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

AKuz · Dec 10, 2020

THE ALL-RADIANT CONGRESS

Setting Information: The Solarian Compact:

Initially formed as the Solarian Treaty Organization from the ashes of the old United Nations Security Council, United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, and the Global Climate Relief Organization in the worst decade of Earth's environmental collapse. The STO was originally a body tasked with overseeing the granting of offworld mining permits and the purchase and distribution of the resources to countries struggling from climate change.

The advent of the Korolev-Chandrashker gates and the construction of the first one under STO oversight in 2063 led to the beginning of the transformation of that body into the de facto single governing body of the Human species.

Reorganized into the 'Solarian Compact', the first Charters were granted to massive corporate conglomerates to explore and exploit the cosmos for Humanity with little to no regulation or restriction.

In the early decades, the Solarian Compact oversaw the construction of KC gates in the systems closest to Sol and began the process of granting colonization rights to the most habitable worlds within that region with colonization rights granted to a number of national and international blocks.

With the growth of the Solarian Compact's power came calls for the body to become more representative and democratic, and in 2099, the Solarian Compact held its first elections and constitutional convention, inviting representatives from the Sol system and the five systems that held permanent Human settlement.

Over the course of the 22nd and 23rd centuries the Solarian Compact has held fast to what it sees as its duty to act as the mediator and financier of the Charters, the unifying agent of the disparate first Human colonies, and the guarantor of interstellar peace for Humanity.

As of 2252, the three most important bodies within the Solarian Compact are the Solarian Parliament -Located on Earth, the Solarian Compact Navy -based in the Korolev-Chandrashker system, and the Solarian Central Bank, -based out of the Columbia System.

Organized as a liberal democracy, with universal suffrage, the Solarian Compact is theoretically overseen by three equal institutions: the Solarian Parliament, the office of the Solarian Secretary General, and the Solarian High Court.

Though the Solarian Compact prides itself on being a Constitutional government, the actual original document merely outlines the terms of admitting new MPs and High Court Judges, and the electoral procedures of the Compact Parliament, with subsequent Parliaments meeting to add items like the Declaration of Property Rights, the founding of the Central Bank, the creation of the Solarian Navy, and the Laws on Freedom of Navigation and Travel being added later.

The Solarian Parliament is made up of two thousand six hundred and twenty seats representing ridings on Earth, Columbia, Atlantis, Penglai, Olduvai, and Epsilon which are elected every three years to a Parliament that meets in the New York prefecture of Earth.

Though the many frontier colonies do not have direct representation in the Parliament due to being owned and operated by private entities, their inhabitants are considered 'Absent for Employment' and may register with a home riding and submit a physical ballot (for security reasons) by courier from when polls open until they close. Though this process was suitable for the closely settled regions of space at the time of the ratification of the Compact Constitution in 2100, the rapid growth of Human settled space in the century and a half since has seen the de facto voter suppression of over 90% of Human settled space.

At the first sitting of each new Compact Parliament, the assembled members will elect a Secretary General and a slate of Ministry officials on a majority basis, and those individuals will oversee the executive branch of government and day to day operations. Though the average Compact Parliament contains between seven to nine parties in each Parliamentary sitting, the vast majority of seats belong to one of either the Party for Human Rights and Liberties or the Justice and Development Alliance and have since the very early 2100s. The governments formed this way can be brought down by losing the confidence of the Parliament for example, by failing to pass a budget, the process of finding a majority government will repeat again.

Though a democratic body that has maintained stability for over a century and a half, the Solarian Compact Parliament has been dogged by accusations of dynastic politics, Charter influence, voter suppression, regulatory capture, inability to reign in the Banks and MIlitary, and corruption at all levels.

Separate from the Parliament is the Solarian High Court that consists of eleven judges that serve terms of up to thirty-three years, with each new sitting of the Compact Parliament selecting one judge from a list provided by the governments of the six main worlds of the Solarian Compact. The High Court rules on matters of adherence of laws to the Solarian Constitution, and have been accused of serving as an arm of the Charters, though this has been strenuously contested by the Solarian legal profession as a whole.

By law the Solarian Compact also oversees a number of other important institutions including the Earth Reconstruction Commission (In a permanent public-private partnership with the Earth Reconstruction Association), the Solarian Central Bank, and the Solarian Compact Navy, though these important institutions often exhibit an alarming degree of autonomy from Parliamentary control.

The Charters:

The result of a cleverly conceived merger between specialty transport vessel manufacturer Titan Staryards and Private Military contractor Martian Military Solutions, Ares cut its teeth not just supplying material to the skirmishes between Mississippi Shipping and United Starhaul, but in supplying military contractors to both sides.

The professionalism of Ares mercenaries and quality of Ares gear led to the rapid expansion of business opportunities for the company and investment skyrocketed even after the Mississippi-Starhaul war ended in a hostile takeover of Starhaul by Mississippi.

Thanks in part to Mississippi debts held by Ares, when the RT-2102 Gate was opened up for settlement strategic maneuvering saw the Compact grant Ares mining and settlement rights to the newly opened system.

The rest, as they say, is history. Leveraging the immense resources of the Alexander system with their existing military expertise, Ares expanded nearly exponentially over the following century. While they maintain a dominating edge in the military field, they now integrated companies in fields from agronomy to personal fitness centers to xenobiology.

Internally Ares very self consciously styles itself as a hierarchical military organization complete with a semi-formal rank structure and an ethos of respect for the chain of command, professional courtesy, and treating your subordinates with respect. In practice Ares is hidebound, authoritarian, filled with passive aggressive sniping and rampant empire building.

While Ares remains headquartered on Mars, they have holdings in several systems and own the distant system of Alexander outright.

Rhodes Mining

One of the three original Charters that the Compact granted, Rhodes considers itself the singular reason that Humanity survived ecological collapse and spread past Sol. Immensely wealthy, over 52% of all material mined and processed by the entire Human race has passed through Rhodes hands at one point or another.

While founded merely to provide Earth the vital materials that it needed to rebuild itself after the lost decades of ecological collapse, Rhodes quickly expanded into all areas of the economy to support their mining, refining, and processing operations.

Dedicated to their vision of logistical chain efficiencies they've developed an entire chain of star systems into an efficient production center based around the resource rich system of Foundry, and the nearby feeder systems of Ecrams, Qem, and Crucible.

Rhodes considers itself home to a version of meritocracy built on hard work, education, and good old fashioned personal drive. This has developed over time into a stratified internal divide between the rank and file workers, the lower level management, and the highly lauded senior management. Each class lives in entirely separate worlds, attending separate schools, consuming different products, and leading very different lives in what many observers have labelled a de facto caste system.

they make food and medicine, the 120 year old CEO is kinda creepy tho?

Techbros, some of them science, some of them explore

Born from the union of Hermes Interstellar Services and The Ishtar Group, the Hermes-Ishtar Corporation owns and operates not only the communications backbone of Compact space, but much of the content that crosses over it.

The results of increasing consolidation of pre-spaceflight communications infrastructure and content creation and management firms, Hermes Communications and Ishtar Entertainment Group were both part of the second round of Charters established after the advent of the KC gates.

While Hermes quickly established operations throughout Compact space, their waystations, couriers, and communications repeaters a common sight in every corner of Human occupied space; Ishtar Group mainly limited their own operations to Sol and the Radiant system, where Ishtar owned and operated the world of Elysium to support their many projects.

Following a wave of Compact space wide reorganizations following the Mississippi-Starhaul conflicts of the 2130s, a desire for complete vertical integration on Ishtar's part led to a mostly amicable union with Hermes in 2139.

Since then Hermes-Ishtar have dominated all communications across Human space with only the privileged internal high-level communications of the other Charters managing to avoid consolidation under Hermes-Ishtar.

While Hermes-Ishtar make a great show of respecting individual creativity, initiative, and drive from their employees; in practice this amounts to rampant internal fighting involving the parasocial personality cults of different "genius" inventors, artists, and executive that rise and fall inside of Hermes-Ishtar at a dizzying rate.

Sketchy buggers, they can get you anything tho

Historical Topics:

Between 2036 and 2071 the Democratic Federation was the governing body of much of Earth's Western Hemisphere.

Initially comprised of a Federation of Socialist, Anarchist, Communist, and other far left social movements, militias, and political factions controlling regions of Earth's North American continent during and after the decline and collapse of the United States of America (1776-2034) due to the effects of unaddressed climate change amplifying existing political and economic crisis.

Eventually solidifying into the governing body of the former United States of America, United States of Mexico and the Dominion of Canada, the Democratic Federation embarked on an ambitious program of cultural revolution and economic reform designed to mitigate and reverse the effects of the climate change crisis.

As the patron of much of the central and southern western hemisphere, the Democratic Federation attempted to chart a course of environmental restoration separate from that of the Solarian Treaty Organization (In 2063 reorganized into the Solarian Charter), choosing not to contest Eurasian and African domination of outer space.

Having never existed out of crisis conditions, a combination of pre-existing economic damage, sabotage, and instability drove the Democratic Federation into decline in the Grey Decade of 2062 to 2070 and eventually forced the Democratic Federation to ratify a series of treaties giving the Charters economic access to Federation member states in order to conduct vital reconstruction work.

A last ditch uprising by radical elements in 2072 to eject the Charters from the Democratic Federation failed when Solarian Compact peacekeepers were called in and in seven months of street fighting pacified most of North America's key urban centers via strategic use of orbital weapons on the areas of greatest urban resistance.

Though guerilla warfare would continue in the Western Hemisphere for another three decades, the Democratic Federation was officially defunct by December 2072 and parcelled out into a number of Charter owned reconstruction areas under Compact authority.

Today radicals still pine for the four decades that the Democratic Federation attempted to build an alternative to the emerging Charters, and the polity's distinctive black, red, and green flag is brought out for each and every Great Black Summer. Well into the twenty second century, riots were often accompanied by demands to 'Avenge the Martyrs of 72!'.

Despite this underground extremist nostalgia, Charter and Compact schools teach that the Democratic Federation was a collectivist state whose iconoclastic behavior saw the destruction of famous landmarks like Mount Rushmore, Stone Mountain, and other monuments to Liberal Democracy and the Free Market in a mad attempt to remake the human race, but whose doctrinaire adoption of command economics saw them unable to deal with the ever-changing complexities of climate change.

Misc Details:

The first five systems to hold permanent Human colonies are known as either "The First Sisters" or "Earth's Daughters", depending on who you are asking and their political persuasion. From oldest to youngest, these worlds are:

Columbia: settled by billionaire American expats and tens of millions of refugees who had fled the unfolding revolutionary violence of the North American continent several years beforehand. Columbia was founded under a vision of fidelity to the American dream and to prove the indomitability of the soul of the United States of America and liberalism in the face of the red flags of the (North American) Democratic Federation. Fiercely loyal to the Compact and the dream of Charter prosperity, and home of the Solarian Central Bank, Columbia is often known as the "Gilded World" in reference to what many see as a return to American Gilded Age wealth and social inequality. Ares Conflict Solutions' central command is located here.

Atlantis: With colonization rights to this majority oceanic planet initially granted to the waning power of the European Union, the nations of the EU opened up colonization opportunities to other allied powers, especially Russia and Egypt. Atlantis was often seen by the EU as a place to dump unwanted refugees from outside of Europe's borders, and Russia and Egypt's tendency to see the world as a genuine project led to the usurpation of colonization rights away from Europe in the mid 2080s. Known today as the most restive of the first wave of colonies, Atlantis is the most skeptical of Charter power and plays a delicate game of wealth redistribution to underwrite the greatest social security net in Human Space. Cernunnos is de jure headquartered here.

Penglai: Originally the world in the most need of terraforming of the original colonies, Colonization rights were granted to the People's Republic of China and their allies after a lackluster bidding campaign. As China's focus was mainly on attempting to stem the damage of climate change on Earth herself, colonization of Penglai initially lagged until the Chinese Politburo struck upon the strategy of subcontracting colonization rights to Pacific adjacent nations suffering from the rise of that ocean. As colonization unfolded in the early 22nd century Penglai became known as a multicultural mosaic as hundreds of millions from across the Pacific settled and intermingled on the wine darkened shores of that world. Known today for its vibrant cultural milieu, violent clashes between labour unions, and private police, Penglai hosts the headquarters of the Hermes-Ishtar, Omoikane and Rhodes corporations.

Olduvai: With Colonization rights granted to a coalition of African nations at the height of the 'African Century', the African Colonization Organization did not see their colony as a refugee destination, dumping ground, or resource colony like their fellows. Instead the ACO saw the colonization scheme as an opportunity to preserve and export the rich traditions and cultures of Africa on their own terms, fully intending to set up healthy and self-sufficient colonies. To the current day, Olduvai has the closest relations with the home nations and is the heartland of Daughter sentiment and a bedrock for the Party for Human Rights and Liberties.

Epsilon System: While not technically a single world, the cluster of heavily inhabited space colonies in the Epsilon system are always considered the 'Fifth Sister' or 'Fifth Daughter'. As the most mineral rich system of the original colonies, Epsilon was the source of many of the materials that helped pull Earth through her darkest hour, and the system was recognized for their efforts by being invited to send delegates to the 2099 Solarian Compact Constitutional Convention. Epsilon is famous for its people's long roots in spacing and for being the headquarters of Mississippi Shipping Interstellar and thus the most heavily trafficked system in history.
Technologies: Nanomanufacturing, summary:

The contemporary gold standard for manufacturing. These devices use mechanosynthesis, a process that guides chemical reactions by placing reactive molecules with atomic precision. Ribosomes in the body's cells use a form of this method.

While the largest units can create objects up to 2m x 2m x 2m, smaller units (halving the units each time) are viable on basically any human scale. Projects larger than this size (such as ships or buildings, need to be either grown layer-by-layer via nanofabricators attached to robotic arms, or assembled from smaller parts through traditional assembly line, dry dock, or construction processes.

In principle basically anything can be made with these devices, and some materials can only be manufactured via these methods in microgravity. All manufacturing patterns in Compact Space feature Charter DRM using embedded explosive molecules like octaazacubane or cubic gauche nitrogen that will damage a disassembler or x-ray machine making reverse engineering of their products difficult.

A common part of 23rd century life is the near ubiquity of Artificial Intelligences in daily life, from consumer grade VIs through specialist TLIs, controversial AGIs, finally the perpetually 10 years away Artificial Super Intelligences.

The common consumer will daily run into what are properly known as Narrow AIs, and generally labelled as VI -Virtual Intelligences- by people outside the field. This category covers a broad swathe of techniques, from search and pathfinding to expert systems to genetic fuzzy trees to deep neural networks, which are mixed and matched with each other to optimize for the designed task. VIs are ubiquitous, exceeding human peak skill in their areas of specialization (though real world applications often don't do all that much better than trained humans), and have spent the past two centuries getting augmented with more and more clever algorithmic tricks for improving VIs. In order to do this, the Charters employ large teams of analysts and software engineers to develop clever algorithmic tricks that supplement or outright supplant neural networks, exploiting machine precision where stochastic methods are inadequate.

The use of VIs in everyday life is well accepted by the vast majority of the population, with professionals mixing and matching various consumer VIs to analyse data or assist them with creative or scientific works. Some VI lines are well loved by both the populace and the Charters themselves, with Charter programmers often deliberately leaving VIs with behavioral quirks and unpredictable glitches that not only save money on quality assurance, but are considered endearing traits that lead to anthropomorphization by the consumer market

Despite the mass comfortability and profitability of VIs of all kinds, the introduction of AGIs has been, to put it delicately, controversial. Though computer science has advanced to the point of producing programs that can not only pass the Turing test, but demonstrate sapience and match 23rd century human intelligence, flexibility, and creativity, the public reaction to the introduction of AGI saw the companies of the time rapidly pull them from the market, and even say the Compact itself move to heavily regulate the AI sector.

First introduced in the 2060s, the great tech firms began replacing their work staff with AGIs who did not require food, rest, housing, or pay. This shift led to an alliance between white collar workers fearing that automation would put them out of work and radicals who opposed what they insisted was AGI Slavery, a growing movement that would climax in the First Great Black Summer of 2084. When the ashes of the First Black Summer settled, the Compact's Parliament moved to grant rights to AGIs, and the resulting economic damage saw dozens of formerly great names in computing consolidate under the aegis of several of the first Charters who flaunted their extra-Solarian wealth by buying up prestigious brand names and research divisions on the cheap.

Since the 2080s, while the regulation surrounding AGI production and use have been severely weakened none of the Charters have sought to reintroduce them into the market, perhaps fearing another backlash like the First Black Summer and the few hundred thousand surviving AGIs that were granted Solarian Citizenship rights have found spread throughout the Compact and Charter Space where they usually work at the same white collar jobs whose workers they were designed to replace.

Perhaps due to the risks of attempting to reintroduce AGIs to the market, Omoikane has instead introduced their flagship product the "TLI" or Temporary Limited Intelligence. Approximately as effective as an AGI, a TLI is billed as a more moral replacement for AGI that uses a suite of high end VIs and a proprietary batch of creativity algorithms in order to complete complex tasks.

TLIs are used as a fire and forget program designed to be licensed to solve a single issue, no matter how complicated and then delete itself. Though the TLIs are a black box product, scientists from the other Charters believe that the central creativity algorithm in the TLI is inherently unstable and rapidly degrades in ability with time, making the TLI an instance of Omoikane attempting to market a critical technical flaw as a selling point that is accepted due to the ubiquitous market practice of planned obsolescence and artificial scarcity.

Though expensive, most businesses and successful professionals will keep a few licensed Omoikane TLIs on hand to throw at difficult problems or to supplement manpower in crunch situations.

While AGIs have been possible for nearly two centuries, the promise of a Seed AI, a recursively self-improving general superintelligence, is perpetually 'a decade away from the market', and no successful ASI ever been demonstrated to the satisfaction of the Charters or the Compact.

This is not to say that the Gödel machine architecture or the AIXI model has somehow been forgotten in the past 230 years, but that the Friendly AI problem has yet to be cracked. Every demonstration has either stalled out or gone immediately rampant, attempting to overthrow Charter Space before being stopped by the safety net of Narrow AIs. The small trickle of roughly human intelligence level AGIs that are created every decade typically come from these projects.

Urban legends persist that a few Seed AIs managed to escape and hide out beyond known space, plotting to return and crush humanity, or that they control all of society in secret, puppeting the Compact and Charters from their very foundation and occasionally engineering publicly failed ASI attempts to allay suspicion. These rumours are, of course, patently false, and simply the fevered imagination of crackpots at work, no doubt inspired by entertainment made by Hermes-Ishtar that feature AI supervillainy.
Systems: Map made by @Redshirt Army

The Spinward Frontier:

The Middle Spinward Frontier

The Core Region:

UNDER RADIANT CONTROL OR ALLIED:

The Radiant system is host to a G-class star, only slightly smaller than Sol. The system itself is rather small and resource-poor; experts believe that one or more Jovian planets ejected much of the system's bodies and then followed themselves. This is evidenced by the system's asteroid belt degrading over time, with high levels of eccentric orbits and impacts on planetary surface.

Radiant 1: A rather unremarkable airless iron planet, gravity 0.4 Earth Standard.

Radiant 2: A slightly larger unremarkable airless iron-silicate planet, gravity 0.6 Earth Standard.

Radiant 3: A binary planetary system and the outermost of the Radiant systems' planets.

Asphodel (Radiant 3a): The larger of the Elysium 3 pair, Asphodel might have once hosted life of its own. That life has been snuffed out for hundreds of millions of years, though, as the planet's significant atmosphere began the runaway cycle of your usual hothouse planet. Hermes-Ishtar maintained a significant aerostat and automated surface miner operation for in-house manufacturing, given that the frequent asteroid impacts from the asteroid belt keep digging up chunks of the upper crust and having low-melting-point metals rain out of the sky and solidify, unoxidized, on the surface for collection. Gravity 1.4 Earth Standard.

Elysium (Radiant 3b): Elysium was settled in the late 2190's, being a relatively simple affair. Simple life had already begun to evolve under its oceans, but continued orbital bombardment far past the lengths of things like Earth's Late Heavy Period had kept it there. It was a simple matter of forming up a small anti-asteroid task force armed with tugs and mining lasers to artificially end the pummeling, and the surface proved amenable to Terran life transplants. The colony is energy-self-sufficient, using a variety of solar, tidal, and nuclear power. Gravity 0.9 Earth Standard.

Radiant I: The outermost significant feature of Radiant, this asteroid belt is more a loose mixture of a primordial asteroid belt much like Sol's with a Kuiper belt. The shepherding gas giants which once nudged all these rocks into their orbits are gone, and with it the entire outer system is a maelstrom of chaotic orbits as the belts lose their coherence. This requires constant vigilance from Elysium's anti-asteroid team, but the high eccentricity of many asteroids also makes it cheap and easy to mine the ones that might come Elysium's way, which provides a trickle of basic resources for upkeep and personal goods. All large-scale building and infrastructure projects have been supplied from out-system, however.

A G-K far binary system, Gaid is simply a transit point to Radiant. Gaid's own gate maintenance techs and SAR rotated in and out through Radiant itself. There is no infrastructure other than a set of buoy lines for communications in Gaid A, and nothing in Gaid B.

Gaid A1: An airless world. Quality 10.

Gaid A2: A planet much like mars with a vestigial CO2 atmosphere. Quality 7.

Gaid A3: This planet boasts a methane hydrosphere. Quality 4.

Gaid AI: An asteroid belt.

Gaid A4: A turbulent Jovian planet, its storms would make resource extraction difficult. Quality 5.

Gaid A4a: An icy moon, with tidal heating creating a large ocean under a thin icy shell. Quality 9.

Gaid B1: A molten Cthonian world hosting a simply ludicrous amount of iron. Quality 15.

Gaid B2: An airless world. Quality 10.

Gaid B3: An airless binary system with two near-identically sized planets. Quality 7 and 8.

Gaid B4: This airless planet boasts a large and beautiful ring system, famous as a screen background option across human space. Every few years, a cruise or scientific expedition will stop by for more images.

Gaid B5: A small icy planet. Quality 3.

Gaid B6: A frozen world. Quality 7.

Gaid B7: An interesting gas dwarf sometimes referred to as an 'ice dwarf.' Quality 14.

A close K-M binary, Shei is home to an old Ares penal colony.

Shei 1: A Cthonian world. Quality 15.

Shei 2: An airless world. Quality 12.

Sheol (Shei 3): A boreal world, with a large, decaying ring, the planet features two large continents. The population of the consists of a large prisoner population on the larger of the two continents and a small Ares training base on the smaller. Records show that the prison consists of several million persons convicted to "high risk labour" and dropped on the continent with automatic resupply via Ares contractors and watched from orbit by weapons satellites. Most of the planet's land area is covered in a native tree analogue with a strange multi-stranded trunk.

Sheol is actually home to a population of over 100 million made up of prisoners and their descendants taht Ares was usuing as a live fire training course. Cooperation between Radiant agents, Ares mutineers, and the Sheolites themselves have seen the planet freed.

Gravity .95 Earth Standard. Quality 12.

Watchman (Shei 3a): Once the outer of two moons, this body now boasts Ares' local light shipyards and system command center. Quality 13.

Shei 4: Spiraling in from the outer system, this planet will eventually evaporate near-entirely as it closes towards the dual suns of Shei. Quality 3.

Shei 5: Martian planet with an active methane cycle. Quality 5.

Shei I: Asteroid belt.

Shei 6: Jovian planet with high rotation rate. Slightly squashed as a result. Quality 8.

Shei 6a: An icy capture, this moon will be torn into a ring sometime in the next hundred thousand years. Quality 2.

Shei 6b: Cold Martian planet, covered in a thin layer of water and carbon dioxide ices. Active methane cycle. Quality 8.

Shei II: Asteroid belt.

Shei 7: Jovian planet. Quality 13.

Shei 7a: An icy moon with significant cryovolcanism. Quality 6.

Shei 7b: A tiny icy moon, this is on the edge of hydrostatic equilibrium. Quality 2.

Shei 8: Ice giant. Quality 6.

Shei 8a: An icy moon. Quality 9.

Shei 8b: An icy moon, orbiting in an unusual polar orbit. Quality 9.

Population: 103,000,000

While lacking any currently-habitable planets, Five Lions' large size and potential have made it a significant point of Rhodes' recent extraction efforts. Ambitious terraforming efforts have recently begun.

Carajas (Five Lions 1): A Cthonian ball of iron, it's actively mined by robotic Rhodes-built landers. Gravity 2.3 Earth Standard. Quality 12.

Five Lions 2: A small rocky ball. Quality 3.

Five Lions 3: A rocky ball. Quality 7.

Grasberg (Five Lions 4): A large rocky world, glaciation has rendered it uninhabitable for now, but terraforming efforts have begun to artificially ramp up the greenhouse effect and restore liquid water to the surface, along with mining its ice. Gravity 1.11 Earth Standard. Quality 14.

Five Lions 5: This planet's atmosphere is so significant it verges on a gas dwarf. While a solid surface covered in a thin layer of ice is at the bottom, no reasonable colonization is possible. Quality 7.

Five Lions I: This asteroid belt, along with all the others, is being mined heavily.

Five Lions 6: This Jovian planet forms the center of current Rhodes extraction efforts. Quality 4.

Five Lions 6a: This Martian planet boasts significant ice caps and active plate tectonics, though only a vestigial atmosphere. Debate on whether to put resources into terraforming it are ongoing. Gravity .81 Earth Standard. Quality 17.

Oyu Tolgoi (Five Lions 6b): Home to the local population in covered shelters, this Martian planet, while nearly completely lacking water or plate tectonics, has its own atmosphere. Comet bombardment away from populated areas is ongoing and is already beginning to show results. Gravity .79 Earth Standard. Quality 11.

Five Lions II: An asteroid belt.

Five Lions 7: An unremarkable Jovian. Quality 2.

Five Lions III: An asteroid belt.

Five Lions 8: Jovian planet, its rotation speed has resulted in an unusually calm upper atmosphere. Quality 15.

Five Lions IV: An asteroid belt.

Five Lions 9: Jovian planet. Quality 9.

Five Lions V: An asteroid belt.

Five Lions 10: Neptunian ice giant. Quality 8.

Five Lions 10a: A small icy moon. Quality 5.

Five Lions 10b: A large icy body, this was probably its own planetoid at some point before being captured due to the complex interplays of no less than 5 gas giants.

Population: 15,000,000

A rare system with a brown dwarf orbiting a G-type star (just barely in the limits of what's considered a single system rather than a binary), and with a Jovian planet orbiting that, and on top of that treasure trove a dual ice giant binary, Osliam presents a golden research opportunity, and was bid on by Omoikane despite its otherwise sparce resources and poor habitable prospects.

Osliam 1: A rare hot ice giant, this planet is actively shrinking on a measurable time scale. It must have migrated in as a much larger planet recently.

Osliam 1a: This once-rock-ice moon is now a tiny molten ellipse barely holding together.

Osliam 1b: This somewhat larger moon changes color unusually with its day, as the shade of its parent cools lava to a dull red before emerging back into the light heats the lava back to a healthy orange glow.

Osliam 1c: This entire moon glows dull red in its day, just barely solid, and cools to an unusually smooth moon in its night.

Osliam I: This asteroid belt was probably a planet before Osliam 1's passing tore it to shreds.

Osliam 3: A hothouse planet with a relatively thin atmosphere, it retains temperatures and pressures that are survivable with heavy-duty equipment on the surface—when it's not raining sulfuric acid, that is.

Osliam 4: This small Martian planet seems to have collected some of Osliam 1's offgassing in its move inwards, and has a renewed temporary atmosphere.

Osliam 5a: This planet seems to have survived at the edge of the frost line by siphoning gas off its smaller twin.

Osliam 5b: Barely a gas giant, this planet was probably only slightly smaller than Osliam 5a in the distant past.

Osliam 6: The focus of Omoikane colonization in-system, Osliam 6 retains plate tectonics from the nearby brown dwarf but no atmosphere, an odd combination.

Osliam 7: A brown dwarf, this substellar object long ago burnt its deuterium and now lies slowly cooling, glowing dimly red. It is, however, still giving off a prodigious amount of low IR radiation.

Osliam 7a: Once its own planet, Osliam 7a was captured at some point by Osliam 7, perhaps in the same interaction that threw Osliam 1 to its suicidal innermost orbit.

Osliam 7a1: This icy moon is simultaneously shrinking and becoming more habitable—while its outer layers of ice are sublimating, the fierce tides of its complex interplay with Osliam 7 and 7a are heating the inner ocean to temperatures comparable to terrestrial water sources. Some scientists even suggest a pocket of water vapor is forming under the ice, and may form an internal "sky" for as much as a hundred million years before the outer shell sublimates entirely.

Osliam 7a2: This moon is less lucky; its tides are so strong that they seem to slowly be ripping the moon apart. It won't have the honor of becoming more than an ephemeral ring; the same complex tides tearing at it will rapidly disperse its debris field. While it lasts, though, it's easy water harvesting.

Population: 650,000

UNDER CHARTER CONTROL:

A distant double G binary, Xotreh hosts a small habitable moon around Xotreh B, the smaller of the two stars. As such, development has focused on the second star, despite the fact that the jump points center closer to Xotreh A.

Xotreh A1: This world boasts an active liquid silicate cycle on its surface, with oceans of basalt and continents of granite. Gravity 0.38 Earth Standard. Quality 8.

Xotreh A2: A rather large airless world, its original atmosphere was likely blown off by a massive impact. Gravity 1.2 Earth Standard. Quality 9.

Xotreh A3: A binary planetary pair of airless worlds about the size of Mars. Quality 6 and 8.

Xotreh A4: A hothouse planet with a planet-wide sulfuric acid storm due to its rapid rotation. Gravity .71 Earth Standard. Quality 8.

Xotreh A5 "Cueball": This planet is remarkably similar to Earth—if earth was buried under a kilometers-thick ice sheet across 90% of the surface. One day, as Xotreh A expands and dies, this world will become an ocean planet, but for now it's a cold desert. Gravity .87 Earth Standard. Quality 5.

Xotreh A6: An unremarkable icy ball. Quality 4.

Xotreh AI: An asteroid belt.

Xotreh A7: A Jovian planet, Xotreh 7 corrals the entire inner system in line. Quality 10.

Xotreh B1: This planet must have once been a gas giant at least the size of Uranus before it was sent inwards. Now all that remains is a dense core with a molten surface. Gravity 1.51 Earth Standard. Quality 13.

Xotreh B2: A binary pair of earth-sized airless worlds. Quality 6 and 7.

Xotreh B3: Another once-gas giant, this planet remains far out enough to boast a wholly-solid surface of iron. Gravity 1.64 Earth Standard. Quality 14.

Xotreh B4: A Jovian right on the frost line, its tidal heating keeps its moons on the edge of habitability. Quality 3.

Xotreh B4a "Sushi": An ocean world with massive polar ice caps, Omoikane has constructed a series of seasteads on the equatorial high ocean plateaus where it was feasible to drive foundations into the sea floor a few hundred meters below the surface. These small facilities serve as housing, data storage, and production centers for the research teams studying the dual Cthonian planets of Xotreh B. Gravity .67 Earth Standard. Quality 2.

Xotreh B4b: The lesser tidal heating here worsened the glaciation, and the planet lies under a planet-wide crust of ice. Gravity 1.13 Earth Standard. Quality 10.

Xotreh BI: The close proximity of this asteroid belt makes it an ideal location for resource extraction.

Xotreh 5: This Jovian is definitively beyond the habitable zone. Quality 6.

Xotreh 6: A dense ice giant. Quality 4.

Xotreh 7: Jovian planet. Quality 6.

Xotreh 8: An exceptionally cold Jovian. Quality 9.

Xotreh 8a: An unremarkable icy sphere. Quality 8.

Xotreh 9: This planet would have a massive atmosphere, if it wasn't so cold it all froze and fell to the surface. Only a few degrees above the space surrounding it. Gravity 1.3 Earth Standard. Quality 9.

Population: 54,000

Besides an interesting Jovian-gas dwarf planetary system, Bestreer holds little of interest other than its connections to other places.

Bestreer 1: An airless world. Quality 2.

Bestreer 2: An airless world. Quality 6.

Bestreer 3: This airless world once had a captured moon, torn apart at the Roche limit and forming a ring. A small gate maintenance and SAR team bases here, siphoning fuel and water from Bestreer 5 and mining into the surface for both resources and safe spaces for housing. Quality 10.

Bestreer 4: A rock-ice world. Quality 5.

Bestreer 5: Another rock-ice world made up more of ice than rock. Quality 5.

Bestreer I: An icy asteroid belt.

Bestreer 6: A large Jovian planet, on the edge of becoming a brown dwarf. Quality 15.

Bestreer 6a: This gas dwarf might have become a gas giant in its own right without its massive sibling. Quality 5.

Bestreer 7: Another Jovian. Quality 14.

Bestreer 7a: An icy moon, with an internal ocean buried under kilometers of ice. Quality 12.

Bestreer 8: An icy ball. Quality 10.

Population: 450

G-class star. A transshipping point to Radiant and environs, Mississippi keeps a substantial support crew on hand for possible cargo ship breakdowns or emergencies in-system, due to the slightly increased risk of issues from the absolute shambles of Akleod's inner system. A minor executive has also put together a cheap refueling and battery exchange station.

Akleod 1: Even actively evaporating and leaving behind a trail in orbit of dissipating volatiles, this body is large enough to have usurped Akleod 1a's orbit temporarily until it disappears away or the chaotic orbit of the two throws one into the star or out of the system. Quality 2.

Akleod 1a: The original Akleod 1, its orbit has been badly disrupted by the current, migrating Akleod 1. Which of the two gets ejected is still uncertain despite a decent amount of computational simulation; odds put it at 48-52% relatively. Quality 6.

Gnat's Ass (Akleod 2): A small, loosely-held-together icy body, perhaps what used to be an asteroid belt before Akleod 1's suicidal inner-system dive. It's not yet had time to fully reach hydrostatic equilibrium. Quality 3.

Akleod 3: An icy planet similar to Akleod 1, perhaps an old sibling. Quality 13.

Akleod I: An asteroid belt.

Akleod 4: A Jovian with an unusually elliptical orbit, it's regarded as the culprit for the chaos of Akleod's inner system. Quality 11.

Population: 5,000

As it turns out, transponder codes from regular priority messages through Gaid (now that we can see them, having backdoored the gate control) bear tags from a system, Thoa, along with navigational chart updates for any ships that happen to stop by. Thoa and Gaid both seem to have been nothing more than transit points to the far-more-valuable Radiant for Hermes-Ishtar, but Thoa holds a small anti-pirate base guarding against raiders from Signia. Hermes-Ishtar was apparently serious enough about it to have a converted corvette on station.

All told, the Thoa system holds gates to 2 systems besides Gaid's. There's also an unimproved jump point simply labelled as "dangerous." that leads to Signia

Thoa System Stats:

Thoa 1: A molten mess of a planet, it's hot enough that a residual atmosphere of vaporized low-melting-point metallics exists.

Thoa 2: An unremarkable airless metal ball.

Thoa 3: A super-earth hothouse, this planet would have been uninhabitable due to its gravity even before turning scorchingly hot.

Thoa 3a: A captured asteroid barely on the edge of hydrostatic equilibrium, the Nasty Bastardhad been excavating rudimentary shelters for "leave" for its crew.

Thoa I: An asteroid belt.

Thoa 4: A normal Jovian planet.

Thoa 4a: A moon much like Mars in climate.

Thoa 5: A Jovian planet with an unusual triangular wind pattern at the poles.

Thoa 6: Blooms of hydrogen well up from the core of this Jovian, perhaps disturbed by some recent impact.

Thoa 7: Bathyscapes would find themselves at home on the surface of Thoa 7. Pressures much like that at Earth's seabed keep a crust of ice 3 stable enough robotic drones could walk on it.

Thoa 7a: Unusually, Thoa 7a is the only large icy body in the system. Scientists are unsure of where the others went. As the only easy source of volatiles, the UNasty Bastard periodically stopped by a handful of obsolete volatile collection systems on the surface to top up.

Thoa II: A Kuiper belt of icy objects.

Empty Systems

Kimberly: A fairly unremarkable and empty system, this site was chosen as Rhodes' spinward boneyard—a place for failed experiments, old equipment, and ships so worn they weren't worth maintaining anymore, but were still valuable enough to warrant not throwing into a gas giant or otherwise completely destroyed. For 2 decades a Rhodes-affiliated salvaging contractor worked here, gathering scrap and other valuables, but following high injury and death rates and low returns, the contract (and most non-local dumping) was cancelled in 2247 (4 years before the March Days.)

Kimberly 1: A large rocky planet, this must have migrated inwards from further out in the system a long time ago to be so large so close to its parent star.

Kimberly 2: A Martian planet that keeps a comfortable daytime temperature despite its lack of atmosphere due to a close orbit.

Kimberly 3: A Jovian world.

Kimberly I: This asteroid belt is actually combined with a thinly-spread junkyard corralled by Kimberly's 2 gas giants.

Kimberly 4: A Neptunian world, this planet has several starship hulks abandoned as the closest stable orbit to the gate out. An old deactivation hub orbits in resonance with Kimberly 4a, the former site of a salvaging operation.

Kimberly 4a: The only significant satellite in the system, this icy moon retains a thin crust and a massive subterranean freshwater ocean.

Total:

Radiant:

Gaid:

Five Lions:

Head of Diplomatic Corps:

Name: Amanda Redcrest, Victoria Blackwell, and Kayla Hayashi

DoB: "2222", 2219, 2227, 2224

Current Position: Influential media figure and figurehead of Social Committee propaganda

Not a traditional diplomat, or a traditional individual 'Veronica Stardust' is the persona of a trio of XP broadcasters who have been working together since 2246 and has consistently been one of the most recognized figures across Charter space and is a local Elysian celebrity.

In Charter space those individuals who choose to make money by recording their lived experiences, of all kinds, for later playback are treated with an indulgent disdain by the polite classes as a mix of internet celebrity and sex worker despite the practice of selling XP experiences being common in the poorer segments of society and a smaller portion of the professional middle class attempting to stay afloat in a tight gig economy.

Amanda Redcrest was a former media programmer whose attempts to supplement her income with XP work backfired and saw her fired from her job. Contrarily, Kayla and Victoria both come from lower class backgrounds, though Kayla's attempts to climb into the middle class by earning a marketing degree were frustrated when her lower class status markers and financing of education via XP work saw her frozen out of the job market.

A former collaborator of Kayla's, Victoria had been a rising XP star in her own right and had no desire to change her station, but as her brief celebrity began to fade Victoria approached Kayla to propose the creation of a dedicated broadcasting persona that both would act as. Later bringing on Redcrest, who they'd both done crossover XP work with, to do technical work, the trio used carefully gathered market data and some intuition to create the "Veronica Stardust" persona of an middlingly-intelligent and freewheeling persona who played to the upper class's picture of what depravities and indignities the poorer class must get up to in their spare time.

From 2246 to 2251 the Veronica Stardust persona (performed by all three at various times, though primarily Victoria) produced experience recordings that were nearly always in the top 10 best sellers across Charter space.

Though they enjoyed the wealth that they brought in, the trio increasingly chafed at the market driven limitations of Veronica, and were considering a number of possibly catastrophic brand shifts when the March Days broke out and all three participated in street actions in a private capacity after sending one last broadcast as 'Veronica' to encourage revolt.

Since the formation of the Social Committee the figure of Veronica has been rebranded to serve as the figurehead of Social Committee Propaganda and several major initiatives have been launched with her at the forefront including a highly successful part of the anti-overproduction initiatives.

As part of the now-completed campaign to maintain the charade that Radiant was still under Charter control, Veronica Stardust continued to sell broadcasts to HI media chains, though the trio could not help but begin a brand shift towards a far more intelligent and radical persona.

Pros: XP Celebrity, influential, well known, inspiring to the middle and lower classes

Cons: XP celebrity, little diplomatic experience, three people

Diplomatic Goals: Defeat the Charters in the field of public opinion, push social revolution and freedom of information and communication, cause public opinion to oppose attacking Radiant

Unlocked FRM

Ares Peacekeeping Grade - Access to planetary army formation

Ares Military Grade - Access to mid-sized shipyards, bonuses to planetary army combat. Bonus to completion of Chinook remodeling

Rhodes Light industrial Grade - 10% increase to all mining income, reduced Cost for BLG and other actions that use basic fabber processes

Rhodes Heavy Industrial Grade - Massive discount on mining upgrades, able to unlock automated technologies with Omoikaine

Cernunnos Consumer Grade - +1 to all Soccom actions

Cernunnos Enterprise Grade - NOT UNLOCKED

Omoikane Consumer Grade - +1 to FRM reserach for each two tech bases unlocked (+6 currently)

Omoikane Enterprise Grade - +5 to blue sky research, automation with Omoikane

Hermes-Ishtar Consumer Grade - Your economy doesn't crash when the turn of funding

Hermes-Ishtar Production Grade - NOT UNLOCKED

MSI Consumer Grade - Consumer Goods, Drones, and personal vehicles, +2 to domestic projects in IndComm and SocComm

MSI Enterprise Grade - NOT UNLOCKED

Original Tech

The Box: Fabber the size of a X-box that can, with time, materials and power, print the components for a full sized box. Less efficient, but easy to print and hide.

Defence Coordinator:

Name: Maria Awhina

DoB: 2165

Current Position: Military Committee Delegate from the Radiant Veterans Guild

Born into poverty on Earth as the twenty-second century began to wane, young 22-year old Maria Awhina caught up in radical anti-Charter politics during the third black summer of 2187 and was convicted of property destruction during the rioting and sentenced to serve as a contractor to Hermes-Ishtar until her contract was paid off.

The stark choice of starvation or service to Hermes-Ishtar caused Maria to descend into self-destructive behavior where for twenty years Ms. Awhina continuously volunteered for the highest paid and most dangerous positions that Hermes-Ishtar had available.

Hermes-Ishtar considers Special Operations Lieutenant Awhina to have served with distinction throughout the heavy skirmishing of that era, though Maria herself continues to carry guilt for her service and her survival.

After performing exceptionally well in a hostage rescue operation Awhina was transferred to the Protective Detail Division of Hermes-Ishtar Security, and was eventually assigned to serve as the head of the Radiant Vice President's protective detail.

Over the next four decades she came to see the world as her home, and while her professionalism never wavered, her loyalty to the company who still owned her contract did.

This March, Maria had the option to gun down her fellow planetary headquarters workers to secure Yang's escape, or to finally return to roots in anti-Charter agitation. The fact that we are all here today shows what choice she made.

Pros:

-Actual Combat Veteran, knows Radiant inside and out, special operations expert, professional.

Cons:

-only academic knowledge of starship operations, logistics, organization command and strategic operations.

Command Traits:

-Objective oriented, unflappable, aggressive, prefers attacks and operations to come from unexpected angles.

Reports from the Permanent Commission for Military Intelligence on hostile forces in neighbouring systems:

Blue Squadron:
-Allegiance: Ares Combat Solutions
-Service: Mars Interstellar Security
-CO: Rear Admiral Weylon Kang
-Flagship: MIS Yorktown

We know little about Rear Admiral Weylon Kang except that he has received a number of commendations from the MIS board for keeping costs low while on deployment. He appears to be making an effort to clamp down on the rumours racing back and forth across the fleet.

MIS Yorktown
-British Empire-class Fleet Tender
MIS Eurymedon
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS La Rochelle
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Cape Rachado
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Second Schooneveld
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Matapan
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Valcour Island
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Kerch Strait
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Galveston Harbour
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Cape Sarych
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS River Plate
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Third San Francisco
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Scipio Africanus
-Cossak-class Frigate
MIS Suleiman I
-Cossak-class Frigate
MIS Louis Botha
-Cossak-class Frigate
MIS Fort Ware
-Hudson's bay Company-class Fast Fleet Tanker
MIS Fort Mackinac
-Hudson's bay Company-class Fast Fleet Tanker
MIS Fort Osage
-Hudson's bay Company-class Fast Fleet Tanker
MIS Arabian
-Postal-class Courier
MIS Macedonia
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Hispania Citerior
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Hispania Ulterior
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Gallia Narbonensis
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Sicilia
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Corsica et Sardinia
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport

Fixed Defences:
Battery A
-MSS-54-F LMP Constellation
Battery B
-MSS-54-F LMP Constellation
Battery C
-MSS-54-F LMP Constellation
Shoal A
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal B
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal C
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal D
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal E
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal F
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal

Fixed Defences:
Battery A
-Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation
Battery B
-Airstrike Pattern LMP Constellation
Shoal A
-Macross-Pattern LMP Constellation
Shoal B
-Macross-Pattern LMP Constellation
Strikecraft Wing, ID# 48603
-Radiance-Type Strikecraft

-None

Local Security Forces
-Approximately fifty strong volunteer station security militia drawn from station personnel

Local Security Forces:
-Deep Space Security Solutions (Omoikane Subsidiary) Customs shuttle squadron based out of Xotreh B-4a's orbital station
-Three companies of Standard Planetary Security Company (Ares subsidiary) troops based out of Xotreh B-4a's habitat complexes for internal security and law enforcement

139th Solarian Navy Squadron:
-Allegiance: Solarian Compact
-Service: Solarian Navy
-CO: Vice Admiral David Visser
-Flagship: SNS Krak de Chevaliers

Thanks to his heavy handed labour discipline and extractive tribute and demands for corvee labour from Ascension Admiral Visser is viscerally hated by the populace of Ascension, and to a lesser degree the rest of the Solarian Force as well. While the gate's completion draws near, it is uncertain what path that Visser will persue.

SNS Krak de Chevaliers
-Star-hold-Class light-tender
SNS Victoria Newman
-Leonard Greyson-Chang-Class Strike Corvette
SNS Julia Stonechild
-Leonard Greyson-Chang-Class Strike Corvette
SNS Robert Chuikov
-Leonard Greyson-Chang-Class Strike Corvette
SNS Wallace Al-Wazir
-Leonard Greyson-Chang-Class Strike Corvette
SNS Dawn's Early Light
-Freedom's Light-class cruiser
SNS Jacob Nagumo
-Herald Kanumba-Class frigate
SNS Alexander Hamilton
-Liberation-class troop transport

Solarian Marines now spread throughout the system

PCMI Provides new system data on the single system that lies beyond beyond Five Lions:

Mobile Force:

Current Orders: Defend the All Radiant Congress by acting as a rapid response in the event of any hostile acts.

CO: Commodore Stephanie Rousseau

CNS Velasco, United States of America-class Fleet Carrier

-CO: Captain Esteri Attar

-Orca Wing, Switchblade-type strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: Wing Commander Jasmine Ang

-Red Wolf Wing, Switchblade-type strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: Wing Commander Heloisa Kimura de Lima

CNS Shieldmaiden, Great Heathen-class Light Cruiser

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Shamhat, Great Heathen-class Light Cruiser

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Righteous Tempest, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: Captain Vehement Shade

CNS August Willich, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Elysium, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Asphodel, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

-

Home Force:

Current Orders: Defend Radiant, comet patrol, act as a reserve force

CO: Commodore Erina Kozlova

CNS Blaire Mountain, New Model-Class Strike Corvette

-CO: Captain Guillermo Kageyama

CNS Scutum, Comet-Class Patrol Corvette

-CO: Captain Martin Pagonis

CNS Buckler, Comet-Class Patrol Corvette

-CO: Captain Samuel Smiles

CNS Nasty Bastard, A Jury Rigged Mess of a Drone Carrier

-CO: Captain Jean-Paul Beaumont

-

Radiant System Self Defence Force:

Current Orders: Defend Radiant, comet patrol

CO: Overseen by Admiral Gregory Mansur in his capacity as MilComm Chief of Naval Operations

Radiant Customs Squadron, Arabia-class boarding craft with marine contingents

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

Switchblade Wing, Switchblade-type strikecraft

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

Apogee Wing, Switchblade-type strikecraft

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

Battery A, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery B, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery C, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery D, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery E, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery F, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Shoal A, Macross-Pattern TAM Shoal

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Radiant Orbital Yard 1

Current construction: None

Radiant Orbital Yard 1

Current construction: None

-

Gaid System Self Defence Force:

Current Orders: Defend Gaid

CO: Commodore Victor Raine

Battery A, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery B, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery C, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery D, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery E, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery F, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

Shoal A, Macross-Pattern TAM Shoal

Shoal A, Macross-Pattern TAM Shoal

Shoal A, Macross-Pattern TAM Shoal

Zephyr Wing, Switchblade-Type Strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: Wing Commander Ara Helge

Aeolus Wing, Switchblade-Type Strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

Gale Wing, Switchblade-Type Strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

-

Frontier Force

Current Orders: Keep watch on SolNav force in Raphanus, assist with integration of Ascension military forces, patrol Spinward frontier

CO: Commodore Shayla McLean

CNS Kiel Mutiny, Kaiserreich-class BattleCruiser

-CO: Captain Inana Devlin

CNS Choreographer, Janissary-class Light Tender

-CO: Captain Karl Xanthopoulos

CNS Valiant, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Defiant, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain Fool's Errand

CNS Reliant, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain Rouge Napier

CNS Actium, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain John Rankin

CNS Crête-à-Pierrot, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain Nkiru Chaudhari

CNS Valmy, New Model-Class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain Sumac Barros

CNS Revolutionary Will, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: Captain Yamamoto Hanae

CNS Revolutionary Grace, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Under New Management, Don-Class Fast Tanker

-CO: Captain Adras Kierenos

CNS Liberte, Hollywood(C)-Class Frigate

-CO: Captain Colin McRae

CNS Egalite, Hollywood(C)-Class Frigate

-CO: Captain Adelia Swift

Resources
Naval Ship Types: Ship Types (Public Version)
Naval Officers: Congressional Navy Officers (Public Version)
System Codex: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rtNbPCcPsTK7HCHKo9dPgK7ntx5tBKOpltrZb_In7GY/edit#
Blaze Zhang: Blaze Zhang is trans-masc. That means his pronouns are he/him.

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MSH · Feb 28, 2023

We are not freed of moral responsibility just because we are opposed to some of those using the power that we flung indiscriminately over the galaxy. Yes, they can simply murder innocents without our aid, but the Genetic Augmentation Jailbreak represents taking a block of locked potential (augtech) and breaking it down into its components.

We remixed it one way. The humanists are likely to take inspiration and remix it another way, a way that leads to atrocity. This isn't just about Drake, it opens up new crimes against populations who previously were somewhat protected by the ignorance and limitation their oppressors operated under. Omoikane (or was it Cern?) was wasn't exactly going to give out medvats and restricted research for free.

We have been too lax by far with spreading the secrets of power where literally anyone can pick them up and use them. I will not go so far as to say the First Broadcast was a bad thing, but I will say that it was a necessary evil, insomuch as all of the fighting we've done is a necessary evil. However, if I'm remembering correctly, it was the advanced medical tech that gave Drake the ability to worsen their crimes against augments, and that came in a later Broadcast.

I would not be against releasing a package of directed gene therapies to deal with the dietary and medical restrictions, but if anything the true center of Genetic Augmentation Jailbreak should be under Amaranthine FRM when we finish it, provided only to polities who have shown full commitment to augment rights. Handing this power over to anti-augment polities in full will not lead to anything good.

Genderite · Feb 28, 2023

Spart117MC said:
I'm sorry, but are you seriously arguing that Broadcasting the Genetic Augmentation Jailbreak is a bad idea because it might, might lead to people already committing genocide do worse warcrimes?

These people don't need research purpose built to remove dietary and medical restrictions to make nerve gas.

I think that MSH might be right here. I'm not sure we want to be sending out the tech to make slave species. There is definitely Jailbreak stuff we can send without too much worry but some of Cern's stuff can be used to make some real bad shit if someone wants to use it to maintain hierarchy no matter the cost.

Torgamous · Feb 28, 2023

MSH said:
However, if I'm remembering correctly, it was the advanced medical tech that gave Drake the ability to worsen their crimes against augments, and that came in a later Broadcast.

They've been using Cern's magic medical pods to forcibly baseline kidnapped children, yes.

That's not Jailbreak. That's a basic function of the pods. Jailbreak is just making a version of every Augment line that doesn't have the proprietary food requirements. It's not going to make anything worse.

Setsul · Feb 28, 2023

I think with GAJ it's mostly a moot point by now because the part we didn't send out yet is to make the changes breed true and get the the more obscure lines done that might be in use on Bob but not in the AIC. I think we know Ares is kinda hyped about simplified logistics for augment shock troops, but it's a little too late to worry about that now.

HOWEVER, we are literally using Monster Within for military purposes this turn, to make the Lilyshadows work, so be careful with that.
Similar caution applies when we're doing Basic Augmentation Guarantee because I am sure "design your own augmentations" stuff could be modified in the inevitable direction of a cat girl slave race.

Nyvis · Feb 28, 2023

VillaininGlasses said:
I think that MSH might be right here. I'm not sure we want to be sending out the tech to make slave species. There is definitely Jailbreak stuff we can send without too much worry but some of Cern's stuff can be used to make some real bad shit if someone wants to use it to maintain hierarchy no matter the cost.

The jailbreak also frees people from having DRMs in their bodies. It's life or death for current augments so scaremongering about the potential for new slavelines when people could be dying due to their augments requiring proprietary maintenance feels ridiculously misplaced. Cern can already make slave species anyway.

MSH · Feb 28, 2023

Cern aren't who we ought to be worrying about. Cern could probably create worse augmentation limits, or remove them entirely. Hell, they probably already have both, hidden away in a hotlab somewhere. But Cern has a certain objective and ideology that informs how they've used augment tech in the past and how they will probably use it in the future - the cynical financialization we're trying to put an end to. I suspect Cern will be a problem later, but not related directly to this.

The problem is the humanists. As a clearly rather muscular ideology, they don't seem too likely to pursue this line of research on their own...unless we take actions that make it easy for them. Drake and their behavior are the most explicit and most activist humanist regime we know about, but there are doubtlessly more of them out there, and that includes ones who are too "moderate" to pull a Drake. The jailbreak, in their hands, is a seductive temptation - no more augments or at least their issues with augments, maybe even without having to spill blood. There are terrible possibilities, and because we have the means to mitigate them we have a responsibility to do so.

This is not a choice between helping or not helping in a potential future broadcast. This is a choice about the security we are employing towards the discoveries we release, about precaution and maintaining our intentions rather than letting the chips fall where they may.

Limiting what exactly we broadcast and using FRM to maintain intended usage at a distance is the key to this. The Charters used it to make money, but we can use it to help people without putting them in even worse danger. People don't have to know how the jailbreak therapies work in order to use them. Considering how much work it took for us to crack advanced FRMs, and that this is equal to the basic Amaranthine FRM with all the bells and whistles, it's not that much to ask for reducing the potential of atrocities done with the work of our own scientists, is it?

We send out only the results of the project, not the method, and we place those results on free but encrypted fabrication files. They can't be modified without cracking our encryption, and even if you do crack them you have to understand genetic science enough to make useful modifications off of them. The only easy usage will be for augments to use the procedure - and thus that will happen before anything else and hopefully in lieu of anything else.

The drawback here is that people will have examples of our FRM to experiment on cracking, but loyalists have ideological difficulty with it, revolutionaries probably won't use it for atrocities, and the humanists are disinclined to make such an investment. We upgrade to Advanced Amaranthine FRM in the meantime.

Torgamous · Feb 28, 2023

MSH said:
The jailbreak, in their hands, is a seductive temptation - no more augments or at least their issues with augments, maybe even without having to spill blood.

That's not what the Jailbreak is though

They are already doing their "no more augments" thing because that's not what the jailbreak is

We're not making augment genomes editable, they already are that

We're not making it easier to customize augmentations, that's a different project

Jailbreak is just taking existing augment lines, and making versions that don't have the food requirements

That's it

T_of_A · Feb 28, 2023

Worst-case scenario, they forcibly de-augment all the augments. That's a huge violation of bodily autonomy, and it's motivated by hate so you know they'll be extra evil about it too... But it's still better than physically genociding them all. Which it seemed they were about to try to do, for a while.
I'd say giving them all a de-Augmentation button is probably less evil than not doing so, given that we also gave them all guns and tanks to do genocide with.

IIRC even their so-called "humane" de-augmentation plan involves slaughtering all Augment adults

Torgamous · Feb 28, 2023

T_of_A said:
Worst-case scenario, they forcibly de-augment all the augments.

They're doing that already, because that's part of the Advanced Cernunnos package. Jailbreak doesn't give them that capability because they already have that capability, and because Jailbreak isn't about developing that capability.

Jailbreak has nothing to do with de-augmentation. It is just making versions of existing augments that don't have dietary restrictions. That is all it is. It's not anything else. It's just that. That's all the project does.

T_of_A · Feb 28, 2023

Torgamous said:
They're doing that already, because that's part of the Advanced Cernunnos package. Jailbreak doesn't give them that capability because they already have that capability, and because Jailbreak isn't about developing that capability.

Jailbreak has nothing to do with de-augmentation. It is just making versions of existing augments that don't have dietary restrictions. That is all it is. It's not anything else. It's just that. That's all the project does.

Yes I'm aware, I'm just engaging with the misconception to argue "even if you were right, this would still be a lesser evil".

The Laurent · Feb 28, 2023

Getting Both Hands Dirty, Prologue: Blown Call (June-November 2254)

Silvia Greene Takes Early Lead In Party Primaries!--Colonial Advocate News (Last Updated: June 3, 2254)

In the first major contests of the leadership primary of the Justice and Development Alliance Party, Silvia Greene has pulled a series of surprising wins that give her a significant lead in delegate count going into the mid-June contests. While it is likely that JN OK's strength is highest in the August and September contests, which will determine a majority of the elected-party-delegate total, Silvia Greene is getting the polling numbers, fundraising, and delegate totals needed in these early contests to stand a chance, albeit in a path to triumph as narrow as it is perilous, of unseating JN OK.

For a further breakdown of the current delegate math and major news on this contest, see: here.

****

June 8, 2254, New York City, Sol

"We have a problem," Tobby Joss said to the small assembled team. "One that we haven't predicted, and I don't mean her cousin's attempt to glam up support for her home-based de-augmentation scam. No, this is even more serious. Have you seen the recent polls in the HtH--" Head to Heads, "Between JN OK and the Prime Minister, and between Greene and the Prime Minister? She activates many soft-PHRL voters towards her side, according to the latest numbers. We'd still have an advantage, but she could carve into it, make your majority smaller."

"Tobby, we can't afford to give her any more PR than she already has," Rob said. Beechworth smiled gently, to take the sting off of it. "Anything we do will need to be subtle, because if we give even a hint we're afraid of her--and she's still likely to lose to JN OK--then we'll be handing her a very good situation."

"I know that," Tobby Joss said with a sly grin. "But Goldstein and I have been talking, and I think we could begin to put feelers out, and direct some harsh media attention. She has plenty of skeletons in her closet, if we can dig them up. Nobody's without their little picadillos, and we've worked across from her for decades, right?"

"That's true," one of the higher-ranking interns said. If they kept up the work for another few years they'd be staff, and Tobby Joss made sure to check what their name was. Oh, Bayleaf, they'd proven to be a solid enough person, a credit to Augments everywhere, and so he thought that perhaps they were ready for their first independent assignment.

The best spies and agents were those who were too lowly to be noticed, after all.

***

June 18, 2254 Political News Digest Archive, "A-OK Ltd Fork", last accessed on June 21st, 2254, by Okorie, J.

"You know I find it charming, in a way. Too often populists try to live it up, gladhand everyone and make friends everywhere," Finch Gardiner, #4 Political Commentator in the Compact said, looking across at Adam Vall, whose show Political Vall-Hall-A was one of the most watched shows of the politically engaged under-50 demographic. "But she doesn't invite people to her home, has two offices, one for work and one for meetings. She opens the latter to the public, and has a reputation for cutting costs. People attacking her all of a sudden for the news a year or two ago that she'd bought some 'Generic' brands mistake how much the voters hate things like that. Indeed, it builds up a picture--"

"What picture is that?" Vall asked, crossing his legs and looking over at the woman with the platinum blonde hair and winning smile.

"Of a serious meritocrat. Often her programs are compared to PHRL welfare programs, and so her ability to seem as if she knows how to count costs and cut down waste. Her business-like approach extends to her hiring."

"I've heard she offers the best wages for her staff of any of the major political players," Vall said. "People have called it buying loyalty."

"I'd call it paying for the best, and paying for absolute loyalty," Finch said, smiling her literally award-winning smile. "It makes her seem like someone who cares for her underlings in a hands-off, professional way. She's a businesswoman, and her business is reform of the Compact, instead of being a best friend, the way JN OK tries to be with his staff. It's honestly the kind of brand you can't buy, because it makes her seem like what everyone wants to be: a Meritocrat. Someone who rose through their excellence and hard canniness. This is clearly what she's doing with the wages, with her office, with every aspect of her persona… and it's converted me. I don't think all of her policies are the best, but this way of presenting herself convinces me she can learn and grow as a politician…"

***

New York, Sol, June 25, 2254

"She's just playing Hero Ball, I know that," JN OK groused, lounging in bed with the newest intern as she smoked an e-cig, head turned away from him, looking at the walls. He'd have to get her a new wardrobe, if she was going to be up to code for the office. That's what it'd begun as, some sartorial advice, which she had resisted at first. But JN OK had the best fashion sense in all of the SolParl. Though he had to admit everyone said that Greene's offices were simply the most well-decorated. So perhaps he could get her help once he'd beaten her once more.

"But?" Natalie asked, turning to him. "There's a but there."

He almost got distracted with a thought, reaching around to cup his hand around her hip. But… ah, right. Physical activity like this was almost as good as exercise, and so he always felt more alive after he'd had sex. "Well, the but is that you have to be able to work as a team, you have to know how to talk to people. I have an idea, really. Not going to tell it to you, sweetie. You should focus on perfecting your craft where you are."

"What, the craft of making coffee?" Natalie asked, but she managed at the last moment to make it funny with a motion with her hand as if holding a cup of coffee.

"And this craft, and all others. The analytics are pretty impressive, stick around for a year, or two, and there's a promotion coming your way." JN OK laughed, "And ultimately the key is very, very simple. If her brand is what is advancing her, we need to attack her brand. Her policies, oh, we can hit those too. But darling, it's all about knowing what to do and what's expected of you. I'm exactly what people expect, and it's why I'm going to be Prime Minister."

"What do you expect when you see me?" Natalie asked, but she softened it once more, leaning into his touch a little bit.

"Beauty and brains," JN OK said, with a lecherous grin. He was thinking half about sex and half about politics, and in the moment both halves were focused on the woman next to him.

She really was proving herself a very effective intern.

***

June 29, 2254, New York, Sol

"If that's what you have to do, Bayleaf, than do it," Tobby Joss said, the words forced out of him. He knew that politics was a cutthroat game, but working with JN OK? Well, it'd take time to establish any sort of connection, but it was a clever enough idea. Work with JN OK covertly to help him win, and then crush him in the generals. It was positively an art-form… but it was something he'd normally have to run by the Prime Minister.

But what she didn't know wouldn't hurt her.

***

Top Secret Internal Document, Greene Campaign, July 20, 2254

"... it is of utmost importance that, above all else, the drive towards the creation of Frontier and Systems Republics be expanded immediately. In CASE RESOLUTE, especially, there is a need for a drive towards a Systems Republic that will be unpopular unless paired with significant advancements in the rights of Frontier Republics AND the promotion of various Frontier Republics to System Republic status. Doing less is a half-measure, and it is unlikely that CASE RESOLUTE representatives, should they be consulted, would accept Colonial Republic status. It is possible that even frontier Republic status is a bridge too far for them. If they are willing to accept CR status, we should warn them and steer them away from it for their own good as well as the good of the Compact…"

****

Interview with Silvia Greene, on July 18, 2254

"How do you respond to those that say that you're not keeping up the pace in July needed to defeat JN OK."

"I say that we are just getting started, and that the next move is to begin to broaden our appeal. We still have the Daughters to fight for in August, save Epsilon, and the Sol numbers have begun to improve. But it is not about the polling numbers, but about the cause that we are fighting for…"

****

Colonial Newscast Talk Show Outtake, July 30, 2254

"Well I for one can't think she's serious with some of these colonial reform proposals. She's just playing to the base. But these colonial reforms she's proposing are too fast, and I think that we can rule out… no, actually, VI's saying that's a cut. The argument won't convince the right demographics, what is a better line of argumentation? Run me the analysis, and we'll try another take of it in just a second. But she's losing, isn't she? She's not quite mathematically eliminated, but she's basically lost. So do we really have to do this? Yes… how about a different angle. How about this?

*****

Daily Justice Herald, August 12th, 2254

Here's how she can win: you see the delegates in four of the contests are not required to listen to the vote of the members, just the overall impression of the vote. Additionally, there are various "extra" delegates from certain demographics, including Augments and AGIs, as well as party elites. If they can be convinced based on polling then she could win as late as late-September, and so we need to begin driving forward and continuing to ask for Silvia Greene, the only true hope of JDAP.

***

Sol, August 29th, 2254, Greene Offices

The room was tense. It was the kind of place where people were supposed to be able to tell the truth, or something like it. It was small, carefully chosen, and at the moment packed.

Glinda Issin had been hired two years ago as a consultant, because she was someone who fit the profile for a PHRL voter while supporting Greene's faction, because she was a skilled analyst with non-profit marketing experience, because she was the best hire for the job and because she decided she wanted to be involved. Now her voice was raised as she looked around the room at dozens of people who supposedly all believed the same thing as her.

Glinda did not know what she believed, fully. "Why are we telling everyone we can still win? We've been mathematically eliminated for weeks."

"We can still build alliances by staying in, and by continuing to contest elections," Harald said, his jowls quivering as he gave the most textbook possible answer. She knew that that was most of the reason, but it didn't make sense.

"And how are we going to build alliances if we're making enemies focusing everything on Colonial Affairs? Penglai, Epsilon, those were where the people were. But…" she threw up her hands, rubbing her eyes. She knew that her job was to seek out PHRL voters, and that this was making her focus on the places with greater numbers of PHRL delegates.

At the same time, the idea of spending so much time rambling about the value of different proposals and policies. It wasn't even Greene… directly, at least. She seemed sensible enough. But the rest of them were flailing by now.

Perhaps all campaigns were like this at some point if they lost.

"It all flows together," Ore said, their tail twitching as they paced. "Each piece fits together, and even if an individual piece is not popular, the whole still matters. The whole is where the cause is, and the cause is simple: necessary reform. What better argument is there, if we can deploy it right?"

"A targeted argument? A clever argument? A reason we're doing this?" Glinda asked, looking around at them.

She stood up because she could not stand to be in the same room as them right now. She knew tempers were high, but they were just spouting off the same old stuff.

She stepped out in the hall and ran into Silvia Greene, watching her thoughtfully, frowning. "Glinda, are you okay?"

"We're going to lose and the people in there want to trick everyone into thinking we can win just so that we can distribute leaflets. Surely we could just… become a protest vote if we admitted we were losing?"

"Ah," Silvia Greene said, and pulled her away for a moment, frowning thoughtfully. Choosing her words very carefully, Glinda suspected.

And then she said the only thing that could have led Glinda to storm off.

***

Sol, JN OK Offices, September 2nd, 2254

"We finally found someone," Oberlan said. He was lounging on a chaise, looking up at JN OK with a quirk of his eyebrows. JN OK had never met a man more given to lounging around while posing, but he was very good at seeming like that was all he'd done. He'd been involved in one of the Frontier Wars, and then he had met JN OK's father. They'd been lovers, which was something that made OK uncomfortable around him.

Warpath had all but gifted him to JN OK, and he served as the eyes and ears of the Old Guard, the ones who had made the JDAP great. He had plenty of self-confidence, but there were moments when Jason felt like he was always going to be in his father's shadow.

Warpath had last sent a message from his vacation home on Columbia--one of a dozen different vacation homes--a month ago, and he had choice words for JN OK.

"Greene isn't anything at all, she's practically a child. I do not understand, Jason, why you are unable to simply defeat her. Or even better, befriend and co-opt her. Populists are very ideologically useful. Will you be over for Christmas? We have much to talk about."

This was going to be painful unless he could find a way to win more convincingly.

So he grinned, glad that the problem was solved. "But? Is there something wrong?"

"It was through Roderick's office in part. She wants to join Roderick's staff if she provides the information," Oberlan said. He had a first name, but JN OK could hardly stand to use it, after one time when he was twenty and he had accidentally walked in on his father and…

He actually did go to therapy, on the sly. It was things like that that made it worth it, helping him bury memories like that.

"That can be arranged. If she thinks she's going to win, that will even give her a reason to want to take on the best talent. And despite her… willingness to jump ship, she seems to have a solid enough record, right? You're not telling me she's some serial malcontent goose-egg?"

"No, no, she's a very good choice, a soft-PHRL type of the exact sort that Greene was so good at luring," Oberlan said. The criticism was merely implied, so JN OK did not allow himself to bristle as he considered it. Recently the PHRL had been making more inroads into JDAP territory than visa-versa. But everyone knew that the revelations about that one HI system back out beyond would transform that.

Well, everyone who had been clued in knew, at least.

"Well then, get in contact with Mr. Joss," JN OK said, leaning back in his chair and looking up at the ceiling. "We have ourselves a double-agent."

***

Statement Leaked By Silvia Greene: Colonial Affairs Most Important Determinant (September 11, 2254)

...leaving many on Sol offended, especially those leaning Daughter but within the JDAP who make it quite clear in polling that the idea that Sol was a backwater or facing significant exploitation was an insult to the proud Solarian Heritage..."

*

Staffers Forced To Work On Birthdays, And Other Horrors… Underworld Herald, September 20, 2254

Birthdays would have to be taken off as one of the mandatory sick days rather than automatically given to them, unlike such politicians as Roderick, Okorie, and indeed the famed Warpath. This lack of concern for the lives and safety of her staff, and their birthday happiness, is matched by the lack of presents or official in-house celebrations on birthdays, all of which were key elements of a truly compassionate workplace.

*

Exclusive: Silvia Greene Decries Christmas, declaring it "Not a secular holiday"--Christmas Planner Monthly, October 2, 2254

*

Silvia Greene Vows To Slaughter Small Business Owners--Business Daily, October 7, 2254

In private conversations, Silvia Greene, the disgraced and disgraceful candidate for JDAP leadership has declared that it might be time to begin a phased sunset of the 'Small Business Owners Relief Act of 2188', claiming that the advantages it gives are too narrowly targeted and could be replaced with something broader. But this covers for the fact that what she's actually talking about are co-operative businesses disqualified fairly under…

*

Greene Underperforming In October Contests--50%+1: Polling Analysis For Pundits (October 18, 2254)

…while most of the scandals seem unlikely to last, they are successfully damaging her brand with several key demographics in the short-term, and are creating questions and concerns that have left the candidate reeling, especially as the leaks do not seem to be immediately plugged. Indeed private conversations, even, seem to find their way sometimes into the hands of journalists and still there is no announcement that the culprit has been caught and punished.

*

Another Batch of Leaks Targets Greene's Environmental and Social Party Credentials, (October 24, 2254)

*

Questions Regarding Greene's Hiring Of Flip Effect--JDAP Alternative Views, (October 30, 2254)

…Digitally Created Person known as Flip Effect was involved in the Chorsen Tournament Scandal in 2153, and while their reputation since then as both a player of various games and an analyst who uses game theory in political campaigning, has been entirely on the up and up, the connection with the controversial figure raises allegations of foul conduct that warrant careful investigation and refutation as serious charges to be…

***

Before the Party Convention, November 6, 2254

The office was not much to look at, but then again Silvia Greene had not been allowed to decorate it. It had been rented, and it had a very specific decor that was, legally, impossible to change. Its new owner--him, tomorrow--would get everything there. Including the chair that Silvia Greene now sat in, looking up as JN OK sauntered in. "I came here to say that you played well, but you didn't understand the long game, you did a bit too much Hero Ball, and at the end you had no hustle at all. You played a bunch of guns-for-hire… but you did well. If you just ask me for mercy, if you just drop out now and support me, then we don't have to go through anything tomorrow. We can even be colleagues, and you could join in on my government more directly."

She looked at him cooly, blinking and taking him in as if she were looking for something--and not finding it.

"I will never beg for mercy for myself," Silvia Greene said, with a shake of her head. "There is no dignity in it, and no use. Anyone who wants you to beg has made up their mind."

"Well, perhaps I have. This will be my office, you got the better positioning, and I've paid the bought-out fee. Tomorrow it'll be mine, and you can… arrange your fight to the death against the delegate math somewhere else. It has been… interesting, maneuvering and proving to you that you cannot buy loyalty. I sought out a weakness, and I found it."

"Please do not think I'm being rude," Silvia Greene said, in a soft, almost yielding voice. "But don't you have someone else to… explain this to?"

"Oh yes, absolutely, I've explained this brilliant play to many people. But I want you to know. We managed to find your weak spots in July, and September just let us begin to hack them apart. You were bleeding to death and you didn't even know it."

"I'm alive," Silvia Greene pointed out dryly. "Political death is metaphorical at best."

"It's just as bad," JN OK said. "Just as bad to be relegated to nothing… but if you play the game better, use your brand to push policies that are actually popular with the voters, then you could succeed me."

"I would not say it's as bad," Greene said to herself, lying because he knew she was like him. She was a political creature, she moved sideways and breathed in compromise and deals and tricks. So of course, political death was as bad as one could get. The Compact wasn't a blood-sport, good heavens what did she think it was?

He would never understand her. "Here's a bit of advice. You have both hands clean. But the true politician, the clever politician who steers the Compact, they have one hand dirty, filthy with their deeds, and the other clean and neat and ready for any handshake, any wave you need to make. Until you dip your fingers in filth, you're always going to lose."

"Is that all?" Silvia Greene asked quietly, and he could tell he'd cowed her, that she was looking away--she always did avoid eye contact with him--in a way that proved she was not taking this well.

"No… there's a few more facts you need to know, about how you could do better in the future. Consider it constructive criticism…"

****

Prime Minister Roderick's Office, Sol, November 8, 2254

"We'll have to employ her, but she's proven passionate about reform, and about holding the Charters to accountability within a democratic framework. She could easily be integrated," Special Media Relations Coordinator Garlan Fry said.

Tobby nodded absently, considering her resume. She was not trustworthy, but she was no doubt very skilled, and she could be managed. He nodded to himself, "We've won a great victory here. JN OK is a weaker opponent, and so Roderick will have a better path to victory. And once she wins, she can continue the steady reforms needed to further strengthen the Compact."

He smiled to himself, genuinely happy with how all this went. "The future is brighter than ever… and we managed to outplay JDAP already."

***

The Pacifica Newspaper (Published November 7, 2254, Accessed by user S. Greene November 20, 2254)

Jason Nnamadi Okorie wins Justice and Development Alliance Party primaries with clear mandate.

Today the Sisters wrapped up their year-long primary season by electing Jason Nnamadi Okorie as their candidate. While reform candidate Silvia Greene put out strong early numbers, Jason's focus on long-term strategy led to a clear win. Speculation as to whether Jason will adopt part of Silvia's small-business focus, Charter-hostile platform abound, but nothing certain has been indicated by Okorie…

***

Message From November 28, 2254, recovered by Digital Historians on fragmented hard-drives February 2263, Speculated to be between Glinda, then part of Prime Minister Roderick's Staff and the Greene Office

I hope it hasn't done long-term damage to you. I know you approved each of the leaks, but it still hurt, seeing everyone running around doubting each other like that. It was… a cold move, but I get why it's necessary: you'd lost mathematically, and half the things leaked weren't actually bad and might help you.

So I get why you did it, and I do hope one day to serve under you when you are Prime Minister, as you deserve. I don't know what it is about this 'Radiant' that is so important, but I will be able to tell you the schedule of the delegate whenever they are sent to Sol. They'll have to submit any major plans to the Prime Minister's office, most likely, and so I can get you access to the PM's planner if you want to try to arrange a meeting with them.

I don't know what you think they can do, but if you think they'll be a major ally in helping to reform Colonial Policy and bring change to the galaxy, then I believe you. It had to be hard, though, spending weeks being blasted in the press like that, lied about.

But there's no way I'm going to let this opportunity pass, with all that was paid for it.

A/N: Obviously, she did not get a chance to talk to the ambassador from Radiant, and it wouldn't have gone the way she expected if she did. You chose Santiago, not Mueller, and she was very much expecting a partner in reform.

I thought it was important to kinda set up the way that "Getting Both Hands Dirty" is about a continuation of political maneuvers by Other Means (™). So she was willing to sacrifice her reputation and go through a month of bad news cycles to set up a spy in the enemy camp, since she believed that Roderick had a good chance of winning the coming election, and in either case would be the one negotiating with Radiant when they arrived.

So it's a very… Reformist-brained plan, and represents a good "B4" view of where these people are, where they aren't, and the kinds of crabwise ways that Greene thinks… as well as the limitations to how these things functioned back then. And what one could expect.

It was a blast writing, to be honest.

TheGrape · Feb 28, 2023

The Laurent said:
He had a first name, but JN OK could hardly stand to use it, after one time when he was twenty and he had accidentally walked in on his father and…

How dare you make me feel bad for JN OK >:

WillRobinson · Feb 28, 2023

TheGrape said:
How dare you make me feel bad for JN OK >:

Huh, my takeaway was 'taking advantage of subordinates runs in the family'.

Redshirt Army · Feb 28, 2023

JN OK: "Until you dip your fingers in filth, you're always going to lose."
Greene: "ogey" meets with SolNav officers behind closed doors
JN OK: "Greene how could you possibly think that's what I meant-"
Greene: "another day, another banger"

The Laurent · Feb 28, 2023

WillRobinson said:
Huh, my takeaway was 'taking advantage of subordinates runs in the family'.

Oberlan was a bit more of a peer than a lot of the people JN OK... let's just say it how it is, targets. It was a little more like making a friend and then getting them a nepotistic campaign job, and then starting to date them.

masterofmadness · Feb 28, 2023

Wow, the more I read the more I am glad we blew up the fucking compact!

buli-buli · Feb 28, 2023

Okay.

To recap:

Greene realized she was probably going to lose the Primary AND her Party would probably lose the General Election regardless of who was representing it.

Greene also knew about Radiant declaring independence. And she believed Radiant could make a powerful ally to reform the Compact.

So! Greene spent the rest of her campaign secretly running a sham smear campaign against herself to accomplish two (2) things.

All of the "scandals" were likely to ingratiate herself to a hypothetical frontier republic.
The leaks provided leverage for her agent to "buy" her way into the current and probable future administration. From where she could act as a go between for Greene and Radiant.

...she's ambitious, I'll give her that. But, like JN OK is now, she widely underestimated the amount of bad blood and the complete lack of trust.

Driven by Apathy · Feb 28, 2023

masterofmadness said:
Wow, the more I read the more I am glad we blew up the fucking compact!

It's a deeply disfunctional system. I'm rooting for Greene, but I don't think actual reform of the Compact has much of a chance.

Torgamous · Feb 28, 2023

The Laurent said:
Top Secret Internal Document, Greene Campaign, July 20, 2254

"... it is of utmost importance that, above all else, the drive towards the creation of Frontier and Systems Republics be expanded immediately. In CASE RESOLUTE, especially, there is a need for a drive towards a Systems Republic that will be unpopular unless paired with significant advancements in the rights of Frontier Republics AND the promotion of various Frontier Republics to System Republic status. Doing less is a half-measure, and it is unlikely that CASE RESOLUTE representatives, should they be consulted, would accept Colonial Republic status. It is possible that even frontier Republic status is a bridge too far for them. If they are willing to accept CR status, we should warn them and steer them away from it for their own good as well as the good of the Compact…"

For anyone who can't be bothered: the Compact had six and a half levels of autonomy, with Colonial Republic being one step above being outright owned by a Charter, Frontier Republic being a step above that, and System Republic having the second most autonomy.

So Greene was talking about having Radiant skip a bunch of steps and go straight to one level below Penglai, and taking a bunch of other systems with us because they'd be mad if we got special treatment (or because giving us special treatment would be an excuse to upgrade a bunch of other systems too?)

The bit about advising us not to settle for the second worst level is very funny and I'd have loved to see her try to tell Santiago that, but this is about as based as a reformist can get.

UponALotusBlosom · Feb 28, 2023

I was confused for a second until I started reading the dates.

Still, it seems like the Greene we have in the quests present is significantly more directionless than the Greene of before the revoultion when she had a path forward plotted out.

Anyways. It was a pleasure to read this lovely pile of dysfunction and now I have even more reason to dislike JN Okorie as a person. Not that anything new has been fundamentally revealed but there is more fuel to fan the fire now.

Broccoliccoli · Feb 28, 2023

buli-buli said:
underestimated the amount of bad blood

I am not sure about that. The thread usually starts hissing whenever options that Greene would like get offered, but that we still receive them shows that the voterbase isn't in tune with the IC population. A future where we work together with her was possible even if we would be dragging her towards more radical stuff.

MSH · Feb 28, 2023

And thus goes the Reformist Timeline, where we eventually install Gaston Gains and Silvia Greene as the co-consuls of the Democratic Solarian Federation following the institution of Individual Market Communist Reforms, that they might trade the Funny Hat back and forth every week until the end of time, when the Milky Way is consumed by the gravitational singularity of rage that was once the small world of Sheol.

buli-buli · Feb 28, 2023

CeBrudras said:
I am not sure about that. The thread usually starts hissing whenever options that Greene would like get offered, but that we still receive them shows that the voterbase isn't in tune with the IC population. A future where we work together with her was possible even if we would be dragging her towards more radical stuff.

Sure we could have, but we were honestly convinced the Charters were planning on killing us all and that the Compact would help them.
And given SolNav tried to glass Earth I'm not convinced that is not exactly what would have happened.
...Regardless of what the not-leader of the not-ruling Party might have had to say about it.

Which given what she did during the Sol Crisis is basically nothing of substance.

Derpmind · Feb 28, 2023

CeBrudras said:
I am not sure about that. The thread usually starts hissing whenever options that Greene would like get offered, but that we still receive them shows that the voterbase isn't in tune with the IC population. A future where we work together with her was possible even if we would be dragging her towards more radical stuff.

We did vote to join SolComm, which is a major Greene-supported initiative.

MSH said:
And thus goes the Reformist Timeline, where we eventually install Gaston Gains and Silvia Greene as the co-consuls of the Democratic Solarian Federation following the institution of Individual Market Communist Reforms, that they might trade the Funny Hat back and forth every week until the end of time, when the Milky Way is consumed by the gravitational singularity of rage that was once the small world of Sheol.

As much as we meme about Sheol, in the last Galactic Frontpage we saw several places that hate the Compact even more than Sheol does. I don't think us going for a Reformist playbook would have kept other places from eventually rebelling in their own way.

The Laurent · Feb 28, 2023

buli-buli said:
Sure we could have, but we were honestly convinced the Charters were planning on killing us all and that the Compact would help them.
And given SolNav tried to glass Earth I'm not convinced that is not exactly what would have happened.
...Regardless of what the not-leader of the not-ruling Party might have had to say about it.

Which given what she did during the Sol Crisis is basically nothing of substance.

This is quite the point. She did do stuff during the 14 Days, but ultimately she was unable to actually shift the tide of anything from where she was sitting, and was taken as much by surprise as anyone else. All of her manueverings here are very clever, and at least earnest in trying to make the galaxy a better place... but they're largely useless, and fruitless, at least of anything she did in 2254.

Hence why it's a Prologue. It introduces themes, it introduces characters, etc, etc, but it isn't the whole story.*

*or it will, once it's in its place in the Threadmark list.

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

Been Better

Aspiring Gynoid

Aspiring Gynoid

Aspiring Gynoid

Cannon Fodder

Formerly known as Brain_Caster

Aspiring Gynoid