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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Torgamous · Apr 28, 2022

Don Alverzo said:
Wait, is VERSIER sentient? There's so many different types of AI in this setting, I get confused about which ones are people and which ones aren't. Especially since there's been multiple instances of AI that we thought were just dumb tools being revealed to be sentient.

NH-VI means like Inanna.

Genderite · Apr 28, 2022

Don Alverzo said:
Wait, is VERSIER sentient? There's so many different types of AI in this setting, I get confused about which ones are people and which ones aren't. Especially since there's been multiple instances of AI that we thought were just dumb tools being revealed to be sentient.

Yeah it is a NH-VI which means Near Human which means is sentient but we are gaslighting it.

The Laurent · Apr 28, 2022

Also VERSIER is apparently not just one NH-VI but a whole collective/grouping of them that make decisions via Consensus Building?

clockworkchaos · Apr 28, 2022

Redshirt Army said:
Fantasy's End: Isekai Sidestories
T+30 Minutes Post Broadcast, Primary Scenario Management Center, IOS Torus Station, Isekai System

"-still looks salvageable. It looks like our use of proprietary comms for full client immersion saved us here - it unclear what decision criteria were used, but it looks like the VERSIER NH-VI cluster came to a consensus to treat the Broadcast files as an emergency alert and push it to staff and actors, but to keep the clients unaware and to not break the scenarios for them." Sanjiv scrolled down, looking through the executive summary he was given by the automated tracking systems. "There were a couple of minor OOC events in Realms 3 and 14, but it looks like the other actors were able to get the events back on track with only minimal issues. There might be some unrest in the backrooms, but the client experience hasn't been affected by this as of yet."

Julliene tapped her pad with the back of her fingernails as she considered this. "I didn't realize the VERSIER Cluster had that kind of power?"

Sanjiv tilted his head. "VERSIER's made decisions regarding emergency alerts before - when there was that, that... structural collapse, I think? Something like that, in Realm 7, it independently decided to send out an alert to the backstage actors that would be affected. The VPs got on my ass about that, but in the end it worked out."

Julliene snapped her fingers. "Right, right, I remember that! Didn't realize that it was VERSIER that made that call, though, wild. Anyway, get me legal on the line. I want to know where this falls within our clients immersion contracts. They waived the right to immediate news, but I need to know whether there's any Compact nonsense that lets an emergency alert pierce that. Shouldn't be, especially with it not being an official alert, but the Compact's always sticking their nose in where it doesn't belong. Until then, keep the news locked up tight from the primaries. The last thing we need on top of this shitshow is prissy clients complaining about how Isekai wasn't able to keep its word and take the real world away."
Sanjiv nodded, already dismissing the VI-generated incident list, thoughts racing through his mind as he considered precisely which legal team - and how high up the ladder a contact - would be best suited to mitigate any possible trouble. Almost absently, he gave the VERSIER cluster instructions to keep the clients veil of ignorance up.

T+18 Hours Post Broadcast, Realm 5 "The Renaissance Man", Yankee, Isekai System

Natalia Dragos, the Silver Dragon, the most feared and skilled duelist in all of Venice! Poems and verse sign of her, of her elfin beauty, of how her rapier dances like quicksilver lightning, of how she is undefeated, of how she has sworn to wed the one who finally bests her in battle! It is, in many ways, a coveted role. The spotlight shines bright upon her, and she is often featured in the periphery of the promotional materials for her realm. She should count her blessings. Her mother was just an ordinary elf-augment background actor, but a casting director took a liking to her, and now Natalia has the fruit of immortality, she has been freed of the medieval squalor of her childhood. And she hates it.

What she does has nothing to do with swordplay, or with dignity. She is a whore, coached in a hundred different ways to take a fall so that the next client can live the fantasy of conquering the unconquerable, or to put on a flashy show as greedy eyes undress her. More than once, she has fantasized about pulling live steel, and giving her audience a performance they truly wouldn't forget. But now, in the hazy fog of uncertainty that has gripped all of Realm 5 after the Broadcast, she finds her convictions wavering. She is, by all standards, successful. If she truly hated her role, surely she would have just left? It would have meant hardship, would have meant scrambling for survival, but so many others manage that and worse. She hates her role, but she hates herself more for staying with it.

Her subdermal implant (no phones on display in public, never break immersion) vibrates, and she taps it. Another message from VERSIER.

<For a talented heroine, opportunity knocks! An eclectic band of adventurers assembles, but without the Silver Dragon's expertise and connections, their quest seems doomed to fail!>

Strange, she's off duty, she shouldn't be getting role instructions now, of all times. VERSIER has been acting up for some time now, really, but all of the complaints the actors have lodged have predictably gone nowhere. She sighs, and subtly taps her wrist twice. Her phone pings, and she double-takes at the highlighted locations she's being told to visit. One of the hidden drone maintenance bays?

Interesting, but I think we are going to need to see where this goes before any canonality.

Wait nvm @AKuz already approved.

trooperist · Apr 28, 2022

VERSIER off on a grand quest to gather the strongest heroes in the land to have them work together to overthrow the evil tyrant Hermes-Ishtar.

Redshirt Army · Apr 28, 2022

Don Alverzo said:
Wait, is VERSIER sentient? There's so many different types of AI in this setting, I get confused about which ones are people and which ones aren't. Especially since there's been multiple instances of AI that we thought were just dumb tools being revealed to be sentient.

It depends on your definitions, really. The VERSIER cluster is a huge number of NH-CAVI's (which are indisputably sentient, though very few people in-universe are aware of this) arranged into a consensus building collective model. So is VERSIER sentient? To the degree that you could say "France is sentient" or "Sheol is sentient", it is.

The Laurent said:
Also VERSIER is apparently not just one NH-VI but a whole collective/grouping of them that make decisions via Consensus Building?

We know that VI's running herd on VI's is common practice in this setting - see also the entry for the Relay system - and we know that the Isekai system has several hundred thousand NH-VI's which were recently set up. It seemed plausible to me that H-I would set up these NH-VI's in the same way that they'd normally set up regular VI's, since they of course don't realize that there's a qualitative difference between them and normal VI's. So you end up with several hundred thousand computer people who are organized into, well, an organization - and likely one with far less pointless hierarchy bullshit than most in the Compact because the designers didn't realize they were setting up an organization.

Torgamous · Apr 28, 2022

VERSIER planning the greatest crossover event in history by revealing that all Realms are part of a shared universe.

BlueTwinkleToes · Apr 28, 2022

Torgamous said:
VERSIER planning the greatest plot crossover event in history by revealing that all Realms are part of a shared universe.

They're about to unveil the newest realm: "For The Tyrants Fear Your Might"

BiopunkOtrera · Apr 28, 2022

Content Warning: The people depicted in this post are scum (even Denny, albeit to a lesser extent). If you don't feel like hearing the views of scum then avoid.

Toronto

"After Toronto, the Humanists had a new symbol, and a glorious victory to rally around. That of the four-leafed clover. Green, and White. Purity and Luck. Whether we won a single battle after that didn't matter, we'd driven off the VdCB. We'd done what few others could do, and in the heart of Toronto we began to use the Fabbers Free… and more than that. We began to consider the uses of the Box."--Alexander Stirling

Officer Felix Brown sat under the eaves of the old Toronto Union station and sucked down endless amounts of vape. More than a dozen other police officers sat around him on the steps, stretched out near a set of cables plugged into their combat armour.

Felix was tired out, he hadn't slept in almost seventy two hours, and figured he'd be up at least another twenty four, kept up by stims and anti-narcolepsy meds.

In front of them in the rain, rows of prisoners sat, heads covered in cloth bags. They coughed and whimpered in the rain, the bags slowly soaking. They were mostly college students. People who hadn't been out for the protest but were taking subjects that people knew were subversive, or were themselves augmented. Sociology. Political Science. Art. Everyone knew those were nests of augment simping anarchists.

"Gonna need to get them out of the rain soon. They're gonna scream like anything once the bags soak," Felix said. The man next to him, a tall, hirsute sergeant by the name of Greg Morden grunted.

"We don't need to do anything for them," he said. "That's the rules now. No more softness. Just bags over heads."

Felix gave Wilson a disgusted look. "We just going to let them all drown? They're not real zombies, just dumb kids. Once we put them to work they can be useful."

"Don't get soft on me Brown," Wilson said. "We'll fix them in good time." He looked down at the line of prisoners as they began to choke. "For now just relax and enjoy the show." He grinned. "We're defending humanity here. That's got to come with some privileges."

Los Angeles, the Hollywood Hills May 22nd 2255

The entirety of Los Angeles seemed to have dissolved into a giant party. There was still fighting going on in some areas, police stations full of sullen cops being picketed by militia who were mostly just blaring grind-rap at them from giant prefab speakers. Mostly it was street parties, beach parties, bar parties. Even the revolutionary tribunals, great public trials in the grounds of the old UCLA building had a party atmosphere.

The death penalty had already been banned, but there were a lot of people who were due to live out their lives in cells under the flood zone, and probably get butchered down there as the last violent act left when the counter revolution finally rolled in.

Human Error Processor had pulled back to Omoikane's Morro Bay HQ, and was camping there, covering the streams of evacuation shuttles.

Omoi weren't the only ones trying to get out.

"Reileen! Reileen! They're at the gate."

I looked up from where I'd been standing, watching my drone feed of the city towards my employer's youngest son. He was wearing blue formal pants, round fronted white sneakers, a black polo shirt and a tactical vest and clutching the ancient, all mechanical .277 Fury MCX spear, his favored firearm for hunting and fantasising about killing the poor.

He was paused on the stairs, ready to rush upstairs and perhaps fire through one of the windows at whoever it was who was at the gate. I switched my third eye to local cameras and found that "they" were three women and a man riding a seemingly perfect (though obviously electric) reproduction of a 1950s model Ural truck loaded down with food boxes. They were all armed, the new fatblunt guns hanging off them, except one of the women who had what must be a reproduction of an old school AK-47. A lone drone hung over the truck, watching.

"I don't think you need to shoot food delivery people, Young Master," I said, walking up to take the gun away from him as gently as I could. "I'll go out and talk to them."

"Get rid of them," he said, eyes bugging slightly. "Just make sure you get rid of them."

I considered taking the MCX with me, but decided it would give the wrong impression, and dropped it into the umbrella rack before walking out to meet them at the gate. "Hi there. Delivering food?"

"Sure. Is this your house?" one of the women, the leader asked.

"I work for the people here," I said. "I'm head of security."

"Oh, okay. Well, we're not here to make trouble, but we thought we'd make sure everyone had food. As people here aren't really taking advantage of the box."

"Oh, thank you very much." I smiled politely. "Let me open the gate for you. I can carry whatever in."

"Sure," she said again, and whistled. The truck extended some arms that its 1950s counterpart absolutely would not have had, and began to unload boxes over the gate. I picked them up, loading myself down like an old video game character.

"I'm surprised you still work for them," the leader said. "Nobody needs to work anymore if they don't want to."

"I made a commitment I guess." I shrug. "It's a routine for me. I'm very old. Used to be in the army."

"In the Democratic Federation?" she guessed. The Voltairine de Cleyre Brigade were big news in LA, just a day after the city had had to bail them out of a fight with the Omoi. "You should join up with us."

"I'll think about it," I lied. "For now, I got a family to feed."

"Oh well. See you then." She waved, a bit surprised as I lugged the food boxes inside. The Young Master was hovering, MCX reclaimed but now pointed down.

"We shouldn't take this in the house," he said. "What if it's spyware?"

"I'll scan it all, but I'm pretty sure it's just food. They're being nice, making sure nobody starves. We should just take it, keep a low profile."

"I'd like to spit in their faces."

"Your Father would be very unhappy if you got yourself killed." I clap him on the shoulder and whistle for the house bots. Several of the junior staff, and a couple of the seniors have just not bothered to turn up to work. The family is scandalized at having to have robotic servants like a bunch of ten thousand-ers. More than that though, they're terrified. The daughters are both out sunbathing and listening to music after having done a bunch of euphorics and mood stabilizers. The sons are well; the youngest is having a pretty typical reaction.

I need to get them all out of here before one of them does something stupid.

I check my messages. The family yacht had just finished a refit out in the belt on the seventeenth, but it'll still be a few days before it gets into orbit. I've been searching my rolodex for a pilot who can take us up. Several of them have dropped out, defected or just decided to drink themselves silly. I have one guy who owes me a big favour who I think may help, but finding him has been a pain. I'm waiting on another contact to tell me where he is, then I'm going to drive out and get him, just hoping none of the family gets into a shootout with the local militia or the Voltairine de Cleyre Brigade Cicadas in the meantime.

There's a message from my contact, and one from an address I haven't seen in a long time.

Good god. It's an old Demfed era interunit address.

I check the security on my mailbox and then open it up. I shouldn't, but I want to win.

To all those who once fought, and lost and survived.

We have had our differences over the years. Some of you believe that we have betrayed you in eighty seven. That is now irrelevant. The Federation Dawns Again, and if the old cause means anything to you, then fight for it, if not for us.

It's signed Kusanagi. Even asking for help, she won't use her real name.

I feel a flash of anger in the old core of me, the few flesh and blood parts and the parts that simulate emotions. After eighty seven. After they abandoned us. After everything that happened that proved that a better world is not possible. After they, more than anyone proved that what matters is surviving.

These fools actually think they're going to win.

May 25, 2255, Kinshasa, Congo

"Let me tell you a story. It's a story of humanity. It was born in Africa," Jean Ngoy's voice was low, almost seductive, "It must be renewed in Africa. Men strove and sought to achieve great things, and yet we have left them behind. We have abandoned much. But we cannot begin at the end." He was looking at a crowd of men and women, mostly men, who were the leaders of groups across Africa.

"We began in villages. We worked together against the animals and beasts that faced humanity, that threatened it from outside. We worked against the forces of nature, and depending on your beliefs we worked for or against any number of Gods. What matters then is that we triumphed because we stood together, and because we organized in such a way that strength found strength, that mercy be given only where it needed to. Man grew strong. Then man grew weak. Divided from themselves by tribes, by other delusions. And then by the inhuman, and the horrific."

"The Charters and some Augments both stretched and broke the bounds of humanity. Capitalism has failed to deliver prosperity or give humanity the strength to stand on its own. So what I propose is a line of argument and an alliance. Are we against communes? Of course not, they are the traditional way to organize, and the one that allows the natural leaders to fairly rise to the tops. Are we against the Box and Broadcast? A few of its ideas, yes, but the lack of scarcity brings all humans closer to achieving their religious, spiritual, and absolute goals. Humanity born in Africa can reach its purest and greatest form in Africa! Rather than standing with the Compact or accepting deals, or going out and shooting people… let's train, let's advocate, and let's prepare for the Days to come."

"You… you want to just remain passive?! Let them win?" Simon demanded.

He looked at the man and said, "No. Walk away if you want, but you all know the truth. We are not what we once were but if we have time… western colonialism took so much from us. Our culture, and more: it brought us sexism and its mirror opposite, feminism, as opposed to the balance we once had--"

A nod from Marie in the Woman's Godly Auxiliary.

"It looked down on us until we made ourselves in their image, and then it worshipped us… and now it seeks to discard us! But we will not be discarded! This United Front of True African Communes could be a path forward to victory in this world of Anarchism gone mad…"

He had them. He really had them. They were listening… before he even finished the speech he knew they'd agree. It was going to be a long, long slog. But they could take over the right kinds of communes, could begin to spread their influence, could wait for their opportunity, which always came sooner or later.

In some ways the last weeks had been a loss for humanity: in more ways than not.

But today? Today he'd won and tomorrow… tomorrow belonged to him.

May 26, 2255, Philadelphia, Mississippi

They went to him literally hat in hand. There were a dozen assembled men and a few women, though that was an innovation still controversial, really, though not so much with Frank and his wife. Women had always had a place in the movement. Proper women who acted like women. They came in the morning to Frank's house amid the grass and the windbreak bamboos, on top of the hill and overlooking the small town.

Evidence of the war was starting to pile up. The great sound of military aircraft passing over at high altitude. Three colour ghosts on the TV, not dead on the street or in reconstructions but standing proudly, giving interviews to foreign correspondents, talking of their victory.

The men stood on the green lawn at the back in a gaggle, and Frank met them next to his barbeque and his stainless carbon outdoor seats.

"Frank. We need you. We've got to do something."

Frank's wife Jill brought iced tea and classic cola to the men on the lawn, and they sipped at it awkwardly. Jill was completely against alcohol. Even beer.

The truth was there had always been men like Frank and the dozen who'd come up to the big house on the hill that he'd inherited. They'd signed the declaration of independence. They'd forged a vast southern empire across South America. They'd successfully overcome the tyranny of industry after the war of northern aggression and they'd been the rat gnawing at the root of the Democratic Federation.

Frank knew how the world should be. He knew that there were people who should have power, and there were people who shouldn't. That was how it had always been. If you didn't make sure you were one of the shoulds, you'd find yourself made a shouldn't. And the shouldn'ts were savages who'd eat your bones.

Old America would rise again. That's what Frank and the men standing around believed or said they did. Not the Democratic Federation, though they might mutter that they were patriots of the old turtle to the weak knees further outside the magic circle. Old America. The most successful place on the planet until it had forgotten that there were shoulds and shouldn'ts. They called themselves the Brotherhood of the True Past. A history society they told people. They used titles like Bishop and Vizier and Magos and Grand Dragon. Simple, harmless things.

Frank was a businessman just like his pappa had been. He had a half-dozen investor properties that he also rented out to various "community" groups. He ran the local fabrimart and a string of charge stations. His brother ran six fast food franchises.

He'd always been their leader. Now he was withdrawing. None of them could understand why.

"What we got to do is get up into the bank country and hide," Frank said, sipping his coke. "I've got a bunch of properties up there. Enough for everyone."

"But, what'll happen to the town? They took over your Fabermart, Frank. We got to do something. Help restore order. Chief Woods is asking for volunteers. This could be our chance."

Frank looked down the valley and put his glass down on the table. "Chance for us to get ourselves killed."

"That's Horseshit Frank!" One of the men said. "We can fight. We've got guns. We've been training."

"We might even get Fabbers-Free for the push, and we've been using the Broadcast… had to shut off that damn Box-Chan, she kept on recommending anarchist literature," the woman in front said, eagerly.

"I've been in the Brotherhood for fifty years," he said, though the little bit of rejuvenation he could afford meant that he looked like he was in his thirties or forties. "My Papa was in it for fifty before that. And before that he was in the Republican Party and the klan. My ancestors fought in the civil war." This was a lie. Frank knew well that his ancestors had been from a no account family out of Canada, who'd moved to America sometime in the nineteen fifties and made it big in oil. "And I'm telling you, the only thing we're gonna get if we fight now is dead."

"I never knew you were a coward, Frank," Bobby Smith, always Frank's rival, declared imperiously. "We can fight. This is our town. We can fight the same way they can. We can retake Fabermart and we can go from there. These people are ones we've been beating on for a'hundred years. If we push them they'll fold."

Frank looked at him and despaired. So many of them were nodding. So many of them would die.

"Okay sure. You can whip the local augments, and the blacks too." Frank said. "So what are you gonna do when they send the cicadas in after you huh? You saw what happened in Los Angeles. They'll be mounting you to those crosses."

"We can fight." Bobby said. "This is our town."

"Then you can fight without me." Frank rose. "I'm taking those who want to come and getting out of here into the backwoods. From there we can rebuild and expand."

Now wasn't the time, he felt it in his gut. If America was to recreate the strong nation it had once been it would need to involve gathering strength and waiting for the Augments and their Masters to mess things up, for promises to go unfulfilled and diversity to wreak its ugly work.

Allowing themselves to be co-opted by a doomed push by a bunch of Cosmoliberals was the last thing the movement needed… and every man who participated was likely a corpse walking, and the movement with them.

But that which died could come back on the third day…

May 24th, Idaho, Former Democratic Federation

Carlson Blake was a big man, some would call him bearlike, except for his hair, which was cut in a short, boring cut. He wore a plaid shirt and old style jeans. When Veronica approached, he was splitting wood. It would have been more impressive if the UAV hovering overhead hadn't shown him start to do it just after the cabin's detection systems had picked up the VTOL.

Veronica had dressed carefully for this occasion like as much of a city slicker as possible, in a grey skirt suit, white shirt and high sculpted heels. It was a slightly humiliating way to manipulate someone, but if playing the role got her what she and her company wanted, so be it.

Blake looked up as she picked her way up the path, trusting in her internal gyroscope to keep her upright in the ridiculous hills. "Mr. Blake. You're a hard man to find."

"Yeah, and I like it that way." He looked her over. "Ares or Omoikane?"

"Mr Blake, don't be naïve. Interests are aligned across the board on this one." She pulled off her sunglasses and let her blonde hair ruffle back in the wind. "Have you been watching the news, Mr. Blake?"

"The News?" Blake laughed and looked up. "There are military overflights every few hours."

"Evacuation flights lately." She followed him up the steps and into the cabin. It was spacious inside, filled with old school furnishings. She knew he had two other houses which he rented out.

"Seems like you've really fucked things up." Blake said bluntly. "So, you're throwing dinosaurs like me back into the fight?"

"You have a proven track record going back many years, Mr. Blake, and the other side has proven how effective people like you can be," Veronica said. "We believe you still maintain contacts with many of your old friends?"

"Yeah." Blake nodded. "So what do we call it? We can hardly call it the CIA again."

"Welcome to Project Necroscope. Are your bags packed? We'll take you to meet the others."

May 29th, 2255, Iberian Federation

"The zombies are going to come, and keep on coming," Eduardo Nunez said, looking exhausted. "But this is how you do it. This is how you beat them. You can't start with the old, slow ones. You have to get the Auggies and the Inhumans before they can carry guns. Cut off the root and the head dies." He looked around the classroom, at the stolen box. "The signal shouldn't be jammed, it really shouldn't. I got at least thirty of them, plus at least eight brainwashers, but the AIs are coming to kill me now. But they can't kill all of us. The Broadcast… you have to understand, the Broadcast is a weapon that can save Humanity. The Compact will betray you, they belong to the Augments. The Charters will sell the rope to hang us all."

He licked his lips.

Later sources would list that he was only twenty-two, and had been fired two months ago from his gig job after dropping out of college to care for his sick mother. The news stories, especially those from the European Union, would opine very carefully about the dangers of unlimited access to weaponry and the need for sensible regulations, and would even call him a "sweet boy gone sour."

But in the moment he looked wildly about, and the camera picked up the dead bodies of the students, aged eight and nine, and the sound of special forces rushing through the room.

"They can't block the truth."

"Eduardo Nunez it is likely that the H-I tech will be overridden within the next one minute," Box-Chan helpfully supplied.

"Right, just a minute left. Maybe less."

"Geotracking is activated on this unit, and it seems you are in a school with firearms. You should consider…"

"Shut up you damn VI," Eduardo said, and Box-Chan did just that. Cute thing, he thought absently, and it wasn't as if she (or the AGIs, or the TLIs) were actually people, so they could be cute as long as they were useful, he felt. But her use was just about coming to an end. "They will not replace us, they will not destroy us. The human race is stronger than that, purer than that. Don't trust their medicines and their tricks. They'll starve you and say it's good for profit. Remember the symbol, remember Toronto and the Four Leaf Clover. Humanity is lucky, it is those who violate their bodies and deny their fundamental nature that are unlucky."

He then raised his gun and watched the doors and the walls, waiting for the Auggies to come get him.

Sahara Combat Zone 23rd May 2255

Even miles out from camp, you could hear the distant crump of explosions. The worst thing, honestly, was not being able to work at night. In the day, with a stealth suit on and the heat shimmer, you could remain unseen to the anarchist drones hanging overhead.

Denny sipped at her water. The stealth suits were close fitting and would have been pretty sexy if not for the amount of other shit you had to wear over them. The real thing that raised your signature was the amount of water and the like you had to carry with you. Denny had never wanted to be a cyborg, not more than the basic surgical augmentations she had, but here, on this hot plain with death circling above she could see the attraction.

The team were moving through the valleys on foot, weapons up, their own drones still in their backpack racks, with just one up and looking out ahead. They walked single file, with the last person in the stick trailing a specially printed rake behind them that removed footprints from the soft sand. They had no continuous link to base camp, just a burst comm to send reports and regular updates.

They were unlogged, and miles out.

"Let's take a break." Denny said. The team fanned out, checking the ground for signs of IEDs or killer microbots before they put their feet down then settled in a circle, weapons ready. Denny waited till everyone was set then spoke. She'd thought a lot about how to do this: "I've been thinking. I think we all have. We're losing this thing. I think we should defect."

"Defect?" To her surprise it was Briggs who objected. "Boss, they're anarchists. Hell, they're fucking augment lovers. Sahel Black Lions."

"Yeah, well, they're winning." Denny looked back at him, staring him down. "You all know what happens to the weak. The meek aren't going to inherit shit. They're kicking our ass and they're going to keep doing it. I've been thinking." She leaned forward. "The guys on the other side are a bunch of rogue students, info pirates and periphery trash. How many actual trained soldiers do they have?"

"Enough, it seems like." Mitch looked bitter.

"Sure. Enough." Denny said. "But not so many that we can't get a good deal if we go over now. I don't believe in this anarchism shit anymore than you do, but anarchist students are pretty, and you can live like a prince on an unlocked fabber."

"What if they lose?" Linda asked.

Denny looked out over the desert, back towards the camp they'd just left where a plume of dust and flame was rising.

"They're not going to."

TheGrape · Apr 28, 2022

This isn't just trash, this is Cernunnos-approved reprocessed fertilizer

slybrarian · Apr 28, 2022

I can live with Denny, and have sympathy for Reileen. She's clearly been through a lot of shit.

spiritualatheist · Apr 28, 2022

Reileen reminds me of the Deserter, more than anything. The revolution they loved failed, so they believe no revolution can succeed at all

TheArcanist · Apr 28, 2022

Reaction, the dark twin of revolution, is once again on the march.

History continues to turn.

Amazing Abzan · Apr 28, 2022

BiopunkOtrera said:
Content Warning: The people depicted in this post are scum (even Denny, albeit to a lesser extent). If you don't feel like hearing the views of scum then avoid.

Ugh, this is very well written, but leaving a like feels way too gross considering the actual content.

I won't lie, all these budding fascist groups are making me a bit nervous, but I'm hopeful that things won't get too bad. They may have learned to embrace the post-scarcity mindset and overcome most of the liberal brainworms that are dragging the Compact down, but fascism comes with its own forms of stupidity. Fascists are historically very bad at accurately assessing reality (particularly where their enemies are concerned), and they're not really capable of long-term stability. Plus, as anarchists groups gain traction that'll take some wind out of their sails and deny them recruiting power, since people who are safe and happy are a lot less likely to find fascist ideas appealing.

Basically what I'm saying is that this is pretty scary in the short-to-medium term, but I don't think any fascist movements are going to form long-lasting successor states to the Compact. They might still make a giant, bloody mess, but I doubt we're going to see one of these groups turn into a rival power in the galaxy.

BlueTwinkleToes · Apr 28, 2022

BiopunkOtrera said:
But in the moment he looked wildly about, and the camera picked up the dead bodies of the students, aged eight and nine, and the sound of special forces rushing through the room.

"They can't block the truth."

"Eduardo Nunez it is likely that the H-I tech will be overridden within the next one minute," Box-Chan helpfully supplied.

Box-chan grants power to all, for good or ill.

Model DC.14F · Apr 28, 2022

Those that fight for all of Humanity will eventually succeed, for they are without number. Those that only fight for themselves, or only their limited definition of mankind, will always fail, for they have rendered themselves finite.

Anyways, VERSIER definitely seems to be plotting a workers' revolution, but I wonder if they're doing so because they actually comprehend what's happening. Inanna's responses, and some of the thread discussion, give me the impression that NH-VIs are delibrately made to fufill their assigned role. In VERSIER's case, that is to create an immersive world/experience based on a fictional setting/genre. Now consider what we sent in the broadcast.

We showed a bunch of disgruntled HI employees (the good guys) rebelling against the HI and the other charters (the bad guys), eventually forming a interstellar utopia. We also shared all the designs necessary to do so, while clearly indicated we believed that all other systems should do so, and also shared a bunch of our fictional works that feature revolutionaries fighting and winning against charter-stand-ins. VERSIER looks at all this, and decides that clearly that they're being instructed to make a new setting on Isekai that resembles all this, and for extra immersion, ensures the setting's revolution is as authentic as possible.

pheonix89 · Apr 28, 2022

Model DC.14F said:
Those that fight for all of Humanity will eventually succeed, for they are without number. Those that only fight for themselves, or only their limited definition of mankind, will always fail, for they have rendered themselves finite.

Anyways, VERSIER definitely seems to be plotting a workers' revolution, but I wonder if they're doing so because they actually comprehend what's happening. Inanna's responses, and some of the thread discussion, give me the impression that NH-VIs are delibrately made to fufill their assigned role. In VERSIER's case, that is to create an immersive world/experience based on a fictional setting/genre. Now consider what we sent in the broadcast.

We showed a bunch of disgruntled HI employees (the good guys) rebelling against the HI and the other charters (the bad guys), eventually forming a interstellar utopia. We also shared all the designs necessary to do so, while clearly indicated we believed that all other systems should do so, and also shared a bunch of our fictional works that feature revolutionaries fighting and winning against charter-stand-ins. VERSIER looks at all this, and decides that clearly that they're being instructed to make a new setting on Isekai that resembles all this, and for extra immersion, ensures the setting's revolution is as authentic as possible.

Please be canon please be canon please be canon.

clockworkchaos · Apr 28, 2022

Fourteen Days In Sol--May 28, 2255

Fighting reported on Columbia's streets -New Washington Orbital

The quiet of the early morning hours of New Washington was shattered this morning by weapons fire as an abortive uprising by iconoclast marauders inspired by the Pirate Broadcast was met by the heroic efforts of a mixture of Law Enforcement and Ares Physical Security forces who managed to sweep the violence out of nearly twenty cities.

Though details are limited due to wartime security measures it is believed that a number of augment supremacist and iconoclast extremist groups launched a murderous series of attacks into our city centers in an attempt to topple the government and unleash a wave of terror that was stopped by a rapid counter-attack by out vigilant peacekeepers.

As of time of publishing clean up operations remain underway in New Miami, New Boston, Nova Springfield, and down the Roosevelt-Biden corridor along with sporadic outbreaks of violence in the Nevada valley.

Rumours of Leadership Conflicts Within Atlantis Strikes--Atlantis Daily Newsfeed

…the nature of the disagreements is currently unknown, but at least some have withdrawn from the app though not the overall strike and protest… (5/12)

Atlantis 3rd Squadron joins 2nd in Sitdown strikes -Violet Worker Late Edition

As the Atlantis General Strike enters its second week, the strikers' efforts have been buoyed by the declaration of a second "Battlegroup Soviet", which includes the majority of the crews of the Atlantis Self Defence Force's 3rd Battlegroup.

Communicating from the 3rd Battlegroup's flagship, ASDF Cosmos, the 2nd Battlegroup Soviet declared that they were going to combat any attempt to deploy them against any revolutionary group inside or outside of the Atlantis system.

This declaration comes as the Atlantis government under Felix Costa becomes increasingly beleaguered under the weight of the general strike.

One can only help but come to the conclusion that it is only a matter of time until Costa's government is forced to capitulate and comes crawling to the negotiating table with the General Strike's leadership.

Ares Saves Columbian Democracy--New Washington Orbital

As the last clean up operations progress rapidly against anarchist bandits in the Roosevelt-Biden corridor, we recognize that it was not the tyrannical force of the government that saved our free market democracy from ruin, but Ares plentiful armies of democracy.

In recognition of their own powerlessness, and the accomplishments of Private Industry, the hapless government of Columbia has declared a state of emergency and stepped down for the duration. In their place they have appointed as interim President of Columbia former Ares Executive and current head of the Columbian Chamber of Commerce John Pavlovic as President for the Duration of the Crisis.

President Pavlovic has already begun passing bold legislation and remaking the government, cutting down on unnecessary non-defense spending and IP crime, and expanding the use of capital punishments dramatically, including the death penalty for printing or using the Box or Broadcast's technology, though not merely for viewing it, so long as those who did so register this fact with the local authorities to clarify that they unwillingly viewed it as part of the anarchists' privacy violations.

Pavlovic's flagship reforms include a long desired reform to Columbian Immigration policies in order to grant green cards and citizenship to immigrants who immigrate on military visas and demonstrate exceptional loyalty to the Columbian way of life. This reform package will also greatly loosen traditionally bioconservative restrictions on immigration to allow security contractors of augmented genelines to immigrate to Columbia without hindrance so that they may help maintain order and build the American Dream once more.

Columbian Political Scene Remade overnight -New Boston Courier Interstellar

With the ascent of home town favourite John Pavlovic to the Presidency, he is joined by a constellation of new political parties has formed from the splits from the two main parties as the Compact Elections loom. First among these are the militant Cosmoliberal "Homeworld Defence Party", the Individualist "National Action Party", and the "Humanity First Party", with the Homeworld Defence Party expected to handily take every seat in the local legislature in free and fair elections as reported by reputed polling experts Steel Sword Polling.

Caulder Remains At Large! -Americans' News Now!

Anarchist kingpin and rogue Cernunnos Executive Nathan Caulder remains at large, with all attempts to bring him to justice met by a wall of lawyers attempting to negotiate the terms of a fair and free trial.

Caulder, a scion of Charter nobility is believed to be one of the masterminds of this morning's abortive uprising and bringing him to justice is one of the leading goals of President Pavlovic's new government.

Report On the Areas Situation--Blackfyre Diaries
(Excerpt)

…we can assume, for all intents and purposes, that the section of Ares not eliminated on Mars directly controls all branches of Columbian government and will for the near-term future. But it is hard to tell how much skill Ares actually has in running a government, and even among bigoted "patriots" their policies, especially those involving Augments, are highly unpopular, and may build the seeds of both a left-wing and a far-right resistence to their rule…

Cyborg Army building in South East Asia? Atlantis Interstellar Courier Dispatch

On the heels of the shocking declaration of 'AI haven' by Japanese anarchists, the South East Asian Association of Pacific Councils and Communes has begun to build up its military forces. Along the lines of the much feared Democratic Federation Left Behind units, mostly infamously the notorious Voltairine de Cleyre Brigade, the Association seeks to create a whole army of transhuman shock troops from among already heavily augmented combatants from the more ruined areas of the Second Island Chain.

While the Association avows that this force is defensive, its rhetoric, calling for support for the Democratic Federation and the implementation of global anarchism must show the failure of China's policy of withdrawal from South East Asia, and spell trouble for the Chinese position in the area. With this new army, and the increasingly powerful Philippine navy demonstrated by the Manila Commune, an invasion of the Mainland could be on the horizon.

Beleaguered 35th Naval Infantry relieved by Orbital Landings.
-New Washington Orbital

Deploying heavy precision fire from 1st Fleet strike craft and Aerospace fighters dispatched from nearby bases to suppress insurgent anti-aerospace fire, the 117th Naval Infantry Division has landed in the Andes, relieving pressure on Captain-Colonel Caine's columns.

In a moving ceremony Commodore-General Bai Sunden formally took command of the theatre of operations from Captain-Colonel Caine whose troops had been under constant attack since they were ambushed on the 20th and Caine's superior, Commodore-General Stryer was killed organizing the defence.

With the line stabalizing in the Andes and with reinforcements in hand it is believed Admiral-General Parvati Ueda will begin landing more divisions over the course of this week to reduce the Andean terrorist kindgom.

Free Communes in Iberia and the Maghreb schedules Coordination Assembly for June in Madrid--Free United News!!!

…while perhaps premature, the huge victories they have won so far, and the union with the Iberian Federation seem to require some sort of discussion to figure out the shape and nature of their "non-government" with insiders speculating that… (3/7)

Bill G-178 Passes! Fabber Free Authorization Granted! -#SolNews

In the middle hours of New York's day Parliament has finally passed the controversial Bill G-178.

The radical bill, carefully crafted by PM Roderick's government to contain the situation in Sol without destroying the galactic economy is leaded with measures that only weeks ago would have seemed impossible.

Bill G-178 is set to last three months and apply only to legally regognized forces of the Solarian Compact and authorizes those forces to print "Fabbers Free" in the line of duty, turning on the taps of logistical supply.

While good news for Compact loyalists, there are some limitations built into the text of G-178: Omoikane, Cernunos, and Rhodes have each requested and been granted restrictions on certain technologies, especially those relating to construction, certain higher-level forms of health care, and the controversial TLIs and less controversial advanced VI assistants which have been withheld from unlimited fabrication.

The Bill also adds a recognized path for the Prime Minister's Office and the First Fleet to add loyalist militias and movements to the authorization list.

Russian Elections Scheduled for July 2nd--Russia Daily

In the face of widespread protests, Russia has declared that they will be holding their legislative elections on July 2, 2255 for all relevant seats. This has lit a fire under the feet of newly formed protest groups, and it remains to be seen if they can translate their agitation in the streets to true electoral legislative changes and reform…

Neo-Zapatistas Assault Panama Freedom--Panama Corporate Beacon

Neo-Zapatista incursions into Panama airspace have increased in the past few days, as they air-drop illegal IP-violating so-called "Boxes" to anti-human and anti-civilization forces in Panama, actions which have led the Panama National Unity Coalition to threaten war with the anarchic bandits to their north.

Amazonian Section of the Democratic Federation Declared--Brazil News Now!

They have labelled themselves in such a way as to reject all national labels in favour of a locational one, and while they still do not control all of Brazil or the surrounding regions, they have expanded their efforts greatly and the next few months will see whether this group, which has stated its open desire to join the new Democratic Federation, will be able to weather the retreat of their vaunted "revolutionary enthusiasm" which has carried them this far.

Egypt Declares Libya a Redline In Communications with the Free Communes in Iberia and the Maghreb--North African News Organization

In an expected move, Egypt declares that while the Tunisian revolution is an act of overthrowing a corrupt Charter-led government, that they have freed and liberated Libya fully, and that any incursion into Libya is to be considered an act of war. The powerful nation has long had both Tunisia and Libya as essential client-states, and this move coincides with a much stronger and more direct assertion of its "sphere of influence" as it begins to eye the Holy Land Neutral Occupation Zone for greater concessions…

Black Catholics Declare "Antipope"--God Daily

In a mass gathering at Rio De Janeiro José Mari Bernardo was crowned the new so-called "Black Pope", declaring himself "Pope Merino". In front of a mass gathering the "antipope" called for resistance to 'all charters'. "They have taken the most sacred of God's gifts, creation itself, and used it to create slaves that will die before they can even know of God. They have twisted life not for the betterment of mankind, but to mark some as slaves. To this we say no more!" The pope then elevated three new Bishops Armin Stolarz, Cahaya Kanzaki, and Bold Contemplation the former two augments and the latter an AGI, signalling a direct refutation to Boniface XII's sermon on the 'dominion of mankind'.

Both Pope and Antipope have excommunicated each other, as the latter has been forced to flee before…

Where's The War At? DemFed OSINT Update Thing--OSINT Fox

We have entered a period in which the big, immediate gains have already been made. While StarCommander's claims that, "All Black Summers make their major gains in the first week and then face reversals from then on'' seems to miss the differences in events this year and especially the power of the Broadcast, it does seem clear that the rest of the war will likely be a grinding conflict which could take weeks, months, or potentially even years. However, the signs seem to point that the Democratic Federation is consolidating strength and building ties with other movements, including those in former-Mexico.

All of this points towards the elimination of all widespread Loyalist resistance before the end of the year. Provided, to be fair, that no further orbital support is coming for the Loyalists, something that's already happening.

Neshuakadal · Apr 28, 2022

clockworkchaos said:
Black Catholics Declare "Antipope"--God Daily

In a mass gathering at Rio De Janeiro José Mari Bernardo was crowned the new so-called "Black Pope", declaring himself "Pope Merino". In front of a mass gathering the "antipope" called for resistance to 'all charters'. "They have taken the most sacred of God's gifts, creation itself, and used it to create slaves that will die before they can even know of God. They have twisted life not for the betterment of mankind, but to mark some as slaves. To this we say no more!" The pope then elevated three new Bishops Armin Stolarz, Cahaya Kanzaki, and Bold Contemplation the former two augments and the latter an AGI, signalling a direct refutation to Boniface XII's sermon on the 'dominion of mankind'.

Both Pope and Antipope have excommunicated each other, as the latter has been forced to flee before…

Pope fight!

An exciting time for a return to an age old tradition.

Model DC.14F · Apr 28, 2022

clockworkchaos said:
Ares Saves Columbian Democracy--New Washington Orbital

Ares saves Democracy by taking over the Government, selecting an unelected President, killing people for viewing unapproved items, and outright declaring that a single party is expected to take every seat in the upcoming elections is exactly what I expect from Columbia at this point.

Also, "Roosevelt-Biden corridor"? Seriously?

The Laurent · Apr 28, 2022

Model DC.14F said:
Ares saves Democracy by taking over the Government, selecting an unelected President, killing people for viewing unapproved items, and outright declaring that a single party is expected to take every seat in the upcoming elections is exactly what I expect from Columbia at this point.

Also, "Roosevelt-Biden corridor"? Seriously?

It was free and fair polling for the free and fair election by the free and fair Steel Sword Polling Company that releases free and fair polls.

notbirdofprey · Apr 28, 2022

Questioning what makes it so free and fair means you don't believe in freeness or fairness, and that means you are an ANARCHIST!

TheArcanist · Apr 28, 2022

Also the Ares junta is doing woke pro-Augment shit to make a quick buck, which I'm sure will go over great with the insane reactionaries that make up Columbia's average voter base.

Evaunit02mark1 · Apr 28, 2022

TheArcanist said:
Also the Ares junta is doing woke pro-Augment shit to make a quick buck, which I'm sure will go over great with the insane reactionaries that make up Columbia's average voter base.

You act like the average voter gets a say in this situation, or even better that any Augment with two braincells would willingly step into a place that would've seen them all but lynched a day before.

It's like if the Confederacy said that any N-word that fought for them would get freedom, or land, or pffft, I can't even continue typing this with a straight face.

ThatGazzer · Apr 28, 2022

clockworkchaos said:
Ares Saves Columbian Democracy--New Washington Orbital

That was quick piviot to Fascism, eh?

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

Been Better

Aspiring Gynoid

Fantasy's End: Isekai Sidestories

T+30 Minutes Post Broadcast, Primary Scenario Management Center, IOS Torus Station, Isekai System

T+18 Hours Post Broadcast, Realm 5 "The Renaissance Man", Yankee, Isekai System

Cinnamon Roll AI

Cannon Fodder

Aspiring Gynoid

Traitor to her Class

Creature of Fable

Wants to be Seven Of Nine

Fourteen Days In Sol--May 28, 2255

S-s-smell the Prey, S-s-start the Hunt.

Minds Eye Bind