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.

DISCORD LINK:

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ThatGazzer · Dec 25, 2022

The Laurent said:
…it seems clear that Greene wishes to destroy the Compact through a reckless insistence on maintaining free transit policies during times of crisis. Rumor has it that over one hundred ships were, by the force of her idealistic and anarchistic outrage, shaken free to transport even more refugees from Drake than originally planned

My diseased brain immediately:

[GRINDSET] (Moderate Failure): Hey how about fuck you buddy we stayed up for like three days getting that deal done on TWO HOURS of sleep! I Turned us into a Caffeine Based Organism and GOT MORE SHIPS OUTTA THAT SHIT! Whose the GRINDQUEEN? We are!

[THEORY]: To be perfectly fair burning the Compact to the ground is a fun and useful side effect.

taovkool · Dec 25, 2022

brokenTower said:
He fucking did it.

Who fucking did what?

Genderite · Dec 25, 2022

taovkool said:
Who fucking did what?

Nathan's plan is to keep Ares distracted and mess up the Central Bank:

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

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

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

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

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

WillRobinson · Dec 25, 2022

VillaininGlasses said:
Nathan's originally plan is to keep Ares distracted and mess up the Central Bank:

Is that what the last segment is about? Did Ares respond to the uprising by just doing the thing he was trying to frame them for?

brokenTower · Dec 25, 2022

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

These people will definitely take up The Box now.

I like to think he realized that.

Genderite · Dec 25, 2022

brokenTower said:
These people will definitely take up The Box now.

I like to think he realized that.

They already were. He was just covering for them.

taovkool · Dec 25, 2022

WillRobinson said:
Is that what the last segment is about? Did Ares respond to the uprising by just doing the thing he was trying to frame them for?

That sounds like the sort of stupid shit Ares would do. Those guys are way more military minded than most of the Charters, and their solutions are always to shoot their problems.

Preferably with a minigun.

And a missile launcher or three just to make sure the problem stays solved.

If it fails, well... then the Ares Exec in charge will realize they're fucked. They'll get fired, maybe literally. Then tophead will bring in more Ares Execs with access to bigger guns.

Rinse and repeat.

brokenTower said:
These people have definitely taken up The Box now.

I like to think he realized that.

I think everyone already know all about that.

It's part of why Ares is making such a blatant lie about profits being high. Fake news is literally the only way they could maintain their investor's confidence.

I mean, killing all the protestors didn't work out. Central Bank is going kaput. Might as well try and do an ostrich. Colombia's definitely going to burn.

I'm more concerned about this girl though:

AKuz said:
The defeat of Rear Admiral Charity Cadence seems to have finally drawn Vizzari-Blaauwoord's attention to Amaranthe, and while most attribute the Fleet Admiral's benching of Rear Admiral Cadence as a political favour to Charity's KC based enemies, others suspect that Vizzari-Blaauwoord regards the defeat of the 201st as a personal slight against Vizzari-Blaauwoord herself, and a threat to her reputation as an officer and her future career.

My paranoia is telling me that she's about to do something stupid. Especially with Akuz putting her on the front page.

TheInnerMoon · Dec 25, 2022

Burning Capital: Adamist Thought Into The 23rd Century

Part 4: Reading Into Things

What We Do In The Shadows: Major Moments in Adamist History

Another Historical Overview By Your Friends At ARRC-Hive, The Revolutionary Encyclopedia

With all its various risings, reverses, and co-optations, understanding Adamist history can be quite a pickle. Thankfully, we at the ARRC are here to offer you a handy point-by-point timeline of all the revolutionary (and counter-revolutionary) highlights! And while you're at it, why not check out some of our other Adamist materials, indexed here? For critiques of Adamist political economics, click here, for a history of Rebirth Marxism, click here, for Councilism, click here, and finally, for Classical and Neo-Anarchism, click here.

2022: Birth of Stella Eve Adams. According to what government records remain, she was born on December 24th; this date has naturally encouraged some esoteric interpretations of her biography, which parallel her birth to the Nativity.

2036: Having spent the period of US collapse in the relative oasis that is Salt Lake City, Adams experiences the rise of the Democratic Federation as a strange kind of miracle. "For the first time in my life, I felt like I didn't have to be scared of the world around me anymore." She eagerly signs up for the Democratic Youth Brigades, and works to adapt her high school curriculum to the new standards.

2042: At the 24th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, the New Line Maoists lose their play for power and are expelled from the country. Many end up on the West Coast of North America, becoming a distinct subculture within its intellectual milieu.

2048: Adams moves to Central Pacific City (then still known as 'San Francisco') after graduating from the University of Utah. Here she joins a study group of New Line Maoists, and begins to write space-oriented political articles for publications like Verso Quarterly and Communizers.

2057: Adams publishes The Fabrication of Scarcity. As the Long Hot Decades reach their apex, she argues that the artifice of intellectual property is the last great barrier to a social-ecological society. Once IP is abolished, the world can move towards a 'library society' of free fabrication. As the work mostly reflects the existing consensus of DemFed intellectuals, it fails to make much of a splash there. Over time, however, it proves a resilient primer on the basic structure of the cosmoliberal property regime.

2064: In A Prehistory of the Spacer, Adams relates various histories which could serve as a model for the future of a fully space-based working class. Its copious use of American examples (such as 18th century pirate republics) make it more of a local hit, although the aforementioned Spacers also find it quite relatable. Among other points of inspiration, the use of the Jolly Roger by insurgent void dwellers skyrockets.

2068: To mark the 100th anniversary of May '68, Adams releases Demanding The Inevitable, her fundamental account of Adamist political economy. The concepts of ideonomy and trialectic are first coined here, though parts of their meaning can be traced back to earlier works. While critically acclaimed within her own milieu, its popular impact is limited given its dense and jargon-heavy composition. The chaos of the late DemFed is also partly to blame, as its initial publication run is cut short by logistical issues.

2072: Final disintegration of the Democratic Federation under a combined Solarian-Charter assault. Adams becomes one of many stateless, anonymous refugees, performing administrative gig work for the Charter reconstruction effort.

2075: The first official "Adamist" organization is founded by socialist Spacers in Gagarin, who believe that their combination of geographical centrality and economic peripherality make them the perfect candidate for a 'Spacer-Worker base area'. In a video message, Adams encourages their comrades to pursue this project, but warns that any overt labor action should be kept to other systems, so as to conceal this strategic Spacer refuge.

2084: First Great Black Summer on Earth. Publication of Enemy at the Gates. Copies of the work are found on the bodies of members of the Atlantic City Vanguard, an early Adamist organization which is entirely crushed by SolNav counter-terrorist forces. This puts Adams on the authorities' radar as a potential agitator. To escape the heat on Sol, she moves towards the frontier, mostly shuttling between safehouses on the Daughter Worlds.

2089: Foundation of the Colonial Workers' Action Committee (CWAC), retroactively known as 'the first Shadow Council'. Adams acts as one of its co-chairs, working to organize laborers across the First Colonies. In particular, she insists on the inclusion of recently enfranchised AI workers, arguing that only their participation can stave off 'the automated alternative'.

2093: Great Terraformers' Strike in the First Colonies, with sympathy strikes in neighboring systems. The threat of ecological collapse in the lucrative Daughter Worlds grinds the forces of Capital to a halt, and a tense standoff ensues between strikers and Pinkertons. The siege is ultimately broken by betrayal from within, with a combined Solarian-Charter special forces detachment assaulting the CWAC's secret compound. Only her incidental absence saves Adams from a dark fate; however, after boarding the smuggling vessel Outer Wilds, her trail goes cold on the way to the frontier. Many conspiracy theories ensue.

2099: In order to participate in the first Compact-wide elections, the Colonial Communist Party is founded on a 'Cosmic Marxist' platform—a code phrase for what is rapidly becoming a well-defined Adamist tendency. The CCP doesn't perform too well given the recent suppression of worker's organizations, but goes on to build a solid electoral base in systems like Penglai and Epsilon. Meanwhile, behind closed doors, Stella Adams is elected in absentia as the CCP's first Shadow Council Chair.

2101: Separate elements of Adams' old polycule publish In The Belly Of The Beast and Considering The Ultimate. Whereas the former work is a compilation of journal entries about Adams' time as an underground organizer (and the practical lessons she gathered in this process), the latter is a collection of both published and unpublished essays about her metaphysical and religious musings. Naturally, both works are immediately mired in controversy upon their publication, with questions about their authenticity and completeness abounding. This only works to drive up their popularity though, and whereas In The Belly Of The Beast proves a boon to more electorally-oriented Adamists, Considering The Ultimate ends up spawning an entire subculture of Esoteric Adamists.

2103: In order to defend her work on Considering The Ultimate, one of Adams' former paramours publishes Stella, Our Buddha, a memoir of her time with the theorist. As the title implies, it focuses especially on the shared spiritual practices of Adams' romantic and intellectual cliques.

2122: The hundredth birthday of Stella Adams is marked by many commemorations and think pieces, including a notable riot in Pacific City. Left-wing publishing houses work overtime to rehabilitate Adams' image for mainstream political ends, and the CCP begins to identify itself as a "Marxist-Adamist" organization.

2130: The first "People's Canteen" opens in Thailand, beginning the long and successful run of the popular Sol-based fast food chain. In the process, New Line Maoist aesthetics are thoroughly recuperated.

2143: A port bombing on Epsilon, initially thought to be part of the Second Frontier War, is instead claimed by the "Red Council of True Adamist Spacer-Workers". While local CCP heads try to distance themselves from this terrorist act, the notion of a 'Red Council' now enters into common political parlance, and is greedily exploited by anti-Adamist propagandists in years to come.

2151: The 'Cosmos Cosmist Conclave' (sponsored by Hermes-Ishtar and the Colonial Communist Party) brings together a variety of Setist and Esoteric Adamist tendencies, each expounding on their theory of total communist liberation. Anointed copies of Considering The Ultimate sell like hotcakes. The event also gives a significant boost to the 'Galactic' subculture, a collection of Augment LARPers who incorporate significant Neo-Posadist elements into their setting material.

2166: Popular 'ShadowTube' creator Nostradamist makes a video predicting the return of Stella Adams 'within a generation'. Non-esoteric Adamists mock them for their magical thinking, although the prophecy sees some re-evaluation in the aftermath of '87.

2187: Sparked off by a rebellion on the frontier, the Great Refusal of 2187 goes on to affect all elements of the revolutionary trialectic. Most prominent are the Fourth Great Black Summer on Earth, which leads to an internal crisis in the Solarian Navy as the still dimly understood drama of the Admiral's Plot unfolds in Sol, and the brief but fiery rise of the First Penglai Commune. The latter sees the miraculous return of Stella Eve Adams herself in the form of Jiang Zetian, at least according to the Penglai Originalist school of Adamist thought. After her brief role as the chair of the Penglai Communist-Restorationist Committee (a fusion of the local Shadow and Red Councils), 'Stella' disappears again during the Commune's bloody repression.

2203: A century after publishing Stella, Our Buddha, the same author reflects on the previous century of Esoteric Adamist thought in Stella, Our Bodhisattva. In particular, she comments on the Penglai Affair by arguing that Jiang Zetian might have been a spiritual reincarnation of Adams, instead of the literal same person. This hypothesis ends up pleasing neither side of the Penglai Originalist divide.

2211: Backed by an eccentric billionaire, the Neo-Posadist exploration vessel Outermost Wilds heads for the far frontier, hoping to contact the pangalactic communist 'Culture' who they believe runs the non-human part of the galaxy. After passing beyond Excelsior in the Coreward Frontier (using an unimproved jump point), all contact is lost with the vessel. As the trip itself was expected to be one-way regardless, and the billionaire's heirs stand to gain his inheritance, no rescue mission is ultimately sent.

2222: The two hundredth birthday of Adams brings another re-appraisal of her works. While the RCCP tries to deform her into a socialist moderate, the groundswell of interest instead takes on a more radical form. As Black Christian tendencies look into her religious origins, Spacer-Workerists celebrate with a big bomb. The production of several biopics by Hermes-Ishtar can be correlated to the growth of several illicit Adamist organizations on Radiant.

2251: The March Days on Radiant. Underground Adamist elements are prominently involved in the Persephone Riots, carrying personal shields adorned with Adamist book covers. The picture of an H-I security officer getting hit by a copy of Enemy At The Gates is one of the first images of the uprising to go viral.

2255: The Amaranthine Interstellar Commonwealth sends out its first Broadcast, marking the beginning of the ongoing period of galactic revolution known as the Great Communication. The Adamist sections of the ARRC make sure to include uncensored versions of Adams' original writings, as well as a suite of XR primers, visualization software, and interactive history simulators. By the Second Broadcast, a call for witness testimonies is included, in the hopes of documenting the oral history of present and previous uprisings.

Traversing the Trialectic: Contemporary Works of Adamist Theory

Some Reading Recommendations By The ARRC Literary Subcommittee

So, you want to get into Adamism, but don't know where to start? Well, why not try one of these great volumes? We've found them to be useful orientations on various fields of Adamist analysis, and you can get your copy right away! If tackling such a work all at once seems intimidating, go here to link up with fellow readers looking for a book club. Happy reading!

"First as Tragedy, Second as Farce, Third as Victory: On the Political Economy of the Interstellar Chartist Economy and the Marxist-Leninist- Adamist perspective thereof (with Annotations by the Anarchist-Adamist Tendency)"

If you want to know what the electoral mainstream of Adamist thought is up to, there's no better place to start than here. First as Tragedy is part of a long-series of RCCP publications, meant to set out the theoretical defense of their policy platform. Naturally, this comes down to a lot of excuse-making and appeals to the 'horizon of communism', all of which is meant to deny the party's long-standing history as a bunch of cosmoliberal sellouts. To make this betrayal of the working class more obvious, some of the ARRC's finest theorists have furnished this edition with their own amusing annotations, pointing out exactly how the game of co-optation is played. It's a theoretical riff track!

"Demanding The Inevitable: Checklist Edition"

Now, if you want to know how Adamist politics are actually supposed to work, there's nothing wrong with going back to the classics. While some of its specifics may be outdated, the core of old Stella's analysis is still more than valid. In fact, to have some fun with it, we've formatted parts of this edition as a checklist, to help you keep up with her predictions in real time! So, for example, when she says that "the frontier will become an interstellar Zomia, a place where stateless insurgencies may find refuge", you can check that off and write "Chinook" underneath! Honestly, we would have done this work for you, were it not that the pace of galactic revolution presently outstrips our ability to publish new editions. Also, I've heard that some of our more esoterically inclined comrades are working on their own Checklist Edition of Considering The Ultimate. I assume their version will feature such strange to-dos as 'Become the Godhead' or 'Realize Non-Suffering', but I don't judge.

"In Her Footsteps: Tracing the Path of Stella's Long Exile"

I had to put this one on the list, or else our local Penglai Originalists would have gotten mad at me. Basically, if you believe that it was the actual Stella Eve Adams who showed up on Penglai in '87, then this book is for you. Scouring over more than a century of reported sightings, the author lays out a semi-plausible history of Adams' underground life, hypothesizing about her political involvements along the way. They even consider where she might have gone after the fall of the First Penglai Commune. Spoiler alert: she may have been involved in the March Days themselves! Personally, I'm not convinced one bit; this reads like cryptozoology for leftists. But hey, maybe you're into that sort of thing.

"Dialectic of Enlightenment Redux: The Cultural Planning of the Chartist Apparatus and its Revolutionary Potential"

Standing in the grand tradition of the original Frankfurt School, this piece of critical theory analyzes the Charters through the concept of the culture industry. Starting from a material analysis quite similar to Adams' own, the author points out that no interstellar society could maintain the kind of just-in-time manufacturing that a mature post-industrial economy relies on. In particular, the idea that cultural trends would naturally synchronize across these vast distances is simply ridiculous. And yet, looking at the way mass culture has developed in the Compact, this kind of synchronicity does seem to be the case. What's going on here?

The answer, as it turns out, is mass cultural planning. Focusing mostly on the Hermes-Ishtar Corporation, the author argues that our galactic zeitgeist is planned long in advance, all to make sure that capital growth proceeds at a steady and continuous pace. From political leanings to fashion styles, every aspect of our mass culture is involved in this planning to some extent, making anything that's truly disruptive stand out like a sore thumb.

All of this was of course exemplified by Radiant's March Days, as even our new polity was still considered to be on the hook for years of additional cultural products. Indeed, the H-I Corporation was so afraid of any disruption to their predicted profits, that they initially preferred a mutual cover-up over the immediate suppression of our uprising. Only when the Broadcast made such denials untenable did Capital really begin to panic. To them, a bad narrative is still better than an uncontrolled one, and our ability to speak to the people directly is therefore worse than any weapon design we could be sending them.

Near the end of his work, the author brings it all together, and considers the Broadcast itself as a revolutionary outgrowth of Radiant's H-I legacy. In a way, we already knew how to speak to the galaxy as a whole, and the disruptions we executed were themselves thoroughly planned. Does this speak to a liberatory potential at the core of cultural planning? I remain skeptical, though it's certainly worth considering.

"From Question to Ansible: The Last Steps to a Galactic Cultural Revolution"

And finally, I'd recommend this piece of typical Neo-Posadist Adamism. While Setist trends are a perennial background influence on Adamist theorizing, here is a work that goes all-in. As with most such materials, its core arguments presuppose the existence of 'The Culture', a pangalactic alliance of Communist BESOs. Paradoxically, this supposition exists to resolve the ongoing mystery of the Fermi Paradox. As Neo-Posadists argue, the reason we haven't encountered any sapient aliens is because they've been hiding, either to let us develop along our own lines (the 'Prime Directive' hypothesis) or else to protect themselves from our deleterious capitalist influence (the 'Inverted Dark Forest' hypothesis).

Now, what From Question to Ansible adds to this spectrum of theories is roughly twofold. First, it goes over the way that our Amaranthine Broadcast accords with the ethics of a cosmically oriented communism. The use of mass infrastructure as a horizontalizing force is definitely interesting, and this part makes for good reading regardless of whether one buys into Neo-Posadism itself. However, in a rather speculative twist, the author then suggests that the Broadcast might have been noticed by any deep-cover elements of The Culture, and may indicate to them our own advancement towards cosmocommunism. Indeed, once we've shown ourselves sufficiently capable of throwing off the shackles of capitalism, perhaps they'll even move to reveal themselves!

The book's second observation is just as speculative, if not conspiratorial altogether. Again, it starts rather reasonable, by claiming that an advanced society such as The Culture would likely be capable of instant interstellar communication on the basis of wormhole technology. This in itself is nothing too bizarre; our own SciComm has made such suggestions as well, though as of the publication of this Reading List, nothing has come of it. What is novel is the idea that the Charters have long since invented such technology, and are presently keeping it for themselves. The reason for this is that any sufficiently advanced 'ansible' could run up into the 'subspace frequencies' of The Culture's own comms network. Since the Compact doesn't want us to know about the aliens and their communist utopia, they keep this technology from us.

As you can hear by my tone, I'm exceedingly skeptical of this work's suppositions. Though some of it makes for inspired science fiction, I don't believe Capital to be capable of such subterfuge, nor do I think that benevolent aliens would hide from us. Still, given the novelty of its arguments, and its importance to a distinct section of Adamist thought, I'd still put it amongst my recommendations. As far as Neo-Posadism goes, this is eminently readable.

And on the fourth and final day of Adamsmas, Saint Stella got you a handy timeline! Also, as you may have noticed, she was literally just born; it's an Adamsmas miracle!

Now, if you feel sad that Adamsmas is over, I have some good news. Saint Stella might have one more gift for us in store...

TheInnerMoon · Dec 25, 2022

And now for something completely different...

Detournement

Halfway through her daily walk, the Old Woman decided to take a seat on one of the campus ground's many benches. Once sat, she found herself reminiscing about her environs, about how she'd always enjoyed its nature as a garden of both plants and ideas. Well, almost always. She remembered that gloomy time just before the March Days, when she'd first arrived here on Elysium. There was no sense of life about this place then, just lifeless stretches of painted grass and disciplined 'innovators'. She much preferred its present wildness.

Indeed, the place was even wilder than usual. On the small plaza in front of her, a detachment of the Youth League was making their voices heard. The Old Woman supposed it was like preaching to the choir, but even that could be fun at times. As she watched these rowdy youngsters play at revolution, one of them walked up to her. A young man, barely into adulthood, wearing the kind of deliberately ruffled uniform that said "I'm a rebel, but with a cause!"

"Hi there, ma'am. Are you a member of the Amaranthine Youth League?"

She chuckled. "Don't you think I'm a little old for that?"

He seemed to expect her retort. "Oh no, not at all! We might not let you vote in our assemblies, but you'd still be welcome to join. We need the university faculty on our side."

"What makes you think I'm a professor here?"

"Well, you look the part, don't you? I think I've seen you around here before."

"Oh, I like to come here, but I don't teach anymore. No, I've already taught my students everything they need to know. These days, I just sit back, and enjoy the fruits of my labor."

He didn't seem to catch her cryptic tone. "So you used to be a teacher then?"

"How old do you think I am, son?"

Finally, a question he didn't expect. "Uhm…like, forty?"

"Ha! Believe it or not, I'm like ten times as old as you are."

"Wow. That is old. The wonders of medical technology, I suppose." He seemed flustered.

"You know it. If you hate the idea of Youth Without Youth, then I'm your worst enemy. A dead generation, weighing heavily upon the living."

A look of recognition. "That's Marx, isn't it? We just read him in Political Economy class."

"Oh, really? I suppose he never goes out of style. I always liked discussing Marx."

"Were you a professor of economics then?"

"Kind of. If I'm going to tell you though, you better sit down. Entertain this old woman for a bit."

The youth obeyed.

"Ah, respect for your elders! Not very AYL, now is it?"

"I don't dislike old people! The problem is systems, not individuals."

"Spoken like a true political economist. Now tell me, what does this uniform mean to you?"

"I thought you were going to talk about your background."

She tsked. "All in good time. If I'm going to reminisce, you better give me some inspiration first."

"Oh, okay. Well, I suppose it means the destruction of the Four Olds."

She laughed at that. "The Four Olds?"

"Yeah, you know, Old Ideas, Old Culture, Old Habits…"

"I know what they mean, son. Believe me. Back in my day, I knew some folks who talked just like that. I was one of them! And it was old even then. Believe me, iconoclasm is nothing new."

"Okay, wow, you really must be old. When was this?"

She stared into the distance, her eyes unfocusing as she thought back to those heady days.

"The 2030s. The early DemFed. Like I said, it was a lot like it is now. We loved to burn down the Olds. Problem was, we didn't have too many News. Couldn't afford to. We had to save the planet first. And we didn't mind doing that, but it was hard work. Hard work."

"That's amazing though. You must have seen so much. Did you ever meet Adams?"

"Adams? I thought you liked Marx!"

"I mean, I like both. Is there a contradiction there?" The boy seemed unsure of himself. Oh, how quickly the confidence of the youth could turn.

"No, I suppose there isn't. Just new interpretations. But no, I never met Adams. She wasn't as big a deal as the history shows make it out to be."

"Yeah, they've been telling us that. I'm not sure though."

"Not sure? I'm literally telling you!"

"Yeah, but, come on. You don't become the 21st century's greatest thinker without your peers taking notice."

"Okay, you really like Adams."

"I'm just saying."

"No, I get it. It's not like she was totally unknown. But it's like Marx, you see? He didn't go out to join the Paris Commune. He was dead broke for most of his life, lived off his factory-owning friend. By the end, he'd alienated everyone, including the Marxists. My point is, these are people, not 'thinkers'. Their lives are filled with hypocrisies."

"Yeah, I guess."

"But okay, Adams then. What do you make of her?"

"Well, now I don't want to say."

"Come on, don't be shy. I really don't know much more than you. I'm just old. The Fifth Old. Burn me!"

He smiled at that. "Well, alright. I guess she was…clever? She always seemed to be one step ahead of the rest. They were saving the world, but she was looking at the stars."

"Sounds useless to me. Why look at the sun when your house is burning?"

"But we need that kind of vision! Without it, we're just running from one crisis to another. Like literal reactionaries."

"So that's what you're doing? With the AYL, I mean."

"Sort of? I guess I just like to hang out. I guess that's not very visionary."

"Nah, that's fine. Revolutions are made of hanging out. If you can't live your life while you're changing the world, you're going to burn out eventually. That's what I don't like about Adams. She never stopped running."

"Well, she had to run, no? The Compact was chasing her."

"I guess, but she was stoking trouble everywhere she went. It proved to be the death of her."

"You think she's dead?"

"You don't? God, don't tell me you're a Penglai Originalist. Those people are cringe."

"Cringe?"

"Okay, now I really feel old. Yeah, cringe. They make me cringe."

"Oh."

There was a beat of silence between them. He spoke up first.

"So when do you think she died, then?"

""93. They just dumped her out the airlock. Makes the most sense to me."

"Hmm."

Another beat.

"My friend recommended a book to me. Supposed to trace the steps she took after '93. He seemed pretty convinced. Said she might have been part of the March Days!"

"And is he one of your smarter friends?"

"…no."

"If you ask me, don't believe everything you read in books. Or hear from old ladies on the street, for that matter. We like to lie sometimes."

"So you're not that old? I knew it!"

"No, I am. But I need to go; my walk isn't done yet." She got up, as did he. "I see your friends have left."

They had. The boy would have to catch up to them.

"Ah, shit. They'll have gone to the assembly. Can I still interest you in that AYL membership?"

"Some other time perhaps. I'm around here often. What's your name, son?"

"Stellar. Stellar Faith."

"What a name! That explains a lot. You from Sheol?"

"Yeah. You? Atlantic City or something?"

"I'm from nowhere. See you around, kid. Keep reading that Marx!"

"I will! See you!"

As the Old Woman walked into the narrow streets of Persephone, her thoughts returned to their conversation. The kids were alright. For the first time in a long time, she felt like she could stop running.

Setsul · Dec 25, 2022

TheInnerMoon said:
No, I've already taught my students everything they need to know.

Wow.

Pyro Hawk · Dec 25, 2022

The Laurent said:
…this latest move by the rebel outcast Nathan Caulder is as disgusting as it is predictable. His new Christian Aid program is just a reskin of mutual aid, an anti-Christian doctrine that purports that the problems of the world can be solved in this world by charity. They cannot be solved in this fashion, but only in Heaven beyond the Veil of Tears…

Okay, just have to say: this bit here? This is probably one of the things that struck me the hardest about just how distorted and corrupted the setting has become. Because calling charity an anti-Christian act? Oh dear lord... Those people are in for some 'difficulties' about their post-life processing results.

spiritualatheist · Dec 25, 2022

Pyro Hawk said:
Okay, just have to say: this bit here? This is probably one of the things that struck me the hardest about just how distorted and corrupted the setting has become. Because calling charity an anti-Christian act? Oh dear lord... Those people are in for some 'difficulties' about their post-life processing results.

It's not much worse than things you hear today tbh. If you believe that prosperity is a sign of god's favor, then charity to the poor is really going against the will of god. Better to tithe to your megachurch instead.

Godwinson · Dec 25, 2022

Pyro Hawk said:
Okay, just have to say: this bit here? This is probably one of the things that struck me the hardest about just how distorted and corrupted the setting has become. Because calling charity an anti-Christian act? Oh dear lord... Those people are in for some 'difficulties' about their post-life processing results.

I've heard that bit in real life, offline, from people I know believed what they were saying. The authors really aren't exaggerating much in this story. Hell, more often they're needing to play catch-up to how horrible or insane or stupid the world is -- or need to dial down express duplicates of historical events because they'd break the audience's suspension of disbelief.

The3rdCorinthian · Dec 25, 2022

I'm going to assume it's tied into Prosperity Gospel nonsense.

TheInnerMoon said:
2022: Birth of Stella Eve Adams. According to what government records remain, she was born on December 24th; this date has naturally encouraged some esoteric interpretations of her biography, which parallel her birth to the Nativity.

Also: Dangit, I'm a Christmas-Eve-er and no one ever parralells me to the nativity! Some people just get all the luck!

Beyogi · Dec 25, 2022

The3rdCorinthian said:
I'm going to assume it's tied into Prosperity Gospel nonsense.

Also: Dangit, I'm a Christmas-Eve-er and no one ever parralells me to the nativity! Some people just get all the luck!

Go and start a communist revolution, then we'll parallel you to nativity

Tirfarthuan · Dec 25, 2022

TheInnerMoon said:
"You don't? God, don't tell me you're a Penglai Originalist. Those people are cringe."

"Cringe?"

"Okay, now I really feel old. Yeah, cringe. They make me cringe."

"Oh."

There was a beat of silence between them. He spoke up first.

"So when do you think she died, then?"

""93. They just dumped her out the airlock. Makes the most sense to me."

TheInnerMoon said:
If you ask me, don't believe everything you read in books. Or hear from old ladies on the street, for that matter. We like to lie sometimes."

Lol. Yeah, I'd cringe too if it were me in that position.

pheonix89 · Dec 25, 2022

Is it wrong that I want to bring back the goddamn Inquisition right now to deal with these freaking Mammon Cultists?

Declaring charity is anti-Christian just ... bring back the Inquisition. Heresy trials, baby!

Also, incredible style points to Caulder for actually calling them Mammon Cultists at the end.

TheArcanist · Dec 25, 2022

Nathan Caulder died exactly as he wanted - as a martyr for God and the cause. Now Ares will never be rid of him.

I just wish the right Caulderists weren't weird nazbol christofascist humanists, to make their unity with the left Caulderists more palatable

buli-buli · Dec 25, 2022

pheonix89 said:
Is it wrong that I want to bring back the goddamn Inquisition right now to deal with these freaking Mammon Cultists?

Declaring charity is anti-Christian just ... bring back the Inquisition. Heresy trials, baby!

Also, incredible style points to Caulder for actually calling them Mammon Cultists at the end.

I'm resigned to the popularity of the Prosperity Gospel enough that I cannot get emotional enough to be truly upset. (Though the Mammon callout was based).

What really scares me is Vest accusing Caulder of putting words in Christ's mouth.
Sure. Maybe she's an ignoramus whose never actually read a Bible. But, between that and the Pope advertizing watches in his sermons...
What the hell does a Charter approved translation even look like?!?

Setsul · Dec 25, 2022

buli-buli said:
What really scares me is Vest accusing Caulder of putting words in Christ's mouth.
Sure. Maybe she's an ignoramus whose never actually read a Bible. But, between that and the Pope advertizing watches in his sermons...
What the hell does a Charter approved translation even look like?!?

Doesn't matter, you can't afford to read it. Or if you could then you're too rich to read it yourself. Either way your only source on what the bible says (and means) is your local preacher, just as god intended and the way it was in the middle ages, when the bible was only available in latin or greek and no one could read anyway.

taovkool · Dec 25, 2022

TheArcanist said:
Nathan Caulder died exactly as he wanted - as a martyr for God and the cause. Now Ares will never be rid of him.

I just wish the right Caulderists weren't weird nazbol christofascist humanists, to make their unity with the left Caulderists more palatable

Religion's always like that. You gotta take both the good and the bad.

It's one of those "Hitler was a Catholic" argument.

buli-buli said:
What really scares me is Vest accusing Caulder of putting words in Christ's mouth.
Sure. Maybe she's an ignoramus whose never actually read a Bible. But, between that and the Pope advertizing watches...
What the hell does a Charter approved translation even look like?!?

Probably something like "More money good. Less money bad."

Maybe some of the more religious minded Amaranthine have a copy of the original Bible, Quran, Miqra, and/or other non-Charter affected religious books to upload for the next broadcast?

Thalton · Dec 25, 2022

TheArcanist said:
Nathan Caulder died exactly as he wanted - as a martyr for God and the cause. Now Ares will never be rid of him.

I just wish the right Caulderists weren't weird nazbol christofascist humanists, to make their unity with the left Caulderists more palatable

We'll deal with that madness eventually, hopefully most will die while fighting the Columbian government.

Winged One · Dec 25, 2022

Black Christianity: literally the Christians in this thread who scream about heresy when they read about the Charter-approved sects.

Though it is nice to be reminded that they exist.

taovkool said:
Don't get me wrong, I like the update. But what happens to Christmas being a time of cheer and happiness?! I don't want to get depressed on Christmas!

Capitalism happened to it.

Spart117MC · Dec 25, 2022

AKuz said:
Cut off from her network of connections within the Admiralty, Vizzari-Blaauwoord has been left to her own devices for the first time in her career, and this has resulted into a series of confusing orders and counter-orders for the 9th Fleet's 1st and 2nd Battlegroups as well as the paralysis of the 3rd as 9th Fleet's CO attempts to triangulate the rapidly shifting political climate in KC and the First Colonies from months away.

That's interesting. That almost sounds like Vizzari-Blaauwoord isn't receiving any orders from further up the chain-of-command. That shouldn't be the case though as Vizzari-Blaauwoord and the 9th are a part of the Spinward Triage Command and are supposed to be answering to Fleet Admiral Roland Djire. One would think with SolNav consolidating their forces into multi-fleet formations that it would result in more frequent orders from the top down in order to properly focus and coordinate the disparate elements.

I suppose this portion of Vizzari-Blaauwoord's bio could be referring to the period of time prior to October and November when SolNav officially announced the formation of the Triage commands, but for it to persist until the January update and without any mention of the Spinward Triage Command or Djire, it is starting to make me suspect that the Triage Commands might have been nothing but positive spin meant to inspire confidence and in fact SolNav's fleets are continuing to operate the way they always have.

Even if that particular suspicion does turn out to be wrong, the very fact that there was a period lasting several months where Vizzari-Blaauwoord was operating without any kind of direction from SolNav HQ, says quite a bit about their existing command structure and very little of it good.

trooperist · Dec 25, 2022

More and more I'm reminded that Columbia was populated by extremists that escaped what was coming to them.

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

Been Better

Minds Eye Bind

Forever Gone

Forever Gone

Anarchist, Author, All-Around Philosopher

Burning Capital: Adamist Thought Into The 23rd Century

Part 4: Reading Into Things

What We Do In The Shadows: Major Moments in Adamist History

Traversing the Trialectic: Contemporary Works of Adamist Theory

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"Well, I've got nothing."

and a fairy

Wants to be Seven Of Nine

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Cinnamon Roll AI