a situation of 'nine women trying to make a baby in one month'.

If it takes a week for a Box to print out a Liberator Fab™️, then it takes a week for the first generation of Liberator Fabs™️ to come online. There'll be a lot of them, but they're not coming any sooner than that.

That's certainly what the authorities are banking on.

It'd be unfortunate if there were places with several fabers already in anarchist hands wouldn't it?

TheArcanist · Apr 18, 2022

TripleTango said:
I suspect that runs into a situation of 'nine women trying to make a baby in one month'.

If it takes a week for a Box to print out a Liberator Fab™️, then it takes a week for the first generation of Liberator Fabs™️ to come online. There'll be a lot of them, but they're not coming any sooner than that.

As I understand, the Box makes its cracked fabber by printing out individual parts that are then assembled by hand. So if you have a bunch of Boxes and set them on the task of each individually making a bunch of different parts, you could, with the right coordination and technical know-how, make a single fabber much faster than normal.

neutronium95 · Apr 18, 2022

TheArcanist said:
As I understand, the Box makes its cracked fabber by printing out individual parts that are then assembled by hand. So if you have a bunch of Boxes and set them on the task of each individually making a bunch of different parts, you could, with the right coordination and technical know-how, make a single fabber much faster than normal.

If you have access to a fabber long enough to make a bunch of boxes, you can probably skip the intermediary step and just make a bunch of full on fabber parts instead of boxes.

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

Been Better

Cannon Fodder

Help me

Traitor to her Class

Cinnamon Roll AI

Been Better

Traitor to her Class

Been Better

Plausible Engineer

Pocky Eating MafiaDoka

Amateur human

Traitor to her Class

Mad Rocketeer