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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clockworkchaos · Jan 14, 2023

Angle said:
This is really good! Are you planning to continue the series? I'd love to read more!

As the muse takes me, I'm currently recovering from surgery and my writing is slow as hell.

Jack Stargazer · Jan 18, 2023

The Laurent said:
At the very least the population of Ascension (well, mostly Ascension) is about to increase by two million.

Plus even if there's no actual benefit, "Freeing the suicide-collared AI Slaves" is just the right thing to do.

TheArcanist said:
We have the most important mission of her life - to go to Armstrong and shitpost so hard she collapses the last hope of JN OK's government.

She was born to do this.

We've already had one shitposter who dramatically revealed to the world that everything was about to come tumbling down. Obviously we need to plan some other big reveal for in the middle of one of her rants.

We need whole pantheon of dramatic speech makers outlining cosmic events.

AKuz · Jan 19, 2023

[X] Plan: Shitpost Entryism 2: Science Bugaloo
-[X] [Idylia1] Approve Treaty
-[X] [IPA] Decline
-[X] [LIS] Renegotiate
-[X] [PR] Agree
--[X] [PRBonus] Add "Faster Courier Transit--Improve diplomatic action outcomes by +1 and gain a number of narrative bonuses" trait to MedComm
-[X] [SOSA] Ratify with Tier 1 and Tier 2 Members
--[X] Agree to the Counter-Counter Offer
-[X] [CE] Accept
--[X] [CEBonus] Trait "VDC Connections" increases its bonuses to +3
-[X] [Waystation] Pull out all the stops
-[X] [AIR] NO AND FUCK YOU ASSHOLES (Derogatory)
-[X] [SolComm] Agree
-[X] [Atonement?] Agree
-[X] [Armstrong] Go, in bad faith
-[X] [SPACER] "Yes, and-" Them
-[X] [Gate] Accept
--[X] [GateBonus] SR donations: through the transportation crafts they send, packed with goods, the AIC can gain 25 SR a turn for the rest of 2256. (And BR. But, well…)
-[X] [WORM] Disclosure. Make the Offer
--[X] [WORMBonus] The VDC has ears and eyes everywhere and some very intelligent people. The VDC will officially sign up as a Tier 1 SOSA member (Minus ARIA Disclosure). Massive science bonuses.
-[X] [WORMBonus] Plugged Directly into the VDC's own espionage network. They'll tell us as much as they can, help us with espionage, and we'll do the same.

NEWS:

Results of Elysian Pandia Beach Conference Prove that PM's Strategy Works - New Washington Orbital

The news that the Amaranthines will be joining Alexandrians and Pacificans in attendance at the Armstrong Conference on Colonial Reconciliation must have been greeted by cheering within the PMOs office this morning.

After all, it proves that JN Okay has what it takes to keep the Community of Humanity together, and that his plan to do the opposite of former-PM Margaret Roderick is working.

In response to the Roderick decreed -and PHRL backed- heavy-handed military interventions that backfired so publically, JN Okay and the JDAP have pursued a path of patience and reconciliation with the rebels of the outer frontiers, one that leads directly towards the holy grail of Colonial Reform.

Above: Former PM Margaret Roderick address the Compact in the wake of the Elysian Broadcast

Thanks to the failed policies of the Roderick administration, the first months after the Elysian Broadcast saw chaos and violence spread across the galaxy. Violence that was indeed the only possible result of the centralist Core-first big government policies of the Daughters that had neglected the needs of Frontiersmen for decades.

In contrast the new Sisters government of PM Okorie has thrown aside Roderick's failed policies and pursued a path of delegated autonomy towards the First Colonies of the Core, and patient forbearance with the Frontier Colonies.

Instead of instructing the Solarian Navy's Triage Commands to crack down on the frontier rebellions, our current Prime Minister has instead instructed them to limit the spread of the violence. While also showing his understanding that the violence of the frontiers is rooted in their being suppressed and ignored by the previous Daughters governments for the past decades until their understandable grievances boiled over into violence.

Violence that they want to stop committing as much as we want it to stop, if only someone would finally listen to them.

And listen JN Okay shall.

And the news from Radiant only confirms the success of this platform. Not only has the oldest insurrection in the Frontiers held to the government's ceasefire, they've rejected the idea of further expanding their alliance via an alliance with full separatist Trescore or the placing themselves under the distancing mediation of IPA membership.

Furthermore the Amaranthines have agreed to participate in pan-Compact projects like the Solarian Communications Authority and the Armstrong Conference for Colonial Reconciliation. This indicates a willingness to return to the Community of Humanity provided that they're invited inside in good faith and had their grievances received by the people in power.

It now seems inevitable that with a little patience, and little willingness to just hear the voices of the disenfranchised, JN Okay will be able to not only save the Solarian Compact, but leave it stronger than it's ever been.

-

Interview with Dr Sarah Zygar on her new Book - Books with Maria, Hosted by Mercury-Manat

"The truth is that it is always difficult and costly to negotiate with terrorists," says historian and terrorism expert Dr Sarah Zygar in her new book Coddling the Uncoddlible: Compromise, Capitulation, and the Road to Collapse, "The very thing that makes a radical and radical is an inability to accept any position other than their own"

A tenured professor at the University of Columbia's Virginia City campus, Dr Zygar has spent her life studying and lecturing on the radical mind and the tumultuous decades leading up to the Long, Hot, Decades. "It's always been fascinating to me the degree to which both Christian and Anarchist extremists grew in the last decades of the United States of America." She has said regarding her interest in the era, "I could never understand why neither side was ever satisfied with the political gains they made. Even long stated desires like an African president or universal forced livebirth were merely seen as the first steps towards ultimate victory rather than a goal in and of themselves." says Dr Zygar.

Coddling the Uncoddlible is merely the latest in a dozen works on Extremist ideologies. Her first book, 2170's "Friends of Skynet: Rightsist Terrorism in the Twenty Second Century '' was well received, and has been followed by dozens of others since, including "Stonewall was a Riot! And other unpleasant truths." a thrilling volume on the role that terrorism and violence played in LGBTQ+ activism in the last days of the United States of America. Coddling the Uncoddilible was an instant Atlantis Interstellar Courier Dispatch Bestseller due to it's breezy ability to explain the complicated politics of a complicated era.

"The thing about extremists" says Dr Zygar, speaking from her Atlantean apartment, "Is that they have a fixed vision of the world they want. A lot of people today, who have been raised under the compromise and concession politics of the Solarian Compact, don't understand that the true extent of any extremist's vision isn't niceties and slogans, but a fully realised vision of an impossible dream. The extremist has big dreams and doesn't understand that those dreams are dreams, and not a concrete policy proposal. You can beat the world to look like a dream for a while but it always collapses. Some, like Germany's Third Reich Period, the First French Republic, or the Christian States of America last only briefly before they collide with the brick wall that is reality. Others, like the Democratic Federation in North America, the British Commonwealth, or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics take decades to be ground down by their unreality."

In Coddling the Uncoddlible Zygar takes her historical expertise and applies it to the crises of the modern day, including an afterwards personally addressed to PM Okorie.

"Then as now, they always want more, and are never content merely with being accepted. It applies to LGBTQ+ individuals, to the religious, to anarchists, to nationalists, even to those with liberal beliefs. Sometimes these visions are good, but some visions are comprehensive and universal. Those are the dangerous ones. The ones that see fault with all of reality and wont be content until everything and everyone capitulate."

"The danger here is that so much of our political class is still accustomed to the norms of compromise and concession that a Cosmoliberal system like ours encourages. So we can see on Olduvai, or in Sol, where existing structures try to accommodate extremist visions of the galaxy and keep getting dragged by it because they don't understand that the only end for an extremist is absolute victory. Even PM Okorie himself has fallen prey to this misunderstanding. You think that the Amaranthines see his ceasefires and conferences as anything other than an admission of weakness? Anything other than a way to take advantage of his goodwill? No. The people in charge there have a singular uncompromising vision. Same for the Penglai radicals, and the Pacificans. And we see how that works out, Penglai has had six provisional governments since the deposition of the legitimate government, and we can all see the death tolls of the Pacifican Black Tribunals…"

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Balance of Power Shifting within the Sisters: Silvia's Sway Solidifies - The Colonial Mirror

Over the past two weeks, following the revelations from Pacifica, the acquiescence of the AIC to the Armstrong Conference, and the ongoing dismantling of Omoikane, it has become clear that the IDP are going stronger in parliament.

Six members - including Sian Xaiopeng, the three year Minister for Colonial Affairs under JN OK's father - have recently switched their internal membership from the JPP to the IDP in what has to be a stinging blow for the PM.

This move means that Silvia Greene's wing now controls almost one third of the entire JDAP membership, and Greene can deny passage of any bill through the parliament even before taking into account the cross-party alliances that have previously been critical for Greene's surprising influence. What impacts will this growing wing of small-business support have on JN OK's policy aims? Only time, and our premium analytics, can tell.

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Daughters' Debate Development: How have things shifted-The Colonial Mirror

With this week coming to a close, it is clear that after five rounds of voting, that PRHL's ongoing leadership election is still hotly contested, and likely to last many more months at this rate, with eighteen candidates still in the field, and no indication that any are going to drop out of the race. However, three leading candidates are starting to emerge, each of them having held above 10% of the party for the last three ballots. Let's go over this week's events.

It is no surprise that Bruce Yeltsin was ejected following the tabulation of this round's results, as he came perilously close to being the losing candidate in the second round, but Dipak Patel's endorsement managed to keep him above water until now. It's unclear who, if anyone, Bruce will endorse, and the safe money is on him holding off for at least another round or two, in order to ensure a stronger position for his faction.

Coming in first, with a solid fourteen percent of the vote, Richard "Dick" Eunzel has followed up his initial successful storming of the contest with two nights of back-to-back appearances on popular talk shows. A former Solarian Navy Captain and renowned war hero, with a Solarian Starburst for his heroic actions during the 2187 disturbances, Dick's military background and staunch support of the Navy and Ares throughout his four terms in Parliament have made him the choice to support for many, while his nature as a highly public full conversion cyborg (a medical necessity after his famous stand at Gouzch) has attracted a surprising degree of support from the more rightsist wings of the party, even as he acknowledges the dangers and risks that his Distinct Population can pose. He has also revealed more details of his plans for a Navy buildup this week, on The Early Early Morning Show, with proposals for full integration between Ares and the Solarian Navy in fleet operations, while also issuing a one-off deficit bond to fund the purchase of the Particle Shield technology from Ares to allow for the construction of the Solarian Navy's own Superdreadnaught designs. Such a bold stance is not out of character for Dick, who has always suffered in past contests for it, but with the ongoing chaos in the galaxy, it has proven a popular one among a voter base whose support for militarisation has grown.

Second, comes Filipe Grossman, who's vote share at thirteen percent has experienced the most rapid growth in the last ballot, an unexpected gain for such an elder statesman. A member of the PHRL since its formation, the two hundred and six year old meritocrat has previously served three times as the party's deputy leader, as party whip, and in almost an uncountable number of cabinets. He has personally been relatively quiet about his policies, beyond his strident tones condemnation of JN OK's "Chamberlain-esque appeasement" (referencing the actions of an English Prime Minister appeasing the German Third Reich, the anarchist-adjacent reactionary movement responsible for starting the European theatre of the Second World War) in a thundering speech on the floor of parliament. Still, he is seen as a clean and safe pair of hands, a man who knows stability and reasonable compromise, and can help the party recover from the disastrous actions of Roderick. However, many in the party fear that Grossman will hit the same ceiling he did forty years ago, where his deliberate manner and literary references will alienate the lower-education strata.

Third and last of the major contenders is Hannah Oxford-Sinurat, whose vote share barely edged over twelve percent. Oxford-Sinurat was formerly a rising star and protege of Margaret Roderick, and in the absence of many of the former thought leaders, this young fifty three year old has found the leadership of what remains of the entire Roderick wing of the Daughters fall upon her shoulders. But, despite her previously immaculate record, the legacy that Roderick has left her has proven to be toxic to the political prodigy. For the first three rounds, she held a solid lead among all the major candidates, but her growth has been anaemic ever since, gaining a mere 0.22% voteshare this last ballot. Her controversial refusal to repudiate Roderick's actions on earth has perhaps gained her some votes from Columbia and many of the recruiter electorate, who view the ongoing anarchist crisis on Earth in the most dire of terms (especially given the now months of separation that the recruiter electorate have had from their families), but provided an easy avenue of attack during the debates prior to the vote. If Oxford-Sinurat can rebuild Roderick's once sterling coalition, she will have a solid chance of seeing if the fundamentals that lead Roderick to her years of electoral success will push her to the Oblong office, years before she otherwise would. The chances of this, however, grow slimmer by the vote, as she fails to gather the momentum needed.

Following last week's Black Tribunal revelations, the fourth place candidate, Hazel Al-Dawoud has spent most of the past week denying all of the allegations as anarchist libels and slander. The reaction from…

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Aaeron Park Implicated in Platinum School Scandal -The Galaxy Times

Atlantis, December 12th - As the Pacifican Black Tribunals continue to grind forward, yet another celebrity has been caught up in the shocking revelations being broadcast to the galaxy.

The latest news concerns famed movie star and Inspire! Magazine's "Male Heart Throb of the Year" for 2249, 2251, and 2252 Aeron Park. Best known for breakout role as the male lead of 2248's blockbuster smash RomCom hit Caught By Ribbons and for his turn as the host of HITV's Virtuoso Hour, it appears that Aeron Park's last two paramours were actually purchased via the auspicious of Pacifica's Platinum School!

This news comes as the Prosecutors in the Platinum School Black Tribunal have entered new evidence in the case: a decrypted index of customers and sales covering the last thirty years of the Platinum School's operations were entered into evidence as new evidence in the case against the school's financial department as proof they were aware of the nature of the Platinum School's operations.

Already nearly three hundred individuals involved with the school's operations or having stood by and allowed its operations to continue have been sentenced to death by firing squad in Pacifica's infamous Citizens' Square, with a further two thousand still awaiting sentencing.

Federation Prosecutors claim that the Platinum School was not a charitable pre-Adult live-in educational facility as was claimed by its owners and operators, but a facility where vulnerable youths from impoverished families were raised in highly controlled environments according to the specification of Platinum School clientele as eventual romantic partners.

While Aeron Park is the most prominent name of the list, he is by no means the only one. Also on the list are 12 time MP Jerome Bandera, basketball mega-star Victor Thamsanqa, SanVeRo CEO Katherine de Lima, -

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New Art Movements Spotlight: Neo Psychedelic Symbolism --Workers' Weekly of Pacifica

What to do when you have everything? What to do now that daily life seems to be "fixed"? You turn inwards. This is what the Neo-Psychadelic Symbolists have done. Their art rejects politics, and yet it could not have possibly come into existence without the efforts of our Assemblies, the control over production, and the free time unlimited fabrication has granted millions, if not billions, to appreciate art and make it themselves without the pressure of work to live.

As a new and rising art movement, Neo Psychedelic Symbolism uses both physical art-works, Guided Roleplay, Shock Theater, and VR Experiences interchangeably as part of a deeply controversial melange that has at times been linked to Esoteric Adamism, and at times to "Slacktivism" and yet does not have a political goal. As one of the founders of the movement on Sol, Raz Electra, known for his interactive VR experiments in neoPlatonic symbolism said, "Ultimately we're not trying to change the galaxy. Someone else has done that, we just want to kick back and start exploring the mystery of ourselves and others."

However this new movement is not without detractors within the Federation, Neo Psychedelic Symbolism has also been accused by the Patriotis within the Supreme Assembly itself of being meritocratic and casteic, and both Secretaries Chevalier and Liao have spoken against the movement. Secretary Liao saying that it "alienates the Citizen from his comrades, an individualising endeavour that can only come from an Executive Mindset" and Chevalier giving rare agreement, stating during a gala that "this type of art is a waste of time and talent, individualist indulgence without virtue or legacy."

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the new movement from the perspective of a Citizen's government has to be its encouragement that those experiencing a certain work of art should not work on the day that they experience it, if they can manage it. And that observers should take certain drugs to create headstates that correspond to the art. The former is more of a suggestion, but it potentially risks the focus and concentration of a Citizen which is needed in this Revolutionary era, for the fight is not won, even if some individuals within Sol -nowhere near the majority, of course, who are still preparing for further Revolutionary war- might think otherwise.

Yet while these objections are to be noted, the fact is that they create beautiful artwork, even if there has recently been debate on whether Symbolism is truly representative. As a former member of the movement stated, under conditions of autonomy, "Jung's ideas make for beautiful works of fiction and lovely art, but are they True? The same applies for so much of what we are producing."

Yet whatever its merits as a source of Truth, there are some excellent works being created, and several exhibits are going to be opened within the next month, including Found In Translation, All, and We Need To Bake, which can be located via FedNet.

See Previous Articles On: Revival Capitalist Realism, Symbolist Destructivism, Neo-Traditionalism, People's Art (TM), People's Art, Techno Futurism, Aidadism, Frontier Realism, and Revolutionary Baroque.

REPORTS:

Anarchy in Alexander: While much of the news has been filtered through Mercury-Manat talking heads and Compact censorship, the news from the Alexander system has been positively apocalyptic no matter who you are.

The fighting in that system appears to have expanded overnight into a full scale civil war between Ares loyalists and a coalition of everyone from reformists to full scale anarchists that say neighbour fight neighbour, and cities burning under the guns of both sides.

It is no exaggeration to say that tens or even hundreds of millions of people on Athene died in six months of confused fighting before the revolutionary coalition got the upper hand, resulting in scratch Loyalist formation under Ares mercenary Admiral Sabre Valentine to organize an exodus from the system towards what is now the Trailing Frontier Regional Emergency Administration.

In their absence, revolutionary Alexandrians and those neutrals who have resigned themselves to the new order have begun to pick up the pieces. Perhaps because of how destructive the civil war was, no factions have attempted to assert control over the new revolution, with the majority of the populace appear to fall under what is often described as a "heavily armed anarchist patchwork". While the majority of these new communes appear to have originated in Soldiers and Spacers Councils, details are sparse, giving even the best Compact and Commonwealth analysts a clouded view of the system's domestic situation.

Externally, the face of the region now known as the "Free Systems'' is the "Free Councils' Systems' Command", a loosely organized body of military councils often derided as "pirates" or "raiders" in the Compact's media. The most prominent of these is the mysterious figure of Captain "Reynaud the Fox", commander of the former prototype Ares Superdreadnought Eschaton, who has already fought at least one inconclusive battle with the 7th Fleet's heavy battlegroups as they advance up the Arcadian run and Comet's trail towards the Far Trailing.

Variously called an "Anarchist Fleet", a "Pirate Armada" or a "Deep Space Horde", the Free Councils' Systems' Command is the closest thing that the Alexandrian anarchists have to a central government.

While they are a member of the Crossroads Pact and remain opposed to Loyalist forces and the Solarian Compact, perhaps because of the devastation of the brief Alexandrian Civil War, the Systems' Command has strictly obeyed the terms of JN Okay's ceasefire since the Battle of Bironza and appear to be pushing their fellow Crossroads Pact members to do the same.

[The Free Councils' Systems' Command is born]

The Federation Forms: In contrast to the careful backpedalling and peace feelers of their fellow Crossroads pact members, the new government on Pacifica seems impossibly bellicose.

Due to Compact censorship, firm details on the Pacifican Revolution are hard to come across outside references scattered throughout the broadcasts of the Black Tribunals that are allowed to blanket the Solarian News cycle under Mercury-Manat's watchful eye, it is clear that their current regime emerged from the pre-Broadcast "Citizens Movement".

PCMI analysts studying Rhodes security documents captured during the liberation of Five Lions have described the Citizens' Movement as "an unholy union between radical revolutionary liberalism reinvented from first principles, and heterodox Adamsist communism that preached a dangerously volatile combination of cross-caste collaboration and muscular industrial unionism." And indeed several of the militias that still exist on Five Lions today were inspired by the Citizens' Movement, though it was never a leading ideology in either pre or post Liberation Five Lions.

It appears that in Crucible, Foundry, Qem, and Ecrams the movement was far more influential, and the current government today explicitly draws its legitimacy from a bloody caste-collaborationist Citizens' Movement organized uprising called the "Red Night" whose actions paved the way to not just the Black Tribunals but a dimly understood system of local Popular Assemblies and sectoral managing committees that appear to make up a "Federation of Popular Citizens' Assemblies" governed by both the Supreme Citizens' Assembly and the Supreme Executive Public Administration Committee.

Outside of the endlessly running Black Tribunals, and a Domestic situation that largely remains unclear to us, the Federation's foreign policy has been impossibly bellicose, both in being a founding member of the Crossroads pact and later refusing JN Okay's ceasefire talks by throwing a fleet into the teeth of Trailing Triage Command.

Though that fleet was easily destroyed by the Heavy Battlegroups of the Solarian Navy's 7th Fleet at the Battle of Bironza, it appears that the Federation has not in least lost their appetite for war, and the last news we received from the Near Trailing before we were disconnected was a declaration from the Supreme Citizens' Assembly that: "CITIZENSHIP CONSISTS OF THE EXTERMINATION OF MASTERS! ONLY TOTAL VICTORY BRINGS PEACE! ONWARDS TO KOROLEV-CHANDRASEKHAR!"

[Formation of the Federation of Popular Citizen's Assemblies]

Dead Cat Bounce? Arcadia continues to be one of the most unlucky systems in the history of interstellar colonization. After being the front line of the First and Second Frontier Wars and a secondary front in the Third and Fourth, Arcadia is once again a place where lines are drawn through the void.

The initial weeks after the Broadcast saw fighting not just between revolutionaries and Charters, but between normal colonists and the organized criminals that controlled vast swathes of the system.

This confused general melee was made even more hectic when the civil war in neighbouring Alexander spilled into Arcadia and other nearby systems.

Both Free Council and Loyalist units took up positions in Arcadia as Admiral Valentine's evacuation convoys were contested by anarchist controlled craft, and both sides inevitably drew the locals into their orbits.

When the fighting had settled, and the loyalists had been evicted from Arcadia the allies of Alexander were invited to Crossroads where local revolutionaries and secessionists from across the Trailing were meeting.

At that meeting in a neighbouring room from where the Crossroads Pact was signed, the Arcadian Unity Coalition was negotiated by the attendees to serve as a provisional Crossroads Pact aligned government for the system.

The declaration of the Unity Coalition has been met in Arcadia by both enthusiastic relief that a settlement had been reached from their partisans, and violence from loyalist and criminal elements who have launched a terror campaign against the new government, hoping to strangle the Unity Coalition in the crib.

However the vast majority of Arcadia's population has greeted the formation of the AUC with an exhausted resignation, seeing it as just another in a long line of failed and failing attempts to govern the ungovernable.

[The Arcadian Unity Coalition is Declared]

Accidentally Independant: When MSI dissolved itself into the United Habitats of Epsilon government, and that Sovereign Commonwealth transformed its newly nationalised systems into equal members of a "sub-federal body" called the Interstellar Prosperity Association, not everyone obeyed the orders from HQ.

Though many MSI and MSI subsidiary senior executives that opposed the formation of the IPA were brought on side by convincing arguments or simply disappeared, some managed to hold fast to power, including the senior executives of Crossroads.

Paranoid about both the Elysian Box and the agents of the IPA, life within Crossroads quickly became untenable for the primarily Spacer populace. The subsequent strikes were backed and guided by IPA agents, as was the collapse of the MSI hardliner government.

Their subsequent replacement with a Revolutionary Spacer Republic was not, however.

Officially declaring itself an independent system, Crossroads was also forced to distance itself from the Void Dweller's Compact, as that Spacer organization attempted to maintain its neutrality, and openly held to the line that the Compact should be reformed along the lines of the African Road to Anarchism.

This does not mean that Crossroads was left without allies, far from it, as both neighbouring Alexander and Crucible fell under new revolutionary governments, both of whom were amenable to an alliance with the newly declared Crossroads Free System Republic.

Seeing the Loyalists regroup Trailing and Spinward, Crossroads invited all the nearby revolutionary systems to a conference where they would work out the terms of a mutual defence pact, which would in time birth the Trailing Organization for Mutual Military Assistance.

Better known as the Crossroads Pact.

Bolstered by these new allies the first independent Spacer Republic of the modern era prepares itself for the battles to come. They are secure in the knowledge while they are comparatively weak, their allies are mighty.

[Crossroads Free System Republic Declared]

Hanging Together: Though with wildly varying domestic policies, and harsh disagreements over foreign policy, the new revolutionary polities of the Near Trailing can be sure of one thing: If they do not hang together, they will surely hang separately.

To that end the Crossroads Free System Republic, the Federation of Popular Citizens' Assemblies, the Free Councils' Systems' Command and the Arcadian Unity Coalition have all banded together under a single military alliance: The Trailing Organization for Mutual Military Assistance.

Also known as the Crossroads Pact.

[Crossroads Pact Signed]

Troubles in the Trailing: Between the Crossroads Pact in the Near Trailing, and the Trailing Free Territories in the very farthest frontiers, the Loyalist Cause in the Trailing is reeling under repeated blows.

Cut off from the core, and still out of contact with the Trailing Triage Command, Loyalist Forces in Far Trailing have organized themselves under the banner of the Trailing Frontier Regional Emergency Administration and rallied around their capital at Apotheosis.

Though news is increasingly sporadic due to the chaos along the Comet's Trail and Arcadian Run, the Apotheosis Government has scrambled to house loyalist refugees from not only the Trailing Free Territories, but also the systems that now make up the Crossroads Pact.

With Apotheosis itself apparently restive, these tens of millions refugees have been resettled in the Coreward portion of the TFREA, mainly in Zalona and Glade, where crash construction and the seizure of Colony vessels has been authorized to house the population.

Though paralysed in recent months by the Broadcast and refugee crisis, local Charter and Solarian officials are finally moving forward, forming the Trailing Frontier Regional Emergency Administration on the model of the SFREA.

While the Trailing is full of fellow revolutionaries, it appears that everything from Watchtower to Freeport is now locked down under the control of the Trailing Frontier Regional Emergency Administration.

[Trailing Frontier Regional Emergency Administration Chartered]

The Cernunnos Civil War: News has finally arrived concerning the farthest spinward region of Community of Humanity, concerning everything spinward of Freeport.

News is scattered and unclear as to the details of what is going on in the Far Trailing beyond the newly formed Trailing Frontier Regional Emergency Administration.

However most accounts label what is occurring as the "Cernunnos Civil War" and note that it began with the murder of Cernunnos Botanicals CEO Berith Caulder days after the Broadcast, and has spread to encompass multiple systems in the area, even systems nominally under the jurisdictions of other Charters or the Solarian Navy itself.

Though there are apparently dozens or hundreds of individual factions involved in the war, the two main coalitions are now organised under the banners of the "Trailing Free Territories'' which promulgated the now famous Sirens Thesis.

Information is scare on the Trailing Free Territories, though what reporting does get through paints it as is either an anarchistic coalition, or a Cernunnos successor government held together by one "Izzy" Caulder. Who is, depending on the telling, an opportunistic member of The Get who killed all her other siblings and father in cold blood and attempted to seize power and only narrowly failed in an attempt on Scott Caulder, a heroic rebel estranged from their father whose relaying of key information helped the rebellion to succeed, or he's not a Caulder at all, but a failed attempt to replace Berith Caulder with a duplicate who could command the entirety of Cernunnos Botanicals towards the Free Territory's own ends.

Thankfully the other faction, the Emergency Protective Administration, has more clear leadership. It appears to be a loyalist coalition under the leadership of Cernunnos CEO Scott Caulder, formerly governor of the Bob System.

[Trailing Free Territories/Emergency Protective Administration born in a death grapple]

The First Five Year Mission: With the launch of the CEV Stargazer under Captain Ethan White, the new Congressional Exploration Corps first Five Year Mission is now underway.

As requested by the Raphanus system inhabitants, CEV Stargazer has been dispatched to that system to begin a survey of the currently uncharted systems beyond it.

While Stargazer's expedition will take them into deep space and through multiple jump points, other CEC craft will be dispatched to comprehensive exploration of each newly discovered system.

Hopes are high across Ascension for the success of this expedition, as it is expected to usher in a new era in exploration for exploration's sake, not that of exploitation.

Service Interruption: Since December 5th 2255 we have lost direct communications with the rest of the galaxy. Contact has been reduced to news carried by courier traffic, which has mainly been restricted to a handful of VDC and IPA craft.

With these links severed foreign news will slow, reports will become harder to compile, and rumours will become more vague in the future until we are reconnected to a galactic communications network, or courier traffic picks up.

RUMOURS:

THE BLACK TRIBUNALS: The new Revolutionary government on Pacifica seems determined to rip down the pretensions of the old ruling class and their compact enables brick by brick. And the so-called "Black Tribunals'' are a series of bricks thrown one after another through the pretensions of Cosmoliberalism's decorum that not even the 14 Days in Sol, the Elysian Broadcast, the Penglai Revolution, or Olduvai's Night of Popular Renewal could have hoped to match.

Perhaps it's because these trials are not being made for public consumption that they're hitting the Compact media class so directly. Or perhaps because the Pacificans are airing the scandal ridden secret lives of powerful men and women with such ruthless abandon that no one can look away.

Or maybe it's that so many of the Tribunals end up with Meritocrats in front of firing squads that attracts the horrified attention of the Solarian chattering classes.

Either way, the fact that the Federation's Prosecutors are broadcasting their Tribunals as widely and loudly as possible is a sign that for the new-born government in the near trailing, it's clear that there will be no peace with the Compact. Not until either the entire Solarian Parliament sits in front of a Black Tribunal or Solarian Naval Infantry are pointing guns at the cooling bodies of the Supreme Citizens' Assembly.

Valentine's Day: The other side of the Alexander story is that of one Sabre Valentine, Admiral and CEO of Athene Expeditionary Fleets. As it became clear that the Loyalists were going to lose the civil war in Alexander, Admiral Valentine personally took command of the Loyalist war effort out of the hands of Ares executives and Solarian Navy officers with what many would describe as an armed coup. But few loyalists do as Admiral Valentine subsequently proved themself a loyalist hero by withdrawing nearly twenty million loyalist civilians from Alexander with the assistance of Bironzan mercenaries, and local Solarian squadrons of the 5th and 8th Fleets before the arrival of Trailing Triage Command.

The arrival of Valentine, the Superdreadnought Ragnarok, the remaining Alexandrian Loyalist fleets they command, and convoys with tens of millions of loyalist refugees has been key to the formation of the Far Trailing Emergency Administration. In recognition for this special status Admiral Valentine has been appointed by Cernunnos Provisional President Titania Caulder as supreme commander of the localist government's military forces as they cooperate with Trailing Triage Command and the Apotheosis government to restore order across the trailing.

Reynaud the Fox: Reynaud the Fox: The infamous picture of a fox augment on the Command Deck of an Ares warship mid pounding of a the console is certainty not him, given the gunner's uniform. Medcom is 90% sure that Reynaud's not a fox augment, and is 100% that's not his birth name.

Instead Reynaud the Fox is the nom de guerre taken by the anarchist pirate khan of the Free Councils' whose force of personality and reputation for military excellence has seen him become the leading figure in the Systems Command, and the de facto most influential single individual in the entire Free Councils.

Wanted by Solarian Compact for the deaths of millions, and grudgingly respected by the Solarian Navy for his performance in the inconclusive Battle of Bironza, the bombastic Reyaud the Fox is the figurehead of revolutionary Alexander in the Compact's media and his speeches are often played for the titillation and scandalization of the audience..

Dreadnaught!: Perhaps given undue reporting by Compact doomsayers, the existence of the Eschaton-class Superdreadnaught in anarchist hands is causing shockwaves of panic throughout the military observer community.

Designed and built at the Hephaestus Yards in the Alexander system these craft are not just impressive for their immense size and heavy armament, but panicked Ares reports state that these craft are also equipped with prototype Dusty Plasma Shields and Radiators that promise to make these craft totally invulnerable to all laser and directed energy weapons.

However the Solarian Navy remains confident about their ability to engage Eschaton, with Fleet PR pushing back against claims that the Eschaton class has ushered in a new paradigm in space warfare, one that renders all previously existing doctrines obsolete overnight.

As for the Eschaton class itself, with the loyalist destruction of the Hephaestus Yards and the hulls of Götterdämmerung, Alquari'ah, Armageddon, and Frashokereti, only two examples of the new class remain: The lead craft of the class Eschaton under the command of Alexandrian Pirate Chieftain Reynaud the Fox, and a the half completed AEF Ragnarok, which currently serves as the flagship of Loyalist Alexandrian Admiral Sabre Valentine.

At this point in time it is unclear whether the Far Trailing Emergency Administration or the Free Councils' maintain the capacity to build such a large craft, or if they even possess the designs and technological knowhow to recreate these impressive craft.

The New Chronicles of Isekai: Though news is scarce about why, it appears that the Isekai system has been renamed "Chronicle" after the main population centre within the system, the Bishop Ring "Chronicle".

However the new Chronicle Government doesn't seem either Revolutionary or Secessionist, as they've committed to SolComm and remaining within the Solarian Compact.

Very little else is known about the state of affairs within the system.

The Battle of Bironza: Between censored propagandistic broadcasts on the Mercury-Manat network and loose rumours we have been able to put together the details of a clash between the Crossroads Pact and Loyalist forces that happened last fall, before JN OK's ceasefire offer was fully propagated.

Occuring in the system of Bironza, the Battle appears to have occurred when Free Councils craft led by Eschaton raided the system in an attack on the 5th Fleet's anchorages in an apparent attempt to cripple them before the arrival of the bulk of Trailing Triage Command.

However the engagement seems to have been a tactical draw and a strategic defeat for the Revolutionary forces, with the Solarian 5th Fleet and Bironzan System Defence Force standing their ground in the face of an attack by a Free Councils' Systems Command personally by Eschaton and the newly raised fleets of the Federation Guards Force.

With Systems Command craft taking damage and a Guard's Force overeager formation being nearly wiped out by a Solarian Navy ambush, the main force headed by Eschaton herself withdrew from the battle.

The subsequent arrival of both the lead elements of Triage Trailing Command and JN Okay's ceasefire command turned the inconclusive battle into a strategic defeat for our Trailing co-belligerents.

The Occupation of Arcadia: With the Arcadian Unity Coalition opposed by both loyalist and criminal elements forming major underground movements within the system, the new Arcadian government is on shaky ground. A confused mixture of revolutionaries, mercenaries, opportunist privateers, localists militias, Arcadian nationalist gangs, and Alexandrian advisors the Arcadian System Defence Force are barely able to organize an order of battle, nevermind suppress an insurrection backed by powerful interests.

Into that gap has stepped the Federation Guards Force 3rd System Army. Requested by the Coalition's Provisional Democratic Citizens' Assembly (at the urging of their Federation patrons), nearly two hundred and fifty thousand newly raised troops from Pacifica have arrived on the surface of Sunbathe.

Seen by many locals as an occupying army serving a puppet government, the 3rd System Army has already taken casualties as they fumble their way through a counter insurgency playbook they haven't been trained on fighting people they were told would greet them as liberators.

The New New Zealand: Much like how the New Zealand of the twenty first century found itself home to the billionaires of the Americas in the wake of the 20s and 30s, Springtide has found itself home to many of the Executives and Haute Bourgeoise that were driven from Sol and Penglai during their revolutions or are fleeing instability elsewhere.

This peace is guaranteed not only by commitments to class collaboration within the local system government, but by an overwhelmingly large detachment of Spinward Triage Command which is now deployed to keep Springtide calm and stable.

The Silence of Sol: News from Sol is increasingly scarce, with the Solarian Navy beginning to tighten restrictions not just on transit, but on communications from the birth system.

However, the news from within Sol points towards increasing solidification of the UNS's control over the system, and the UNS Collective Security Bureau, UNS Space Force, and Insurrectionary Solarian Navy running large scale military exercises together for the first time as the first warcraft slide out of Solar slipways.

Pandia Beach Party: Much of the public's attention has been focused on the outcome of the Pandia Beach conference, with casual discourse around negotiations beginning to seep upwards into the General Congress itself.

While foreign and strategic policy has long been a matter mainly conducted by the General Congress, the creation of the Diplomatic Corps along with the daily news of the Pan-Colonial Conference's meetings has caused previously rarified discourse to seep into day to day conversations.

This means that while previously the populace had a high level of trust that the General Congress were doing their best to ensure the survival of the Amaranthine experiment, there is now new discourse around such topics as "Militarized Interstellarism", "Exemplary Isolation", "Inspirational Neutrality", "Broad Front Cooperation", "Shitpost Entryism", "Peaceful Interstellarism", and "Dual Power Institutionality" to enter not just the mainstream news, but the day to day lexicon of Elysians.

Shei's Concerns: Sheol has expressed… concerns regarding the negotiations with Trescore, though their ambassador has also stated that the alliances that have been built with Osliam, Idylla, and the VDC do give them hope that our negotiations with Trescore will not dilute our previous commitment to Militarised Interstellarism.

Art For The People?: Within Five Lions, for the first time in many months, the controversy and political debate have to do not with work or its lack, but with alternate professions and the reach of unions. The unions governing artistic work have seen a series of bitter splits over both interpersonal, political, and quasi-economic disagreements into sides that will or won't work with certain tools--tools relating of course to the rise in focus on artificially generated art. They've also split over the relationship to the "state" such as it is, because fundamentally there has been, according to dissenters, pressure to create pro-revolutionary art and literature. It is not that they are anti-revolutionary, but they feel as great as the threat of reactionary conquest is, art is not what they say it is. The slogan "All Art is Political, But It Is Not Only Political" is the banner under which the new Artists' Union labours, in comparison to the Artistic Workers Union.

Victory Laps: Voting has concluded among the People of Osliam as to the agreement involving SOSA and mutual defence. While Ochiro has not yet returned, wishing to stay on Elysium until the closing ceremony of the Pandia Beach Conference, the swift approval of the populace has marked a new high for his party, so large that they have apparently divided into factions within themselves, with some opposition papers whispering of Caulderism and division into differing Ochiro-ist factions. His popularity is at an impressive and likely unsustainable high, with 82% of the population indicating that they would elect him for a second term. Opinion of the AIC has similarly risen dramatically, with many believing that this Independent But Allied line of foreign policy has all the benefits of both. Both the Republics of Osliams have each competed with each other in offering parades upon his return to celebrate this victory for Osliam, and Ochiro has stated that these should be held immediately, and in honour not of him, but the People of Osliam, to whom the victory belongs…

Waystation Eyes Membership: The carrot and the stick both seem to be working with Waystation, as the firm hard line spooked many doubters, and the promise of prominence and significance within the AIC has led to an instant and total turnaround in popular opinion which has now swung wildly in the AIC's favour. Even those who are leery of pissing off the IPA are at least willing to operate within the AIC to attempt to soften foreign policy decisions.

Project Wingman: Under modest pressure from Hand-Biter sources and new anti-Hand-Biter militarist groups, the number of Strikecraft planned to be raised for external deployment has been increased to nine wings, higher than the previously agreed upon five wings that they were already raising.

Moreover, while the information about the VDC plans has not leaked, Idyllan delegates to the Pandian conference have indicated that they will want to work on improving the capabilities of their Strikecraft wings as quickly as possible and have indicated in talks with MilComm that they would like to see the adoption of a higher performance than the current Chinook model Switchblade which remains our standard strikecraft platform.

This Old Space-House: With the pressure off of Chinook as a frontline system, and the relaxation of the permanent state of war mobilization, several groups within the Chinook have begun diverting resources away from defence construction and towards expansion of habitat space.

While the first plans are for smaller habitats similar to those of Gagarin or Epsilon, there are indications that within the year the All-Chinook Congress will be approaching the General Congress to request IndComm assistance in building larger habitat structures within the Chinook system as well as laterally approaching the other All System Congresses with offers to coordinate the construction of large colony habitats within their systems as well.

To Boldly Go: The launch of the CEV Stargazer and the beginning of the first Congressional Exploration Corps "Five Year Mission" has galvanized the attention of Ascension's people and unleashed a new wave of art and philosophy revolving around not just space exploration but the possibility of First Contact with alien life.

Many Elysian commenters consider this explosion of optimistic thinking and art to be in reaction to the horrific news coming from across the collapsing Solarian Compact, and a deliberate and unconscious attempt to push back against the horrors of the galaxy by asserting a better and more exciting tomorrow that is being ushered in today

Rockeye · Jan 19, 2023

Huh, it looks like someone else got a nice Prototype Bonus. Plasma shields, hm?

Redgamer026 · Jan 19, 2023

damn It feels gross to be seen working with space liberals.

N39TUN3 · Jan 19, 2023

AKuz said:
The most prominent of these is the mysterious figure of Captain "Reynaud the Fox", commander of the former prototype Ares Superdreadnought Eschaton,

I can't express how much I love this sentence.

Nuew · Jan 19, 2023

While I think us joining the Crossroads Pact wouldn't be very helpful for either party given the distance, I think we (and probably Shei) should become official observers if possible.

mymatedave10 · Jan 19, 2023

AKuz said:
German Third Reich, the anarchist-adjacent reactionary movement responsible

Good lord, this level of strategic forgettery is truly astounding. Well done.

10ebbor10 · Jan 19, 2023

AKuz said:
This Old Space-House: With the pressure off of Chinook as a frontline system, and the relaxation of the permanent state of war mobilization, several groups within the Chinook have begun diverting resources away from defence construction and towards expansion of habitat space.

While the first plans are for smaller habitats similar to those of Gagarin or Epsilon, there are indications that within the year the All-Chinook Congress will be approaching the General Congress to request IndComm assistance in building larger habitat structures within the Chinook system as well as laterally approaching the other All System Congresses with offers to coordinate the construction of large colony habitats within their systems as well.

Hmmm.

I'm not sure we can spare the dice, and it's not like we're actually in desperate need of more fragile orbital bubbles to live in. We have plenty of perfectly serviceable planets.

So, I suppose we'll continue our previous policy in regards to the Chinook, which is to ignore them until they do it themselves.

Redshirt Army · Jan 19, 2023

10ebbor10 said:
I'm not sure we can spare the dice, and it's not like we're actually in desperate need of more fragile orbital bubbles to live in. We have plenty of perfectly serviceable planets.

So, I suppose we'll continue our previous policy in regards to the Chinook, which is to ignore them until they do it themselves.

We might actually be able to spare the dice at some point this year. "Within the year" is a pretty broad timeframe, and we're about to lose a lot of prior IndComm commitments relatively soon, as soon as our SR balance becomes less shit.

Memphet'ran · Jan 19, 2023

AKuz said:
NEWS:

Results of Elysian Pandia Beach Conference Prove that PM's Strategy Works - New Washington Orbital

The news that the Amaranthines will be joining Alexandrians and Pacificans in attendance at the Armstrong Conference on Colonial Reconciliation must have been greeted by cheering within the PMOs office this morning.

After all, it proves that JN Okay has what it takes to keep the Community of Humanity together, and that his plan to do the opposite of former-PM Margaret Roderick is working.

In response to the Roderick decreed -and PHRL backed- heavy-handed military interventions that backfired so publically, JN Okay and the JDAP have pursued a path of patience and reconciliation with the rebels of the outer frontiers, one that leads directly towards the holy grail of Colonial Reform.

Above: Former PM Margaret Roderick address the Compact in the wake of the Elysian Broadcast

Thanks to the failed policies of the Roderick administration, the first months after the Elysian Broadcast saw chaos and violence spread across the galaxy. Violence that was indeed the only possible result of the centralist Core-first big government policies of the Daughters that had neglected the needs of Frontiersmen for decades.

In contrast the new Sisters government of PM Okorie has thrown aside Roderick's failed policies and pursued a path of delegated autonomy towards the First Colonies of the Core, and patient forbearance with the Frontier Colonies.

Instead of instructing the Solarian Navy's Triage Commands to crack down on the frontier rebellions, our current Prime Minister has instead instructed them to limit the spread of the violence. While also showing his understanding that the violence of the frontiers is rooted in their being suppressed and ignored by the previous Daughters governments for the past decades until their understandable grievances boiled over into violence.

Violence that they want to stop committing as much as we want it to stop, if only someone would finally listen to them.

And listen JN Okay shall.

And the news from Radiant only confirms the success of this platform. Not only has the oldest insurrection in the Frontiers held to the government's ceasefire, they've rejected the idea of further expanding their alliance via an alliance with full separatist Trescore or the placing themselves under the distancing mediation of IPA membership.

Furthermore the Amaranthines have agreed to participate in pan-Compact projects like the Solarian Communications Authority and the Armstrong Conference for Colonial Reconciliation. This indicates a willingness to return to the Community of Humanity provided that they're invited inside in good faith and had their grievances received by the people in power.

It now seems inevitable that with a little patience, and little willingness to just hear the voices of the disenfranchised, JN Okay will be able to not only save the Solarian Compact, but leave it stronger than it's ever been.

Lol, now that the left-wing revolutionary movement is winning the Space GOP/Tories position themselves as the conciliatory moderate faction willing to live and let live with the new rising power, very politics makes strange bedfellows moment, my compliments to the writer.

mcclay · Jan 19, 2023

God the Federation is so fucking hot. Glory to the people, comrades! March to KC!

T_of_A · Jan 19, 2023

AKuz said:
Variously called an "Anarchist Fleet", a "Pirate Armada" or a "Deep Space Horde", the Free Councils' Systems' Command is the closest thing that the Alexandrian anarchists have to a central government.

Shehol: [Heavy breathing]

AKuz said:
As for the Eschaton class itself, with the loyalist destruction of the Hephaestus Yards and the hulls of Götterdämmerung, Alquari'ah, Armageddon, and Frashokereti, only two examples of the new class remain: The lead craft of the class Eschaton under the command of Alexandrian Pirate Chieftain Reynaud the Fox, and a the half completed AEF Ragnarok, which currently serves as the flagship of Loyalist Alexandrian Admiral Sabre Valentine.

Elysia: "Oh no... The laws of narrative demand Reynaud be the villain to Valentine's hero! He's finished!"

AKuz said:
THE BLACK TRIBUNALS: The new Revolutionary government on Pacifica seems determined to rip down the pretensions of the old ruling class and their compact enables brick by brick. And the so-called "Black Tribunals'' are a series of bricks thrown one after another through the pretensions of Cosmoliberalism's decorum that not even the 14 Days in Sol, the Elysian Broadcast, the Penglai Revolution, or Olduvai's Night of Popular Renewal could have hoped to match.

Perhaps it's because these trials are not being made for public consumption that they're hitting the Compact media class so directly. Or perhaps because the Pacificans are airing the scandal ridden secret lives of powerful men and women with such ruthless abandon that no one can look away.

Or maybe it's that so many of the Tribunals end up with Meritocrats in front of firing squads that attracts the horrified attention of the Solarian chattering classes.

Either way, the fact that the Federation's Prosecutors are broadcasting their Tribunals as widely and loudly as possible is a sign that for the new-born government in the near trailing, it's clear that there will be no peace with the Compact. Not until either the entire Solarian Parliament sits in front of a Black Tribunal or Solarian Naval Infantry are pointing guns at the cooling bodies of the Supreme Citizens' Assembly.

So all we know about Black Tribunals is this passage, along with the fact they've been busting some sort of horrific sexual abuse institution. This is even cooler than the new "impossibly bellicose" "throw a fleet at you" Pacifican polity !

Other remarks:

It's nice to see some space optimism at home ! Yay for scientific exploration, giving our "Star Trek Socialism" game an actual trek through the stars.
How long until our shitpost entryism goes public ?

Rockeye · Jan 19, 2023

What even is shitpost entryism tho

Random Member · Jan 19, 2023

LONG LIVE THE ANARCHO-DEMOCRATIC WEHRSTAAT!!!

AKuz · Jan 19, 2023

Rockeye said:
What even is shitpost entryism tho

I don't know, but you guys just voted for it
>: P

MrRageQuit · Jan 19, 2023

Redshirt Army said:
We might actually be able to spare the dice at some point this year. "Within the year" is a pretty broad timeframe, and we're about to lose a lot of prior IndComm commitments relatively soon, as soon as our SR balance becomes less shit.

It helps that you can do 2 mines in the same system for 1 die, so once the first capital yard and AHB complete, we'll definitely have space free to dedicate a die. Don't forget we promised to build Waystation a trio of hangers or a capital yard to bribe them to join the AIC - and let's be honest, we'll want the second capital yard.

Setsul · Jan 19, 2023

AKuz said:
a path of delegated autonomy towards the First Colonies of the Core, and patient forbearance with the Frontier Colonies.

Translation:
"We literally can't do shit about Article 33, but aren't willing to admit that the First Colonies have gone de facto independent" and
"We did the math and realized we don't have enough bullets for everyone."

AKuz said:
proposals for full integration between Ares and the Solarian Navy

Really the only surprising part is that it's coming from the PHRL, the "regulate the Charters" party that is traditionally weak on Columbia, iirc.
But I guess that's how it works with only two relevant parties, if one is for peace, the other must be for war to differentiate itself.

AKuz said:
resulting in scratch Loyalist formation under Ares mercenary Admiral Sabre Valentine to organize an exodus from the system towards what is now the Trailing Frontier Regional Emergency Administration.

AKuz said:
Cut off from the core, and still out of contact with the Trailing Triage Command, Loyalist Forces in Far Trailing have organized themselves under the banner of the Trailing Frontier Regional Emergency Administration and rallied around their capital at Apotheosis.

AKuz said:
The arrival of Valentine, the Superdreadnought Ragnarok, the remaining Alexandrian Loyalist fleets they command, and convoys with tens of millions of loyalist refugees has been key to the formation of the Far Trailing Emergency Administration. In recognition for this special status Admiral Valentine has been appointed by Cernunnos Provisional President Titania Caulder as supreme commander of the localist government's military forces as they cooperate with Trailing Triage Command and the Apotheosis government to restore order across the trailing.

He evacuated towards the Far Trailing instead of the SolNav base at Birozna, which he could basically see through the gate from Arcadia. That's certainly a move.
There probably aren't many way to make the Cern civil war worse, but throwing in an Ares Superdreadnought might just do it.

AKuz said:
[Trailing Frontier Regional Emergency Administration Chartered]

Is it just me or do those stars/crosses look a bit droopy and ... sad?

AKuz said:
Project Wingman: Under modest pressure from Hand-Biter sources and new anti-Hand-Biter militarist groups, the number of Strikecraft planned to be raised for external deployment has been increased to nine wings, higher than the previously agreed upon five wings that they were already raising.

Moreover, while the information about the VDC plans has not leaked, Idyllan delegates to the Pandian conference have indicated that they will want to work on improving the capabilities of their Strikecraft wings as quickly as possible and have indicated in talks with MilComm that they would like to see the adoption of a higher performance than the current Chinook model Switchblade which remains our standard strikecraft platform.

Shei better get working on those Light Carriers.
I guess if we pull a Fleet Carrier from Kimberly, we know where it should go.

And the Idyllians are certainly in for a treat soon.

10ebbor10 said:
Hmmm.

I'm not sure we can spare the dice, and it's not like we're actually in desperate need of more fragile orbital bubbles to live in. We have plenty of perfectly serviceable planets.

So, I suppose we'll continue our previous policy in regards to the Chinook, which is to ignore them until they do it themselves.

Unless it's an insane megaproject, we could probably chip in by the end of the year. The spacers (Chinook, Ismeu, VDC in general) would probably appreciate, even if they could do it themselves.
Remember, they did build a medium dock on their own dime and are essentially donating the ships they're building to the Congressional Navy. It's not entirely altruistic, due to them being a frontline system, but it's probably not a bad idea to do something nice for them too.

Redshirt Army said:
We might actually be able to spare the dice at some point this year. "Within the year" is a pretty broad timeframe, and we're about to lose a lot of prior IndComm commitments relatively soon, as soon as our SR balance becomes less shit.

Well, we can always build more capital docks in IndComm, but our theoretical steady state will probably be Capital Dock + SR mining + AHB or successor project, and that's if we build more docks in MilComm. If we're done with AHB and there's no followup to it that we want, or at least not in IndComm, or we can spare a focus die, or simply delay a die of SR mining, we can easily sneak in a small project.
Not something huge that requires years to complete, but a couple of dice not related to ship production shouldn't kill us.

Transreal Cloud · Jan 19, 2023

Well... that's a lot of revolutionary polities. Good luck to them.

I wonder if we can recreate those fancy shields. Probably a long way off even if we can.

Still hoping the Alexander Conference thing doesn't backfire horribly.

As usual the absurdism of Compact aligned news sources is amazing. The Stonewall riots were riots and therefore bad is such a bad take.

Ori · Jan 19, 2023

That's a lot of words that I don't care about I'm too busy staring at these absolutely sick flags.

AKuz · Jan 19, 2023

So, while you're here reading the last update, I just thought that I'd mention that we've Launched our Patreon.

At the moment there's not a lot there, there will be some narratively focused Patreon content in the future, as well as some engagement around commissions and other projects to make this project better.

So if you've ever wanted to monitarily contribute to this quest, now is your chance.

AKuz · Jan 19, 2023

OriginalName said:
That's a lot of words that I don't care about I'm too busy staring at these absolutely sick flags.

Oh, because I think I forgot,

ALL images in the previous update can be attributed to @Redshirt Army , our resident vexillogical artist, mapper, and VI art wrangler

N39TUN3 · Jan 19, 2023

Well, I think this is the first time I've encountered a patreon I might actually contribute to regularly.

Edit: 15 minutes in and already more than a quarter of the way to the first goal.

TheGrape · Jan 19, 2023

AKuz said:
narratively focused Patreon content

So what you're saying is we need to pay a micro-transaction to access the Premium Edition Tyrants Quest

Thalton · Jan 19, 2023

TheGrape said:
So what you're saying is we need to pay a micro-transaction to access the Premium Edition Tyrants Quest

*hisses* The capitalists, they are invading!

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

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Gardener of Human Happiness

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