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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CyberFemme · Apr 25, 2022

masterofmadness said:
Christians, Charity and Columbia
May 25th, 2255

A few days ago if you had asked about Nathan Caulder the answer you got probably would have been "Which one is that? You know the creepy old man running Cern has like a hundred kids right?" which was very fair and something he very much had relied on for most of his life. If you had asked after they did a little thinking you probably would have been told "Oh he is the religious one! That's nice I guess." Which was also something he relied on for most of his life. He had been content with that, being mostly out of his shitty father's eye while he did the occasional bit of charity for him to write off or use a PR to keep him off his back.

He could only imagine the look on his dear papa's face now.

He watched the headline on the news as it blared out last night's events as video played of him greeted by his landing shuttle by a crowd of chanting Augments, "Crazed Communist Caulder Campaigns across Columbia" nice alliteration honestly. Truthfully despite the gilded world being full of poor inhabitants in desperate need of the change the Broadcast would bring it would probably never succeed in becoming a successful anarchist state. The headquarters of Ares was too strongly militarized to crush a revolt unless a mass mutiny happened and the culture of hardcore American revivalism clashed heavily with the DemFed associations with anarchism. No he and his cause would probably fail here at some point… but that was exactly why he needed to act.

It was Columbia where he was a citizen who could legally run for office, it was Columbia where he had most of his assets and contacts and most importantly it was Columbia where he was the only person capable of providing that most important tool of anarchist power that Columbia feared the most… free healthcare.

Nobody but a Caulder could theoretically be providing legally produced supplies of food and medicine to the countless 'free clinics' and 'Food banks' that absolutely weren't using illegal fabbers. Of course he wasn't officially an anarchist, at least when not in front of the right crowd for it, just a humble Christian reformist who believed that the good and godly people of Columbia should follow his example as he followed god by giving out the necessities of life to the poor of their own free will and perhaps not punish everyone who used the Box with outright violence. The sort of man that appealed to the frightened segments of respectable society too cowardly to admit they would do anything, the worst atrocities possible included, to avoid a revolt but would be happy to let the poor have the food they should have had all along if it would keep them safe. A group still larger than the grow tide of murderous mad men who were finally finding an excuse to kill the poor like they always wanted.

He suspected everyone in power knew what he was doing overall but they couldn't prove it just yet. After all Columbia was the legacy of America and its God Given Rights! Where the rights of rich white Christians from a good family to manipulate the poor through religion for their own gain was one that could not be taken with due process! So for now Ares and the local government were stalled for the next few days as they figured out how to deal with him. Days that meant everything for a brewing revolution when you had the Box in your corner.

And of course there was the other reason that they were pausing about taking action so far, they needed to figure out which Caulder was really behind this. Sure it was probably just one of dear daddy's many kids going rogue but what if it wasn't? Would dear old dad be willing to support his son's little cooption of the revolution while the galaxy as they knew it burned down happened just so he could take control of one of the Daughters?

Well, obviously he would be willing, because he is a power hungry asshole but is he doing it now? Since right now he was probably a little busy and any response even if he was available would have taken some travel time to get here all the way from Cornucopia the answer was silence. Given how things were going he was probably dealing with some degree of rebellion over there in the Far Trailing that he'd have to put down so Nathan probably didn't need to worry about him for a while. He wasn't optimistic enough to believe his Dad might get the firing squad he so desperately deserved though, he wasn't that lucky.

Besides the idea of his father's rage filled face when he did find out brought an evil smile to his face. He sipped from his cup at the thought and enjoyed the taste of tea.

… And of arsenic.

"Hey Ralph, this was poisoned, find out who did this and drag them somewhere quiet would you? I've got a sermon to give after all." Ralph nodded and walked off. Good man, another advantage he could bring that Columbia needed, well trained security experts who could be trusted. It had been a lot of work getting men who guarded him to be actually loyal to him but it was well worth it.

The local organizer, who was going to introduce him to the crowd, a male fox augment because he was not trying to be subtle, was looking at him wide eyed.

"Are you going to be okay?" He said questioningly.

Nathan smiled "Oh no I'll be fine, I'm one of Caulder's Get after all. I have plenty of 'technically not augments because you can't see them' installed. A common poison like this? It's nothing. Got to get creative with me and anyone who doesn't know that is probably an amateur. So it probably is not Ares or any of my wonderful family this time, nothing to worry about."

For some reason that didn't seem to help him relax much.

He put his hand on his shoulder reassuringly. "Hey, it is okay to be nervous, that is a natural response. Don't worry about me or what I do. All you have to do is introduce me and look vaguely like Santiago right now. Can you do that? Show a fraction of the courage another man showed when he stood in front of the whole damn Compact parliament and told them it was already dead? Because nobody is going to force you to do anything. You can walk away and I will find someone else if you want."

The fox Augment took a deep breath and responded. "No, I can do this. Like you said, what is this compared to what he did right?" He gave a weary smile.

Nathan smiled proudly and patted him on the back "Damn right! Now let's do our part for the cause."

The fox Augment organizer walked onto the stage while Nathan desperately tried and failed to remember his name. He missed most of the introduction but caught his name being announced and stepped on stage.

He was greeted by thunderous applause and he was reminded exactly why he tried to avoid public activity like this, having power over people was intoxicating. It was going to be really hard to not let this get to his head, he wasn't sure it hadn't already.

… Okay it certainly had but he could manage it… probably.

Still the show must go on. Nathan shook the organizer's hand and picked up a bible with the other as he turned on his mic.

"Hello everyone, I would like to tell you the story of man." He paused for effect. "This man was born to poor and humble circumstances on Earth not too long ago." Some mummers started in the crowd. "This man saw a world full of injustice and honest men suffering under cruel masters and he chose to stand up!" Applause started and he picked up his tempo slightly. "This man took to the street and he spoke the truth to all who would listen." Voices started to rise and he raised his as well. "He gathered followers around who listened to his message and they took to the streets." The Voices started to holler and he spoke faster. "The authorities saw this happening and they grew afraid! They screamed out 'We must stop him! We must stop this man' as they unleashed a torrent of lies and stirred fear and hatred!" There was yelling now he was on the verge of yelling too but not quite yet, he had a little bit to go. "They brought down their cruel oppressors to crush him and for a time it seemed they had silenced him but soon he returned! He returned and the people followed his message in greater numbers than ever!" The sound almost couldn't get any louder, but he knew it could go higher and started to work up to a climax for this part.

"I THINK YOU ALL KNOW WHO I AM I TALKING ABOUT!" He screamed and pointed his finger to a crucifix conveniently placed near his fox augment friend sitting nearby. The Crowd screamed even louder.

"People of Columbia, it is time to remind this world that CHRIST WAS NOT A KING, CHRIST WAS A REVOLUTIONARY!"

And with that he had them, they bellowed out screams at the top of their lungs. Putting the full force of their selves and throwing out into the world, towards him. He smiled.

Now he spoke more evenly but with force behind it. "For too long has the word of our Lord been used to justify the Sins of the Strong." He already had them now they were simply following. "False prophets who turn a profit as they turn and twist and pervert the good word to make lies from God's message." They booed but not for him. "They say 'It is better to teach a man to fish than to give him one.' But never truly teach without taking everything they can from the catch and then let the man starve without giving him one." Bellows of support returned but mixed with anger beneath it. He added a little more volume and force. "They say 'The meek shall inherit the earth' but never work towards helping them inherit it." They were rising again captivated by his words, he raised his voice with them. "They speak of how God will grant the faithful miracles but never seek to make miracles for the faithful." The crowd rose even more and he put a bit more behind it. Almost time for the finale. "They say that God will one day bring heaven and paradise on earth but never seek to bring the day or say how it will come!" As he started to all but scream, so too did they once more.

"WELL THE DAY IS TODAY AND IT WILL COME BECAUSE WE HAVE COME TOGETHER THE MAKE IT!"

The crowd exploded and he took a moment to bask in the beauty of it before it calmed down. He moved to climb down off the stage around his guards and spoke softly again. "My fellow children of God please take the humble offerings the kind volunteers around you are distributing now and remember in your heart where you know they truly come from." He briefly brought his hands together as if in prayer before he finished. "But more importantly, please join them. Come and speak with your fellow men and organize yourselves to help bring about the world we all desire. Thank you and God Bless."

He spent a little time going through the crowd and saying platitude or shaking hands. He didn't make an effort to commit anything here to memory though, just went through on autopilot. This was just one speech he would have amongst many he would be giving planet wide as fast as possible. Every one of them was important, a chance for people to gather and organize in peace they so desperately needed, But didn't mean much when he was going through them a mile a minute. He wouldn't have long before he needs to do the next one.

Though as his security team brought him to the local 'quiet place' he'd asked them to find it seemed in this case he might at least have something of a break in between.

"Anything on him Ralph?" He asked.

Ralph shook his head "Not much, seems like just a local 'hero' who watched too much propaganda. Lines up with the lack of proper poison too, though we will tighten things to make sure no one gets a chance to use an effective one next time."

He shook his head "Of course." Then he smiled "Well might as well meet our hero then."

It turned out their 'hero' was a male dog Augment with a black eye he presumably didn't have earlier.

"Fuck you." He spat.

Nathan smiled. "I would love to but I am sadly straight." He shook his head in faux sadness. "I've tried to pray it away but no dice."

"I don't know what you are planning but you won't get away with it! You won't win! Columbia will never be yours!"

He bit his lip as he tried to hold back his grin. He really shouldn't but… screw it. "I know it is wrong but if you are going to line up perfect setups like that I might as well have some fun. I've always wanted to do a super villain rant anyway."

Nathan jabbed a syringe into his and smiled madly. "Just a little something to make sure you aren't getting out of this alive no matter what. I know I should feel bad about this but for a lapdog like you the worst I am going to feel is a little guilt about that remark being slightly racist." He let his disgust show on his face. "You sellouts make me sick, even worse than the monsters you worship."

He lowered himself to just above his eye level. "But you're probably right. I am likely never going to be ruling Columbia, bigger upsets have happened in history but Ares' thugs are stronger here than almost anywhere. But that is half the reason I'm here, every moment I buy holding them down on their own world is time for another out there somewhere to rise up without them."

Then he made his smile outright sadistic. "Of course that is not the only thing on Columbia I am here for. Everyone always forgets about the third branch of the Compact, just how they like it."

The dog Augment's eye went wide in horror "The Central Bank."

He added in some joy to the smile. "Yep, their little game of outright fraud to keep the market intact is doomed to fail anyway but a proper strike on them outright? That will sink it for good, make the mass economic collapse that will really get things going galactic wide."

He backed away. "Sadly I need to be able to honestly say I wasn't responsible so I won't be doing it myself. Compartmentalization isn't just for Charters after all. But if they follow my advice it will look as much like an Ares false flag to seize power as possible."

"You're insane."

Nathan smiled sadly at that one "Thanks to my shitty family yes I am but that is not while I am doing this." He frowned, "I'm doing this because I have spent too long try to help people who need it to be able to pretend that they need it because of this system and that I will ever be able to help them without bringing it down."

He let out a sigh. "It was good to say all that out loud, but I have a lot of work to do so goodbye." He tapped the voice function on his phone "Play me some badass walking away music please?"

The song came through … yeah that would do.

"Ralph, if you would?" Ralph threw something behind him and he wished had the time to synch it up to the music.

… Oh well.

Please allow me to introduce myself I'm a man of wealth and taste.

Oh that song choice was *chef kiss*.

masterofmadness · Apr 25, 2022

CyberEnby said:
Oh that song choice was *chef kiss*.

I will admit it was a hard one. I thought a little about what was best and thought back to the various anarchist songs that have come up. But then I realized the "Man of wealth and taste' opening and the devil implication around a priest were just too perfect.

Plus it is a classic.

CyberFemme · Apr 25, 2022

masterofmadness said:
I will admit it was a hard one. I thought a little about what was best and thought back to the various anarchist songs that have come up. But then I realized the "Man of wealth and taste' opening and the devil implication around a priest were just too perfect.

Plus it is a classic.

I'm glad you did, there are just layers upon layers of irony here that I love.

NHO · Apr 25, 2022

This Nathan learned empathy as a way to stick it to the dear clonedad. It's a painful struggle, but man has gone beyond maecenate. He is a Hero of Revolution, no questions asked.
Rolls permitting, he will be a saint. And possibly denounced by current selloff pope as Antichrist. Rolls exceptional, he will be new Messiah after his organization knocks Central Bank in just the right moment to confuse Ares headquarter defense and let Revolution eat said headquarters.

Balmung1 · Apr 25, 2022

i was reading through this 40k fic that had this passage that kinda struck a cord with me and also I thought would resonate pretty well with the whole theme of the Tyrantsverse.

This one is mine. You cannot have him.

All you do is take. All you have, you stole.

You do not create. You do not build. You do not grow.

You only corrupt and enslave.

This is how it has ever been, since the dawning of darkness.

This is what you are, behind the masks you forge from the nightmares of your slaves.

But this one ?

This one, I have taken back. This one, I have reclaimed.

This one soul, I have saved from you.

Are you afraid ?

You should be.

He is the first.

He will not be the last.

The big company charters like Ares and Hermes-Ishtar don't really build anything all they do is take things from the innocent and turn it into a vile parody of what it was originally.All they have done is take and take,becoming a cancerous tumor killing humanity.Until something changed, A simple colony became free and changed everything.They were the first to truly throw off the chains since the beginning and they made it so that they weren't the last with now the Charters are the ones on the backfoot.Everything has changed now that gods can bleed

Beyogi · Apr 25, 2022

I've been rereading the story and I've come across something I found a bit strange. What are "unliscenced medical practitioners" and why do we call them that way?

10ebbor10 · Apr 25, 2022

Beyogi said:
I've been rereading the story and I've come across something I found a bit strange. What are "unliscenced medical practitioners" and why do we call them that way?

Where did you see it?

buli-buli · Apr 25, 2022

Beyogi said:
I've been rereading the story and I've come across something I found a bit strange. What are "unliscenced medical practitioners" and why do we call them that way?

Remember Five Lions? Where you needed a certification to do anything?

That sort of system isn't just quality control, those licenses (and tests (and study materials)) all cost money.

So, an unlicensed medical practioner could just be some self-trained asshole, but it also includes everybody who doesn't pay a yearly licensing fee.

Of course without a license you probably can't legally use certain equipment and/or insurance won't cover procedures.

There could also be a limit on the number of licenses in circulation at a time.

WillRobinson · Apr 25, 2022

Beyogi said:
I've been rereading the story and I've come across something I found a bit strange. What are "unliscenced medical practitioners" and why do we call them that way?

Accredited med schools only exist in the Core, so places on the frontier like Radiant don't have licensed doctors.

Beyogi · Apr 25, 2022

10ebbor10 said:
Where did you see it?

With the ARC reaction to the humanitarian crisis on Gentle Repose. We sent nurses and "unliscenced medical practitioners" and I found it somewhat weird that'd we'd do that. Either that we'd send cranks or that we'd basically still call our medical professionals with that sort of title.

WillRobinson said:
Accredited med schools only exist in the Core, so places on the frontier like Radiant don't have licensed doctors.

Just kinda strange that we'd care about that and didn't make our own liscences.

TheArcanist · Apr 25, 2022

WillRobinson said:
Accredited med schools only exist in the Core, so places on the frontier like Radiant don't have licensed doctors.

Or, well, they do, but instead of being actual medical practitioners they're bourgeois assholes who own entire hospitals and medical supply companies.

Argent Citadel · Apr 25, 2022

Mood spoiler: Kinda a downer.

Refusing the Call;
Or, five times the gifts of the Broadcast were refused, and one time they were embraced.

Makena was confused. That confusion only grew as she delved through the content that the revolutionaries had sent. None of it made sense. How could all of these terrible things be happening on the frontier, and the Compact did nothing?
And these files, these promised blueprints...It sounds like fantasy, like magic that you could simply go to a fabricator and get anything you need, at any time; That anyone could be immortal without working for it all. Such ideas didn't belong in the real world.

Radiant, she knew, was an entertainment system, and here it seemed they were making another fantasy. Sophisticated, extraordinary, to be sure, some new kind of escapist entertainment, but not real. Yet they piled on proof everywhere. And all around here, people were discussing it. Smart people. And they seemed to believe it was real. Could it be...? It was overwhelming. And so, in turmoil, she reached out to see what other people were saying.

Makena tapped into one of her favourites, Hecking Hazbin's feed. The handsome features of Hazbin filled her feed, where his stream of consciousness monologue continued amid the halo of notifications, chat alerts and engagement multipliers.
"-so it's a lot to take in. I get it. There's some shocking stuff here. Starving to death? Wild. Immortality for everyone? Sexy as. So what do we do with all that? Do we buy it?
I mean, I dunno. Look, lets go to first principles, right? What did we know before the Broadcast, what do we already know is true? Every time anarchism has been tried it's failed. It's a terrible system for running a society because it's actively hostile to the idea of running a society. Right? I mean, we know that, they tell us that themselves.
So now they say they've given everyone who wants it immortality in, what, a few years? Without being able to make a hierarchy? Without paying anyone to do the work? I mean, I could believe if they said they were part of the way to universal immortality, but c'mon.

Think about it, what gets you out of bed to your shitty job? You don't do it for love, you do it to get paid so..."

Yes. That made sense. The jagged barbs that had been pricking into Makena's mind all day started to slip into place like the points of a jigsaw piece. Still, Hazbin wasn't some expert on this sort of thing. Makena flicked through her subs, onward, to look for something with a bit more...gravitas, more...authority.

She checked in to Practical Morality's livestream, which had an exciting reputation as talking about controversial topics. Today, morality expert Professor Kioko's lined face was creased in thought, considering the words of the (slightly tired looking) Dr. Freidan, who's nameplate explained she was an expert on information war and propaganda.
"...so you can see the gap there, between the anarchists rhetoric and their actions. They're claiming to be different from any other nation state, but what they've done is directly from the playbook of every other state out there, especially revolutionary terror states. Though, admittedly, this was on a different scale." finished Dr. Friedan

"States do have the right to defend their people." noted Kioko.

"Sure, but they aren't defending themselves, they are attacking us. Attacking everyone. They just beamed a rocket launcher into everyone's pocket, and then told them enough unverified claims to get them angry. What they want is, quite clearly, to have the gullible fight their wars for them, keep their fantasy kingdom alive a few more years with the blood of millions."

Professor Kioko paused carefully. "I've heard people say that they're only giving the discontented the means to act, but it's their choice to act. I've heard people say they're only exercising their free will. If they chose to act, can that be pinned on the anarchists?"

Dr. Friedan nodded decisively. "Absolutely. Look, don't get me wrong. People should take personal responsibility if they abandon morality and resort to violence, those individuals are responsible too. But Amaranthines created a sophisticated mix of lies and truth specifically to lead to violence. That Foxman even called this a Weapon. This type of extreme ideology has a long history of using cannon-fodder human wave attacks by indoctrinating the disadvantaged."

"Hm." Professor Kioko's hand drummed on the set's expensive leather armchair "So, you said a mix of lies and truth. But there's truth in there?"

Here, Dr Friedan paused, before they relaxed back in their chair "Well, claims of abuses on the frontiers should be investigated of course. There may be some incidents by local leaders that sparked this uprising in the first place. But if they really cared about fixing this problem, if they actually wanted to avoid violence, they could have told everyone with this broadcast without also handing them guns."

Professor Kioko tilted his head thoughtfully, and Dr. Freidan pressed on "I mean, what does that tell you? The anarchists sat on this information for months, years without even trying to tell the public. If anything, the anarchists hid the information of these abuses just as much as the charters did, before releasing them in such a way as to give them a proxy army. Smart? Maybe. Moral? No."

Makena listened on, and felt her confusion fade.

Of course it was propaganda. Occam's razor - what's more likely? That there was some vast conspiracy to hide everything, that you could just magically get everything you ever wanted and some corporations have been stopping it all along? Or that we lived in the real world, that life was hard, and you had to work hard to get what you needed? Much easier to just fake everything they were telling her than actually give everything away for free. The simplest explanation was usually the correct one, and Makena knew which one was simpler to understand. Makena remembered what her mother once told her - if something seemed too good to be true, it probably was. These anarchists had everything to gain by people dying and stealing on their behalf, and weakening their enemies. They were trying to use people, use her, for their own ends, just like everyone else.

Makena felt a lot better in the following days, but pitied those around her being drawn into the con. She was smart enough to avoid it, but could already tell that the broadcast was about to do a lot of damage.

---

Arash was exhausted, so when the strange music blared out of his silenced phone in the dark of his box like apartment he groaned in almost spiritual pain. Arash had only a few precious hours of sleep before another crushing overtime shift , and this weird notification was interrupting it. He grabbed his phone and groggily tried to figure out what was going on. He had a spike of adrenaline when he saw something was coming through the emergency system, but his tired mind struggled to put together what was coming through. Some sort of political drama? Files? A news system? It was too much, the building wasn't on fire, he could sort it out later. He was asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.

Arash blamed the interrupted night of sleep for his late wake up, needing a desperate dash to work in the drone control centre before taking his place. He was so consumed by his own personal crisis that he didn't note anything off about the city on the way in. He still didn't note anything until long after he started his shift at his hub, scheduling and managing drone deliveries and managing customer complaints. It was only when his phone noted a message from his sister that he noted something was different:

SisTAH: Did you watch it?

Ugh. What had she sent? He couldn't remember, maybe it was a cooking video? Should he fess up he hadn't watched it? Nah, she'd whip out that gold level eyeroll hyper-gif the family had gotten her, couldn't bear the alerts that pinged with his brain so fried.

You: Yeah, it was cute, thanks.

There, that was just generic enough. Arahs scheduled a new launch of a drone, and frowned. Damn, it was busy today. The phone pinged a reply.

SisTAH: Woah, really? You're ice cold. I'm still shaking from the Idyllia thing. You think it's real?

Uh oh, he had no idea what she was talking about. Sigh. Time to fess up.

You: I don't know. What are you talking about? I think I was thinking of the other thing you sent.
SisTAH: The EAS broadcast, brickhead!
You: Uhhh kinda slept through it. Can you give me the cliff notes?
SisTAH: Seriously? Ash. This is serious. You should watch it.
You: Sis, I don't have time. I'm flat out right now. What's so important?
SisTAH: I don't think I should type it out. Can I call?
You: Busy. Might have time tonight?
SisTAH: Ash, c'monn...

After a bit of badgering, Arash tried again in his 15 minute lunch to break into the ocean of information in the EAS broadcast. Ok, so there was a revolution? Real, not a vid. And a bunch of crimes on the frontier. And then he had to get back to work.

Some of the co-workers were talking about it, he could hear, but he had to hit quota, he didn't really have time to engage.

The day was hell, a bunch of people had called in sick, so Arash was dead by the time he got home. He had just enough energy to wash, eat and then slip into bed and watch an ep of his favourite old TV series to get that nostalgia hit.

He meant to watch more of that broadcast thing, but it was pretty confronting and he frankly didn't have the energy.

The next day there was a special notice on his phone: Watching the broadcast was illegal.

Huh. Oh well, Arash guessed he'd missed his chance. It's not like he had the time to sort all that crap out, he had a job to do. Only two more months before his overtime schedule went back to the breezy two hour mandatory overtime roster again. Then life would be better.

---

Ying winced as the door to their son's bedroom slammed shut upstairs. In front of her, her husband scowled, clutching the boy's confiscated phone.

"Unbelievable" He growled, slowly relaxing. "No respect."

Ying sagged into a chair, sighing "He's a teenager, Jai. You know this is what they do. He's still so young."

Jai scowled and began to pace. "Not young enough that fucking terrorists won't try to recruit him into their fucking suicide squads." He waved the phone in the air "I mean, how are we supposed to protect him from this? They're trying to kill him! Fill his head with bullshit and send him off to get shot-"

"Don't." Ying had gone utterly pale, clutching the side of her chair in a death grip. Her throat hurt. Her heart. "Don't say that."

Jai looked at her, and a creeping look of shame filled his face. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you." Jai put the phone down carefully and pulled another chair beside her.

They sat in silence for a while.

"You scare me when you're like that," Said Ying. "I hate it when you yell."

"I know. I'm sorry. I...I'm scared too." Jai swallowed. "I just...I don't know what to do to protect him. He's already hanging out with the wrong crowd, that Yun girl, what if..."
"I know. I know." Ying sighed and rubbed her head, eyes sliding to the phone.

Ying had her own thoughts about what she had learned. It was shocking, but perhaps not surprising what had happened on the frontier. Honestly, she couldn't blame the Amaranthines wanting to rebel, but did they have to turn to such a hateful ideology? Maybe there was a way to use what the anarchists had broadcast to improve things here on Earth, without their madness. If they could-

The image of her son, lying cold and pale on the street, blank eyes cast skyward, flashed uncontrolled into her mind.

What worth was a future without their boy?

Ying stood. "We'll work something out. We'll ground him forever if that's what it takes."
Jai hung his head "We...I mean, that won't..."

But Ying had already moved on. "We-we could install Childsafe."

Jai looked shocked. "We said we'd never do that. You said we'd never do that. You hate Childsafe."

It had been a short enough talk they'd had about it. They knew other parents who had forced their kids to use Childsafe - the mandatory checking ins, the recording and surveillance suite, all the 'optional' add ons. They'd both agreed it was more in line with surveillance of a hardened criminal than a child Yin had hated the idea that any child, let alone theirs, would have to suffer from it.

"I do." Ying pressed her hands together so they wouldn't tremble "But some things are more important than what I want and what he wants."

The words hung in the air, sounding louder and louder in the silence that followed. The couple stared at each other for a long moment.

Then Jai stood and embraced his wife. "Ok. Ok, let's talk about it."

---

As awful and chaotic the last few days had been for Ngozi, she had to admit part of her was long the excitement of the times. Her Pol-Sci course was running erratically at best, and half the other students had headed home or off to protests. Even her work was locked down, so that left her with nothing but time to devour the content of the unfolding news and the revolutionary broadcast.

Ngozi had been watching Ambassador Santiago's speech over and over with a kind of horrified fascination. It didn't seem real, that this was a speech that happened in actual politics rather than a scene of a movie. From the chatter online, she knew she was hardly the first to compare it to a supervillain's expository gloating from the latest blockbuster.

I mean, he had escaped in a secret submarine, for crying out loud!

But it was real. Ambassador Santiago was a real person, and he really had stood before the greatest assembly of democracy in the galaxy and gloated about all the death he was about to cause. It took a few watches to help her realise just why she kept watching.

It was his smile. His smile was driving her crazy, because she couldn't understand it.

Oh sure, on a lot of levels, she could understand what he'd done. Can't really blame the down-trodden rising after some of the stuff they showed in the broadcast. Probably, a bunch of it was lies, but maybe not everything. Ngozi was even glad they'd shared the information with her, she'd always wanted to know more about how things worked on the frontiers. And while this revolt was clearly not the most productive way to tackle the problem, maybe it was the only way.

Ngozi could even imagine herself reluctantly, bitterly, taking up arms for liberty in dire circumstances.

But what sort of person gloats about the inevitable bloodshed? Well, a person like Ambassador Theodore Santiago of the Amaranth Interstellar Commonwealth, it seemed.

Ngozi had devoured all the info on this fascinating new society she could find. She didn't believe in 'evil' people, not really. Such a belief was the product of a simple mind. So she didn't think the Ambassador took pleasure at the prospect of destruction itself. He hated the Compact, clearly. Thought it was slavery, and its destruction would be good for its slaves. But why, then, did he not care about what it would cost the people he pretended to address?

The days since the broadcast had been bad. There had been battles and killings across her city, and she knew she was getting off lightly compared to other places. Soon, no doubt, there would be shortages, starvation, homelessness, all the horrors she'd read about that come with any civil war, and it would be all over Sol, all over the galaxy. And Santiago had triggered it off with a grin.

It was during her thirteenth watch that Ngozi finally realised what explained this:

Santiago didn't care about the people. He didn't care about Ngozi and everyone like her, he cared about the idea of the people.

He'd spent so many decades in a dark basement, out of touch, fantasising of this moment. At some point, he'd stopped thinking of what it meant for real people, real individuals, and just thought about an amorphous mass, the idea and concept of liberation of the masses. Who cares what happened to her and her loved ones, so long as he was proven right?

He smiled because the pain of his enemies was more important to him than the sorrow of the people. Standing at a podium spouting off long dead ideas like the 'Tyrant of Capital', meaningless rhetoric like 'breaking free of capital' with no concern for what his empty ideas actually meant to real people.

Fascination hardened in Ngozi to anger, contempt. She decided she had no interest in dying or suffering for revolutionaries' personal fantasies. She had to live in the real world, not the world of ideas. She made a note that such breaches of decorum as the Ambassador grinning could be useful in spotting wider trends in people's politics, and switched to the news.

---

Summers were always hard for Ismael.

The long hot months were littered with many grim anniversaries of comrades lost and dreams dashed. He was old now. He had seen and survived many black summers, outlived friends, family and entire communes.

Still, when the heat rose and the protests marched, Ismael rallied himself and went forth to provide mutual aid. It was all he could do now, and he had to, if his survival was to have meant something. He organised deliveries and ran supplies amid the shattered ruins of a failed dream.

When the broadcast swept the planet, he was astonished. His mutual support net was exploding with excitement, and expanding in size as new recruits poured in. New firebrands had arisen and began to organise. At every meeting he went to, the confidence was building into a fever pitch. This was it, he heard them say. This was it.

He remembered the last time he believed that.

The first time he took to the streets (young, he'd been so young). The friends he'd marched with (what did they even look like? Could he remember?). The first shots, the first bodies.

And the Great Summers. The ones that had been It in their time too. But their time passed, taking more blood along for the ride into the void in Ishmael's heart.

He had learned that you had to be smart, and pragmatic to survive. Keep your head down, don't reach for the great goals, just do what you can. Survive. Above all survive, keep the flame alive. For…

Ismael sat in the back of a meeting and found his hands shaking. They were printing weapons. Drones. Armor. It was incredible. But did he think this was It? That they would win?

He realised, with an awful lurch, that he didn't. If he had learned anything over the many years of pain, it was that the Charters always won in the end. The prospect of success, dangling above him again after so long just made it all the more painful. Cruel of them to let him hope, when there was no chance.

Ismael felt like he was going to be sick. How could he sit here, among these walking dead? How could he pretend they were anything but more martyrs? Ismael slipped out of the meeting hall, shaking like a leaf.

The next day, the agreed hour of action, found him still at his apartment, clinging desperately to his motionless seat, staring at the few pictures of those he'd lost.

Coward whispered a voice in his head. They need you.

I can't watch it fall apart again. I owe to them to survi-

You owe it to them to fight! You're pathetic!

And on it went.

Ismael's hand shook, and tears ran down his face. He remained, paralysed by fear and doubt, as the tide of history marched past beneath his windows.

---

Roland is triumphant as he looks out across the meeting. They have arrived in twos and threes, sneaking or bribing their way past police checkpoints, passing through ruins, in disguise or concealment. Everyone here has risked great danger to be here, because they believe.

And there were so many! Roland counted dozens, and hadn't even checked the encrypted feeds they'd set up broadcasting the meet to discreet servers off world. Better yet, Roland could see the quality was good - he saw some ex military (deserters? That could be useful) and even a few cops in their midst. Could they be informants? Or were they supporters as they said? Well, he'd made that gamble days ago when he'd reached out to them. Too late to wonder now.

The meeting was in a beer hall, windows shuttered due to local lockdown. Seeing everything was ready, Roland mounted the stage normally reserved for musicians and called to the crowd.

"Brothers! Sisters! Old and new members of the Purestars! Welcome. You all know why we're here. The Compact is failing, and will soon fall."

He let the words hang in the air for a moment before cracking a grin, stretching his arms wide "Would it be rude to say 'We told you so?'"

There were a few chuckles and Roland's grin faded and his words became more forceful.

"For years, we have known that the Compact's weakness was leading us to ruin. For years, we have railed against the greed and corruption of the Charters pumping poison through the body politic of sacred humanity! And now, we see the consequences."
Roland clenched his hand into a fist, eyes blazing.

"They did nothing as the purity of the human form was perverted by animals. They did nothing as the wonder of the human mind was copied by machines. They coddled these anarchists. Wrung their hands at firmer measures and gave them a slap on the wrist. They even, we now learn, hid the very existence of this anarchist slaughterhouse from true humanity, let them scheme in the dark. And look what that has led to!"

Roland's hand unclenched from the fist and cut forward in an arc, indicating the whole world outside this room.

"Chaos! Bloodshed! Just as this moment has exposed the Compact's weakness, so too does it expose the anarchist's basic thuggery, their utter subversion by inhuman forces. The people despair. They call out for peace. They call out for order."

Roland's hand dropped and he stared at the crowd.

"They call out for us."

There was a hush, then Roland raised his fist and spoke again, punctuating each sentence with a strike towards the air.

"Purestars! This is our time! The people will turn to us now! We must organise! We must recruit! And we must turn this weapon of treachery, this broadcast, against the traitors to humanity that made it."

Roland gestured, and with a flourish, a stockpile of Boxes was revealed, fabricators stacked in the corner and ready for distribution.

The crowd was ecstatic, cheering, chanting.

"Hail victory! 'til the stars are pure!" Roared Roland

And the crowd roared back

"'TIL THE STARS ARE PURE!"

Genderite · Apr 25, 2022

Beyogi said:
With the ARC reaction to the humanitarian crisis on Gentle Repose. We sent nurses and "unliscenced medical practitioners" and I found it somewhat weird that'd we'd do that. Either that we'd send cranks or that we'd basically still call our medical professionals with that sort of title.

Just kinda strange that we'd care about that and didn't make our own liscences.

Basically Doctor = Hospital owner, Nurse = Doctor, certified/uncertified = Nurse who either has or hasn't paid the fees recently.
Edit: obviously those who haven't paid the fees are cheaper so are all that were available to the poor

Beyogi · Apr 25, 2022

Argent Citadel said:
Mood spoiler: Kinda a downer.

Refusing the Call;
Or, five times the gifts of the Broadcast were refused, and one time they were embraced.

Yeah bound to happen. Honestly surprised we haven't seen more of it. People being far more upset about someone daring to upset the order they've arranged themselves with than the injustices said order is subjecting them and especially others to.

LunarCatalyst · Apr 25, 2022

Hello comrades! 99% lurker here, this quest has honestly blown away all my expectations, I read it in under 48hours, been religiously following it ever since... Thank you, QMs and everyone who's participated in this quest. I just hope I can give something back to the community, even if it's just a little...

So here, take my free gifts and information. I've spent a few hours and compiled population data plus a little bit more from the codex. Easy to access, super easy to read (I hope) information, even works as a proper (kinda) excel sheet for ease of editing.

I just came from the discord where I checked with the QM and co, so here you go (google docs):

Population+ Sheet

Feel free to correct stuff in relation to the codex!

Disclaimer: This relies on the (in-universe)Codex which itself isn't 100% accurate (Shei) and is still undergoing revision, even so, it should help with keeping quick track of systems.

Gradients for joint corporate control didn't transfer over, ~~Compact Administrative Zones aren't identified yet~~.

AKuz · Apr 25, 2022

Argent Citadel said:
Mood spoiler: Kinda a downer.

Refusing the Call;
Or, five times the gifts of the Broadcast were refused, and one time they were embraced.

Makena was confused. That confusion only grew as she delved through the content that the revolutionaries had sent. None of it made sense. How could all of these terrible things be happening on the frontier, and the Compact did nothing?
And these files, these promised blueprints...It sounds like fantasy, like magic that you could simply go to a fabricator and get anything you need, at any time; That anyone could be immortal without working for it all. Such ideas didn't belong in the real world.

Radiant, she knew, was an entertainment system, and here it seemed they were making another fantasy. Sophisticated, extraordinary, to be sure, some new kind of escapist entertainment, but not real. Yet they piled on proof everywhere. And all around here, people were discussing it. Smart people. And they seemed to believe it was real. Could it be...? It was overwhelming. And so, in turmoil, she reached out to see what other people were saying.

Makena tapped into one of her favourites, Hecking Hazbin's feed. The handsome features of Hazbin filled her feed, where his stream of consciousness monologue continued amid the halo of notifications, chat alerts and engagement multipliers.
"-so it's a lot to take in. I get it. There's some shocking stuff here. Starving to death? Wild. Immortality for everyone? Sexy as. So what do we do with all that? Do we buy it?
I mean, I dunno. Look, lets go to first principles, right? What did we know before the Broadcast, what do we already know is true? Every time anarchism has been tried it's failed. It's a terrible system for running a society because it's actively hostile to the idea of running a society. Right? I mean, we know that, they tell us that themselves.
So now they say they've given everyone who wants it immortality in, what, a few years? Without being able to make a hierarchy? Without paying anyone to do the work? I mean, I could believe if they said they were part of the way to universal immortality, but c'mon.

Think about it, what gets you out of bed to your shitty job? You don't do it for love, you do it to get paid so..."

Yes. That made sense. The jagged barbs that had been pricking into Makena's mind all day started to slip into place like the points of a jigsaw piece. Still, Hazbin wasn't some expert on this sort of thing. Makena flicked through her subs, onward, to look for something with a bit more...gravitas, more...authority.

She checked in to Practical Morality's livestream, which had an exciting reputation as talking about controversial topics. Today, morality expert Professor Kioko's lined face was creased in thought, considering the words of the (slightly tired looking) Dr. Freidan, who's nameplate explained she was an expert on information war and propaganda.
"...so you can see the gap there, between the anarchists rhetoric and their actions. They're claiming to be different from any other nation state, but what they've done is directly from the playbook of every other state out there, especially revolutionary terror states. Though, admittedly, this was on a different scale." finished Dr. Friedan

"States do have the right to defend their people." noted Kioko.

"Sure, but they aren't defending themselves, they are attacking us. Attacking everyone. They just beamed a rocket launcher into everyone's pocket, and then told them enough unverified claims to get them angry. What they want is, quite clearly, to have the gullible fight their wars for them, keep their fantasy kingdom alive a few more years with the blood of millions."

Professor Kioko paused carefully. "I've heard people say that they're only giving the discontented the means to act, but it's their choice to act. I've heard people say they're only exercising their free will. If they chose to act, can that be pinned on the anarchists?"

Dr. Friedan nodded decisively. "Absolutely. Look, don't get me wrong. People should take personal responsibility if they abandon morality and resort to violence, those individuals are responsible too. But Amaranthines created a sophisticated mix of lies and truth specifically to lead to violence. That Foxman even called this a Weapon. This type of extreme ideology has a long history of using cannon-fodder human wave attacks by indoctrinating the disadvantaged."

"Hm." Professor Kioko's hand drummed on the set's expensive leather armchair "So, you said a mix of lies and truth. But there's truth in there?"

Here, Dr Friedan paused, before they relaxed back in their chair "Well, claims of abuses on the frontiers should be investigated of course. There may be some incidents by local leaders that sparked this uprising in the first place. But if they really cared about fixing this problem, if they actually wanted to avoid violence, they could have told everyone with this broadcast without also handing them guns."

Professor Kioko tilted his head thoughtfully, and Dr. Freidan pressed on "I mean, what does that tell you? The anarchists sat on this information for months, years without even trying to tell the public. If anything, the anarchists hid the information of these abuses just as much as the charters did, before releasing them in such a way as to give them a proxy army. Smart? Maybe. Moral? No."

Makena listened on, and felt her confusion fade.

Of course it was propaganda. Occam's razor - what's more likely? That there was some vast conspiracy to hide everything, that you could just magically get everything you ever wanted and some corporations have been stopping it all along? Or that we lived in the real world, that life was hard, and you had to work hard to get what you needed? Much easier to just fake everything they were telling her than actually give everything away for free. The simplest explanation was usually the correct one, and Makena knew which one was simpler to understand. Makena remembered what her mother once told her - if something seemed too good to be true, it probably was. These anarchists had everything to gain by people dying and stealing on their behalf, and weakening their enemies. They were trying to use people, use her, for their own ends, just like everyone else.

Makena felt a lot better in the following days, but pitied those around her being drawn into the con. She was smart enough to avoid it, but could already tell that the broadcast was about to do a lot of damage.

---

Arash was exhausted, so when the strange music blared out of his silenced phone in the dark of his box like apartment he groaned in almost spiritual pain. Arash had only a few precious hours of sleep before another crushing overtime shift , and this weird notification was interrupting it. He grabbed his phone and groggily tried to figure out what was going on. He had a spike of adrenaline when he saw something was coming through the emergency system, but his tired mind struggled to put together what was coming through. Some sort of political drama? Files? A news system? It was too much, the building wasn't on fire, he could sort it out later. He was asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.

Arash blamed the interrupted night of sleep for his late wake up, needing a desperate dash to work in the drone control centre before taking his place. He was so consumed by his own personal crisis that he didn't note anything off about the city on the way in. He still didn't note anything until long after he started his shift at his hub, scheduling and managing drone deliveries and managing customer complaints. It was only when his phone noted a message from his sister that he noted something was different:

SisTAH: Did you watch it?

Ugh. What had she sent? He couldn't remember, maybe it was a cooking video? Should he fess up he hadn't watched it? Nah, she'd whip out that gold level eyeroll hyper-gif the family had gotten her, couldn't bear the alerts that pinged with his brain so fried.

You: Yeah, it was cute, thanks.

There, that was just generic enough. Arahs scheduled a new launch of a drone, and frowned. Damn, it was busy today. The phone pinged a reply.

SisTAH: Woah, really? You're ice cold. I'm still shaking from the Idyllia thing. You think it's real?

Uh oh, he had no idea what she was talking about. Sigh. Time to fess up.

You: I don't know. What are you talking about? I think I was thinking of the other thing you sent.
SisTAH: The EAS broadcast, brickhead!
You: Uhhh kinda slept through it. Can you give me the cliff notes?
SisTAH: Seriously? Ash. This is serious. You should watch it.
You: Sis, I don't have time. I'm flat out right now. What's so important?
SisTAH: I don't think I should type it out. Can I call?
You: Busy. Might have time tonight?
SisTAH: Ash, c'monn...

After a bit of badgering, Arash tried again in his 15 minute lunch to break into the ocean of information in the EAS broadcast. Ok, so there was a revolution? Real, not a vid. And a bunch of crimes on the frontier. And then he had to get back to work.

Some of the co-workers were talking about it, he could hear, but he had to hit quota, he didn't really have time to engage.

The day was hell, a bunch of people had called in sick, so Arash was dead by the time he got home. He had just enough energy to wash, eat and then slip into bed and watch an ep of his favourite old TV series to get that nostalgia hit.

He meant to watch more of that broadcast thing, but it was pretty confronting and he frankly didn't have the energy.

The next day there was a special notice on his phone: Watching the broadcast was illegal.

Huh. Oh well, Arash guessed he'd missed his chance. It's not like he had the time to sort all that crap out, he had a job to do. Only two more months before his overtime schedule went back to the breezy two hour mandatory overtime roster again. Then life would be better.

---

Ying winced as the door to their son's bedroom slammed shut upstairs. In front of her, her husband scowled, clutching the boy's confiscated phone.

"Unbelievable" He growled, slowly relaxing. "No respect."

Ying sagged into a chair, sighing "He's a teenager, Jai. You know this is what they do. He's still so young."

Jai scowled and began to pace. "Not young enough that fucking terrorists won't try to recruit him into their fucking suicide squads." He waved the phone in the air "I mean, how are we supposed to protect him from this? They're trying to kill him! Fill his head with bullshit and send him off to get shot-"

"Don't." Ying had gone utterly pale, clutching the side of her chair in a death grip. Her throat hurt. Her heart. "Don't say that."

Jai looked at her, and a creeping look of shame filled his face. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you." Jai put the phone down carefully and pulled another chair beside her.

They sat in silence for a while.

"You scare me when you're like that," Said Ying. "I hate it when you yell."

"I know. I'm sorry. I...I'm scared too." Jai swallowed. "I just...I don't know what to do to protect him. He's already hanging out with the wrong crowd, that Yun girl, what if..."
"I know. I know." Ying sighed and rubbed her head, eyes sliding to the phone.

Ying had her own thoughts about what she had learned. It was shocking, but perhaps not surprising what had happened on the frontier. Honestly, she couldn't blame the Amaranthines wanting to rebel, but did they have to turn to such a hateful ideology? Maybe there was a way to use what the anarchists had broadcast to improve things here on Earth, without their madness. If they could-

The image of her son, lying cold and pale on the street, blank eyes cast skyward, flashed uncontrolled into her mind.

What worth was a future without their boy?

Ying stood. "We'll work something out. We'll ground him forever if that's what it takes."
Jai hung his head "We...I mean, that won't..."

But Ying had already moved on. "We-we could install Childsafe."

Jai looked shocked. "We said we'd never do that. You said we'd never do that. You hate Childsafe."

It had been a short enough talk they'd had about it. They knew other parents who had forced their kids to use Childsafe - the mandatory checking ins, the recording and surveillance suite, all the 'optional' add ons. They'd both agreed it was more in line with surveillance of a hardened criminal than a child Yin had hated the idea that any child, let alone theirs, would have to suffer from it.

"I do." Ying pressed her hands together so they wouldn't tremble "But some things are more important than what I want and what he wants."

The words hung in the air, sounding louder and louder in the silence that followed. The couple stared at each other for a long moment.

Then Jai stood and embraced his wife. "Ok. Ok, let's talk about it."

---

As awful and chaotic the last few days had been for Ngozi, she had to admit part of her was long the excitement of the times. Her Pol-Sci course was running erratically at best, and half the other students had headed home or off to protests. Even her work was locked down, so that left her with nothing but time to devour the content of the unfolding news and the revolutionary broadcast.

Ngozi had been watching Ambassador Santiago's speech over and over with a kind of horrified fascination. It didn't seem real, that this was a speech that happened in actual politics rather than a scene of a movie. From the chatter online, she knew she was hardly the first to compare it to a supervillain's expository gloating from the latest blockbuster.

I mean, he had escaped in a secret submarine, for crying out loud!

But it was real. Ambassador Santiago was a real person, and he really had stood before the greatest assembly of democracy in the galaxy and gloated about all the death he was about to cause. It took a few watches to help her realise just why she kept watching.

It was his smile. His smile was driving her crazy, because she couldn't understand it.

Oh sure, on a lot of levels, she could understand what he'd done. Can't really blame the down-trodden rising after some of the stuff they showed in the broadcast. Probably, a bunch of it was lies, but maybe not everything. Ngozi was even glad they'd shared the information with her, she'd always wanted to know more about how things worked on the frontiers. And while this revolt was clearly not the most productive way to tackle the problem, maybe it was the only way.

Ngozi could even imagine herself reluctantly, bitterly, taking up arms for liberty in dire circumstances.

But what sort of person gloats about the inevitable bloodshed? Well, a person like Ambassador Theodore Santiago of the Amaranth Interstellar Commonwealth, it seemed.

Ngozi had devoured all the info on this fascinating new society she could find. She didn't believe in 'evil' people, not really. Such a belief was the product of a simple mind. So she didn't think the Ambassador took pleasure at the prospect of destruction itself. He hated the Compact, clearly. Thought it was slavery, and its destruction would be good for its slaves. But why, then, did he not care about what it would cost the people he pretended to address?

The days since the broadcast had been bad. There had been battles and killings across her city, and she knew she was getting off lightly compared to other places. Soon, no doubt, there would be shortages, starvation, homelessness, all the horrors she'd read about that come with any civil war, and it would be all over Sol, all over the galaxy. And Santiago had triggered it off with a grin.

It was during her thirteenth watch that Ngozi finally realised what explained this:

Santiago didn't care about the people. He didn't care about Ngozi and everyone like her, he cared about the idea of the people.

He'd spent so many decades in a dark basement, out of touch, fantasising of this moment. At some point, he'd stopped thinking of what it meant for real people, real individuals, and just thought about an amorphous mass, the idea and concept of liberation of the masses. Who cares what happened to her and her loved ones, so long as he was proven right?

He smiled because the pain of his enemies was more important to him than the sorrow of the people. Standing at a podium spouting off long dead ideas like the 'Tyrant of Capital', meaningless rhetoric like 'breaking free of capital' with no concern for what his empty ideas actually meant to real people.

Fascination hardened in Ngozi to anger, contempt. She decided she had no interest in dying or suffering for revolutionaries' personal fantasies. She had to live in the real world, not the world of ideas. She made a note that such breaches of decorum as the Ambassador grinning could be useful in spotting wider trends in people's politics, and switched to the news.

---

Summers were always hard for Ismael.

The long hot months were littered with many grim anniversaries of comrades lost and dreams dashed. He was old now. He had seen and survived many black summers, outlived friends, family and entire communes.

Still, when the heat rose and the protests marched, Ismael rallied himself and went forth to provide mutual aid. It was all he could do now, and he had to, if his survival was to have meant something. He organised deliveries and ran supplies amid the shattered ruins of a failed dream.

When the broadcast swept the planet, he was astonished. His mutual support net was exploding with excitement, and expanding in size as new recruits poured in. New firebrands had arisen and began to organise. At every meeting he went to, the confidence was building into a fever pitch. This was it, he heard them say. This was it.

He remembered the last time he believed that.

The first time he took to the streets (young, he'd been so young). The friends he'd marched with (what did they even look like? Could he remember?). The first shots, the first bodies.

And the Great Summers. The ones that had been It in their time too. But their time passed, taking more blood along for the ride into the void in Ishmael's heart.

He had learned that you had to be smart, and pragmatic to survive. Keep your head down, don't reach for the great goals, just do what you can. Survive. Above all survive, keep the flame alive. For…

Ismael sat in the back of a meeting and found his hands shaking. They were printing weapons. Drones. Armor. It was incredible. But did he think this was It? That they would win?

He realised, with an awful lurch, that he didn't. If he had learned anything over the many years of pain, it was that the Charters always won in the end. The prospect of success, dangling above him again after so long just made it all the more painful. Cruel of them to let him hope, when there was no chance.

Ismael felt like he was going to be sick. How could he sit here, among these walking dead? How could he pretend they were anything but more martyrs? Ismael slipped out of the meeting hall, shaking like a leaf.

The next day, the agreed hour of action, found him still at his apartment, clinging desperately to his motionless seat, staring at the few pictures of those he'd lost.

Coward whispered a voice in his head. They need you.

I can't watch it fall apart again. I owe to them to survi-

You owe it to them to fight! You're pathetic!

And on it went.

Ismael's hand shook, and tears ran down his face. He remained, paralysed by fear and doubt, as the tide of history marched past beneath his windows.

---

Roland is triumphant as he looks out across the meeting. They have arrived in twos and threes, sneaking or bribing their way past police checkpoints, passing through ruins, in disguise or concealment. Everyone here has risked great danger to be here, because they believe.

And there were so many! Roland counted dozens, and hadn't even checked the encrypted feeds they'd set up broadcasting the meet to discreet servers off world. Better yet, Roland could see the quality was good - he saw some ex military (deserters? That could be useful) and even a few cops in their midst. Could they be informants? Or were they supporters as they said? Well, he'd made that gamble days ago when he'd reached out to them. Too late to wonder now.

The meeting was in a beer hall, windows shuttered due to local lockdown. Seeing everything was ready, Roland mounted the stage normally reserved for musicians and called to the crowd.

"Brothers! Sisters! Old and new members of the Purestars! Welcome. You all know why we're here. The Compact is failing, and will soon fall."

He let the words hang in the air for a moment before cracking a grin, stretching his arms wide "Would it be rude to say 'We told you so?'"

There were a few chuckles and Roland's grin faded and his words became more forceful.

"For years, we have known that the Compact's weakness was leading us to ruin. For years, we have railed against the greed and corruption of the Charters pumping poison through the body politic of sacred humanity! And now, we see the consequences."
Roland clenched his hand into a fist, eyes blazing.

"They did nothing as the purity of the human form was perverted by animals. They did nothing as the wonder of the human mind was copied by machines. They coddled these anarchists. Wrung their hands at firmer measures and gave them a slap on the wrist. They even, we now learn, hid the very existence of this anarchist slaughterhouse from true humanity, let them scheme in the dark. And look what that has led to!"

Roland's hand unclenched from the fist and cut forward in an arc, indicating the whole world outside this room.

"Chaos! Bloodshed! Just as this moment has exposed the Compact's weakness, so too does it expose the anarchist's basic thuggery, their utter subversion by inhuman forces. The people despair. They call out for peace. They call out for order."

Roland's hand dropped and he stared at the crowd.

"They call out for us."

There was a hush, then Roland raised his fist and spoke again, punctuating each sentence with a strike towards the air.

"Purestars! This is our time! The people will turn to us now! We must organise! We must recruit! And we must turn this weapon of treachery, this broadcast, against the traitors to humanity that made it."

Roland gestured, and with a flourish, a stockpile of Boxes was revealed, fabricators stacked in the corner and ready for distribution.

The crowd was ecstatic, cheering, chanting.

"Hail victory! 'til the stars are pure!" Roared Roland

And the crowd roared back

"'TIL THE STARS ARE PURE!"

canon

Godwinson · Apr 25, 2022

pheonix89 said:
Ok yeah the gangs are going to be complete and utter scum.

Anyone just up for using violence to protect people they care for in shitty circumstances is hooking up with the anarchists.

Kill on sight, they're Capitalists without even the pretense of civilization.

Funny that you're taking the article at face-value, and extrapolating what kind of criminal they are from that... and then using it to support a kill-on-sight reaction.

I think that article was the most effective of the lot.

BlueTwinkleToes · Apr 25, 2022

Argent Citadel said:
The days since the broadcast had been bad. There had been battles and killings across her city, and she knew she was getting off lightly compared to other places. Soon, no doubt, there would be shortages, starvation, homelessness, all the horrors she'd read about that come with any civil war, and it would be all over Sol, all over the galaxy. And Santiago had triggered it off with a grin.

It was during her thirteenth watch that Ngozi finally realised what explained this:

Santiago didn't care about the people. He didn't care about Ngozi and everyone like her, he cared about the idea of the people.

He'd spent so many decades in a dark basement, out of touch, fantasising of this moment. At some point, he'd stopped thinking of what it meant for real people, real individuals, and just thought about an amorphous mass, the idea and concept of liberation of the masses. Who cares what happened to her and her loved ones, so long as he was proven right?

He smiled because the pain of his enemies was more important to him than the sorrow of the people. Standing at a podium spouting off long dead ideas like the 'Tyrant of Capital', meaningless rhetoric like 'breaking free of capital' with no concern for what his empty ideas actually meant to real people.

Fascination hardened in Ngozi to anger, contempt. She decided she had no interest in dying or suffering for revolutionaries' personal fantasies. She had to live in the real world, not the world of ideas. She made a note that such breaches of decorum as the Ambassador grinning could be useful in spotting wider trends in people's politics, and switched to the news.

This reaction is ... interesting, to say the least. An argument that the cost of the Revolution is being treated in the abstract, while not comprehending the cost of inaction herself. Shortsighted, and yet she isn't wrong about the the suffering to come.

clockworkchaos · Apr 25, 2022

VillaininGlasses said:
Basically Doctor = Hospital owner, Nurse = Doctor, certified/uncertified = Nurse who either has or hasn't paid the fees recently.
Edit: obviously those who haven't paid the fees are cheaper so are all that were available to the poor

Uncerts also include 'call center' style people who have a official VI to diagnose you at the cheapest levels. (Think low-level tech support where they go through a list of steps... for your health care). The Charters liked the ambiguity of uncert as a title covering from 'basically nurse without fees paid' to 'low level tech support'. Radiant doesn't use the latter anymore.

pheonix89 · Apr 25, 2022

Godwinson said:
Funny that you're taking the article at face-value, and extrapolating what kind of criminal they are from that... and then using it to support a kill-on-sight reaction.

I think that article was the most effective of the lot.

I was a bit crazy response-wise this morning yes.

Could you elaborate on what you think is going on that's not-face-value that I'm missing because I'm not seeing anything past face value in that one.

The Laurent · Apr 25, 2022

Also, Theodore Santiago is in his late twenties and has been campaigning among "real people" his entire life while the person making the comment about him thinking in abstractions is using an actual literal world revolution and its propaganda as a potential topic for her Poli-Sci class.

masterofmadness · Apr 25, 2022

The Laurent said:
Also, Theodore Santiago is in his late twenties and has been campaigning among "real people" his entire life while the person making the comment about him thinking in abstractions is using an actual literal world revolution and its propaganda as a potential topic for her Poli-Sci class.

Yeah, I was thinking something similar. If someone said this to his face Theodore Santiago would be very justified in going 'okay, what genocidal prison planet were you sent to?' because whatever else the man has suffered and struggled. Hell, Nathan Caulder even pre-broadcast would probably make a pointed question about how much work she has done in to help people? Is she using her more privileged position to help the less fortunate? Even within the system on a small scale if you are so insistent on it being nonviolent.

In many ways this is a projection of their own behavior as much a defense. Say they don't really care like you do and you don't have to deal with the problems and can retreat into scoffing about it from you high ground.

UponALotusBlosom · Apr 25, 2022

The Laurent said:
Also, Theodore Santiago is in his late twenties and has been campaigning among "real people" his entire life while the person making the comment about him thinking in abstractions is using an actual literal world revolution and its propaganda as a potential topic for her Poli-Sci class.

Frankly I've always wondered what would happen if I was put on the spot like this and now I realize I'd be Ngozi. I'm literally a poly sci grad looking for a good masters thesis. Oh another back swan event? Mark that as a maybe for my thesis. :tongue:

The Laurent · Apr 25, 2022

masterofmadness said:
Yeah, I was thinking something similar. If someone said this to his face Theodore Santiago would be very justified in going 'okay, what genocidal prison planet were you sent to?' because whatever else the man has suffered and struggled. Hell, Nathan Caulder even pre-broadcast would probably make a pointed question about how much work she has done in to help people? Is she using her more privileged position to help the less fortunate? Even within the system on a small scale if you are so insistent on it being nonviolent.

In many ways this is a projection of their own behavior as much a defense. Say they don't really care like you do and you don't have to deal with the problems and can retreat into scoffing about it from you high ground.

Though being fair, he can be cold-blooded and his speech was kinda chilling.

(Theodore Santiago tends to, when he's REALLY angry goes cold rather than hot. This is at least in part just a survival mechanism in the sense of being a minority in a system that punishes standing up... not that his odd, vicious calm when absolutely about to go apeshit saved him from winding up on Sheol.)

notbirdofprey · Apr 25, 2022

Fourteen Days In Sol Sidestory--A New Age of Myths (May 25, 2255)

"[Myths] are not descriptions of things, but expressions of a determination to act… A myth cannot be refuted since it is, at bottom, identical with the convictions of a group, being the expression of these convictions in the language of movement."--Georges Sorel (1847-1922)

Futurewatch Presents: Profile of a Monster: The Terror Fox, Theodore "Ambassador" Santiago
-By Lester Connors

Theodore Santiago was born to unassuming origins on October 7th, 2226, in the Orinoco Reconstruction Zone as part of a large family. Growing up, Cerunnos invested more into him than his own parents, who were typical of those in the Reconstruction Zones. Santiago, however, proved special almost from birth. His quick wit and notable intelligence immediately showed itself in high grades, and members of the Cernunnos Social Education Program (TM) identified him as a high-value prospect who they could save.

He was given a once-in-a-lifetime offer: a cheap education, a guaranteed job, and a career path that could potentially put immortality in his reach. However, it was already too late. He was already infected. The disease: the virulent strains of anarchism and religious extremism that haunt the lands of the former Democratic Federation.

As soon as he arrived at Rio de Janeiro University, he found the local radical groups and immediately became one of their most enthusiastic members. While he was at the university, these groups conducted robberies, arsons, and engaged in IP theft, all the while seeking to expand their influence. While Santiago likely participated in these activities, his main efforts were focused on recruitment and incitement. One student who had been working to infiltrate these groups on behalf of the Rio de Janeiro police who has asked anonymously described him as "mesmerizing and riveting. You couldn't look away when he spoke."

The darkly charismatic Santiago would organize small meetings, where he would compel his audience with his soulful stare, gesticulating with majestic enthusiasm, seducing innocents onto the same dark path he walked. Santiago's seduction was conducted without the slightest concern for anyone's health or safety, and resulted in the death or imprisonment of many of his young 'comrades'.

These activities quickly brought him to the attention of the police and the university's counter extremism program and he was finally arrested for threatening the lives of members of the Cernunnos Social Education Program (TM), before being sent to the Martian Rehabilatory Faculty. Unfortunately, he resisted attempts to reform him, and immediately began engaging in the same sort of behaviors he had been arrested for, not even making it off the Elon Musk Memorial Plaza before the bloodthirsty anarchist began engaging in criminal actions once more.

He went underground, evading lawful authorities and falling behind on his debts, all the while working with violent radicals on Mars. The exact nature of his activities during this period are unclear, but he is alleged to have engaged in illegal narcotics production, IP theft, prostitution, and worse. It is thought that many victims still on Mars today bear the scars of his crimes, and some even from his claws themselves.

However, the Cernunnos Social Education Program (TM) still believed he could be redeemed and made into a valuable asset to society, and after he was arrested, he was brought in for counseling.

"I've never seen someone so terrifying. He spoke like he was certain he was right, like he truly believed he was doing the correct thing as he tried to tear down the Compact," Dr. Isaac Goldstein said, who had been assigned to Santiago's case.

The red-furred bandit snarled and sneered his way through his sessions, but he also spoke with a shocking elegance and haughty disdain, relentless in his arguments. He allegedly even attempted to use his muscled body as proof of his righteousness. Eventually, he was deemed a failed investment and some value was recouped by selling him to Steelgate Corrections Services, an Ares subsidiary.

He was then transferred to Sheol Planetary Detention, where he worked as a farmer, growing crops that were then fed to the Ares soldiers stationed nearby. Speculative reports suggest that this period was the happiest of his life, as he had finally been freed from the threat of dangerous radicalism. Doubtless his melodious voice was used for nothing more than cheerful music instead of the deranged speeches he made first.

However, this blissful freedom was not too last, as information from Ares sources reveal that Radiant anarchists subverted Ares officers with promises of power and bloody violence. Under the threat of orbital bombardment, the leadership of Sheol peacefully surrendered to avoid a massacre.

However, Santiago, once more exposed to the vile disease of radicalism, reportedly fired the first shot, beginning a long orgy of violence that saw the hapless, surrendered, disarmed trooper slaughtered in huge numbers. Our sources suggest that Santiago, dissatisfied with the pace of the murder, even began tearing at his allies with his teeth, ripping out the throats of any who fell behind the pace. Apparently, many of the surrendered soldiers were also brutally tortured before their eventual deaths.

Afterwards, Santiago became highly involved with ensuring Radiant maintained their control over Sheol. It is believed this period is where he earned the nickname "Ambassador," although the exact nature of his activities is unclear, we believe we can extrapolate from his previous reported actions.

Then he was sent to Sol as a deliberate insult to the sacred bonds of humanity by his anarchist masters.

Working with the highly-trained terrorists escorting him. Santiago immediately began undermining the Compact. He is believed to be connected to the resurgence of a number of nationalist, anarchist, and Augment supremacist groups, and his work culminated in the bloodthirsty diatribe on the floor of Parliament itself before he escaped in a submarine.

Since then, he has evaded the attempts of the lawful authority to arrest them, attacked diplomatic installations, incited further uprisings, and done all he can to soak Sol in just as much blood as Sheol.

His plans are unknown, his goals are unclear, for he cannot truly believe that this bloodshed will bring about the paradise he claims to seek. Whatever the truth behind the actions and motivations of Theodore "Ambassador" Santiago is, we vow to pursue it!

Meanwhile, we encourage you, our loyal subscribers, to read our further profiles on other individuals and groups responsible for the attacks upon humanity and the Solarian Compact.

Click here for Futurewatch Presents: Profile of a Monster for Maria "Jackal" Awinha, renegade charter operative and Dictator of Radiant

Click here for Futurewatch Presents: Profile of a Monster for Shayla McLean, Augment supremacist and jilted ex-reality star

Click here Futurewatch Presents: Profile of a Monster for Stephanie Rousseau, The Mad Warden of Sheol, bloodthirsty madwoman, and Radiant Warlord

Click here Futurewatch Presents: Profile of a Monster for the Black Catholic Church, the new cross-burning fanatics that are ravaging the former Democratic Federation

Click here Futurewatch Presents: Profile of a Monster for the Mountain Republic, a savage dictatorship and drug cartel that rule the Andes

Click here Futurewatch Presents: Profile of a Monster for the infamous Voltairine de Cleyre Brigade, and their continuing the terror campaigns of the Democratic Federation for centuries

BlogHome.com (Uncurated)--Profile of a Heroine: Stephanie Rousseau, Defender of the Revolution

During the early weeks of the Amarthine Revolution, when the people of Radiant huddled in fear of the inevitable Charter retaliation, they nevertheless sought to reach out to their oppressed comrades, and as soon as a hand was stretched out, none grasped it more firmly than Stephanie Rousseau.

An immediate revolutionary convert, she decried the malevolent practices of Ares as they slaughtered millions on Sheol, and led the charge on recruiting those opposed to it, forming a network of hundreds of loyal officers and crewmembers. When she judged the moment right, she seized the bridge of Shieldmaiden, brought it into the service of the revolution, and led the campaign to defeat Ares forces in the stars and on the ground, providing orbital support and reinforcements to the beleaguered, underequipped Sheolite guerrillas who were finally winning a war they had fought for generations.

Fearless, tireless, and relentless, reports from the battle suggest Rousseau personally defeated the Ares commanding officer and his bodyguard, slicing them down with the sword she carries with her, the names of the wicked she has slain engraved into its blade.

She immediately took command of the ragtag Amaranthine Navy, inspiring its crewmembers and officers with her fiery attitude, her limitless determination, and her skilled command. She trained its captains, including other heroes such as Captain Shayla McLean and Admiral Erina Kozlova!

But who is Stephanie Rousseau? Where did she come from? And what made her special?

She was rebellious from an early age, the sort of person who inherently questions unjust authority. In military school unconfirmed but undoubtedly accurate stories report her as both chivalrous and heroic, fighting bullies and being incredibly popular with her friends and colleagues and highly successful in the romantic fields, with over a dozen former associates claiming she was the perfect gentlewoman. She organized student groups that just barely stayed on this side of the line of legality and was by the age of 18, according to knowledgeable sources, a committed anarchist. Her refusal to bow to injustice and the manipulation of jealous, corrupt, and murderous rivals led to her being sidelined.

Stephanie Rousseau was sent to Sheol as perhaps the most decorated officer to be sent to that remote posting in the history of the Compact.

There she learned the true horrors of the Compact and the Charters, horrors which made her earlier sympathy with socialism all the more vibrant for having been faced with the harshest and coldest truths imaginable. Someone weaker might have broken under the strain, either accepting their place as a cog in a vast, murderous machine or launching some brave, heroic, but doomed individual charge.

But Stephanie Rousseau instead chose to use the skills Ares had given her and lessons learned from her brushes with various radical underground movements, and began to create one of her own. She subverted Ares communication faculties, turned soldiers and crewmembers of every rank to her cause, and is even alleged to have made contact with Sheolites and provided them with advanced weapons and equipment for months or even years before her moment came.

And when Radiant operatives made contact with her, she began putting all these carefully laid plans into action.

Her heroics in the Battle of Sheol and a number of subsequent actions won her many plaudits from her comrades on the ground, as she ably defended the revolution from Charter forces, most notably at Second Gaid, where her personal ship, Shieldmaiden, led the charge to break the Ares-HI fleet and crippled the Charter flagship, before she once more went into personal battle, sword in hand, a battle cry on her lips. Captured Charter crewmembers likened it to being attacked by a hurricane, such was her indomitable presence and unflinching assault. Eyewitness reports on the combat are confused, but she apparently accounted for anywhere between fifteen and thirty-five enemy crew, cutting through helmets with her blade, even once slicing through a damaged bulkhead to attack a fortified position from behind.

Aside from her conduct on the battlefield, Rousseau is also known for incredibly stirring, heartfelt speeches. "It's like hearing an angel speak," one of her crew members has reported. "You just get transported by what she says. I think if she commanded the dead to rise, they would."

These speeches have rallied the struggling Amaranthine military time and time again, as well convincing the civilian government to take the bold, moral option and confront the evils of cosmoliberalism with undying enthusiasm. A tireless advocate for the welfare of those she commands and for spreading the revolution, Rousseau is nevertheless committed to democracy. She is alleged to have personally delivered the heads of those who tried to persuade her to subvert the democratic systems of the Amaranthine Interstellar Congress to the proper authorities, and continually refused to accept any position that might have blurred the lines between her power and the power of the Congress, including turning down a number of honorary titles and awards.

"The success of the revolution and the liberation of the people of the galaxy is the only reward I need," Rousseau has been reported as saying.

With such a stalwart, courageous, and lethal commander at the head of their military, it is no wonder that the armed forces of the Amaranthine Interstellar Congress remain undefeated. We salute those brave men, women, and enbies for their dauntless courage and indomitable skill, and especially salute Commodore Stephanie Rousseau, commander of the Congressional Navy, Defender of the Revolution.

Science Daily, The Leading Sol Popular Science Website--The Inventor of Revolution: A Short Biographic of FatBlunt, Earth's Greatest Genius

Born in 1998 to a loving family, they were quickly recognized as one of the wisest figures of an era, and by the 2020s as a young enby they were already well-respected in the protest scene, and without peer when it came to invention. As the so-called American promise turned into a nightmare, they did not flinch or doubt themselves even once, instead throwing themselves into the worthy task of technological advancement without any compunctions.

All who met them said they were without doubts, funny without being impolite, thoughtful without being brooding, the perfect gentle-enby in all ways, shapes and forms who nonetheless became a hero of the revolution and one of the cleverest minds of any generation.

It is said that they single handedly built each of the FatBlunt models without any aid at all, so great was their brilliance that nobody could ever match them or even begin to contribute to the masterworks they made, works which they nonetheless remained entirely humble about, praising other contributors simply to be polite. They created the SkyToke 2031, the first successful "gun drone" and the predecessor to a thousand different armed drone technologies in the centuries since. Wherever there was a great discovery in their field for almost two and a half decades there was FatBlunt. It was only in the last decade or two of the Democratic Federation's existence that the burden of being the greatest inventor of all time began to be too heavy for their considerable prowess and their total and unflinching dedication to the revolution.

Reports of their retirement to settle down and raise kids seem to have coincided with expressions of frustration as to Compact theft of their ideas and concepts and arguments around military spending and utilization. Nonetheless, they found love and contentment and even several adopted children with Emanuel Lincoln, a politician and militia commander who was killed by Compact forces shortly after the collapse of the Democratic Federation.

Unbroken and unbowed FatBlunt continued their genius after this point. While they were forced by circumstances to review and examine Compact guns and new "gun drone" style technology, they worked constantly to undermine the strength of reaction in ways both obvious and subtle and began codifying their ideas towards the creation of the FatBlunt Model 69.

It is without a doubt the finest gun ever created, and one which has proven able to be stripped down and used as a basis for deadly semi-autonomous or remote operated drones that use ballistics technology, as well as providing the basis for a number of bombs and tactical support weapons. Users of it cannot help but feel the almost mystical connection between it and the Democratic Federation, and it is a gun which has never truly lost a fight and which creates the new standards for not just the 23rd century, but no doubt into the 24th as well.

FatBlunt lives, and their genius will single handedly allow Sol, far richer and more powerful than the Democratic Federation was, to lead the entire galaxy in military technology and usher in an age of prosperity!

For more on the specific technologies behind the FB 69, as well as the history of Gun Drones, check out the following links.

I wrote the first two, @The Laurent did the third, and @CyberpunkPenthesilea and @veteranMortal also contributed.

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