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

AKuz · Dec 10, 2020

THE ALL-RADIANT CONGRESS

Setting Information: The Solarian Compact:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Charters:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rhodes Mining

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

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

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

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

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

Techbros, some of them science, some of them explore

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sketchy buggers, they can get you anything tho

Historical Topics:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Misc Details:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Spinward Frontier:

The Middle Spinward Frontier

The Core Region:

UNDER RADIANT CONTROL OR ALLIED:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gaid A1: An airless world. Quality 10.

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

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

Gaid AI: An asteroid belt.

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

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

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

Gaid B2: An airless world. Quality 10.

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

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

Gaid B5: A small icy planet. Quality 3.

Gaid B6: A frozen world. Quality 7.

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

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

Shei 1: A Cthonian world. Quality 15.

Shei 2: An airless world. Quality 12.

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

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

Gravity .95 Earth Standard. Quality 12.

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

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

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

Shei I: Asteroid belt.

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

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

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

Shei II: Asteroid belt.

Shei 7: Jovian planet. Quality 13.

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

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

Shei 8: Ice giant. Quality 6.

Shei 8a: An icy moon. Quality 9.

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

Population: 103,000,000

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

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

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

Five Lions 3: A rocky ball. Quality 7.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Five Lions II: An asteroid belt.

Five Lions 7: An unremarkable Jovian. Quality 2.

Five Lions III: An asteroid belt.

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

Five Lions IV: An asteroid belt.

Five Lions 9: Jovian planet. Quality 9.

Five Lions V: An asteroid belt.

Five Lions 10: Neptunian ice giant. Quality 8.

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

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

Population: 15,000,000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Population: 650,000

UNDER CHARTER CONTROL:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Xotreh A6: An unremarkable icy ball. Quality 4.

Xotreh AI: An asteroid belt.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Xotreh 6: A dense ice giant. Quality 4.

Xotreh 7: Jovian planet. Quality 6.

Xotreh 8: An exceptionally cold Jovian. Quality 9.

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

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

Population: 54,000

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

Bestreer 1: An airless world. Quality 2.

Bestreer 2: An airless world. Quality 6.

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

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

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

Bestreer I: An icy asteroid belt.

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

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

Bestreer 7: Another Jovian. Quality 14.

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

Bestreer 8: An icy ball. Quality 10.

Population: 450

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

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

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

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

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

Akleod I: An asteroid belt.

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

Population: 5,000

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

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

Thoa System Stats:

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

Thoa 2: An unremarkable airless metal ball.

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

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

Thoa I: An asteroid belt.

Thoa 4: A normal Jovian planet.

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

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

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

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

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

Thoa II: A Kuiper belt of icy objects.

Empty Systems

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

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

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

Kimberly 3: A Jovian world.

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

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

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

Total:

Radiant:

Gaid:

Five Lions:

Head of Diplomatic Corps:

Name: Amanda Redcrest, Victoria Blackwell, and Kayla Hayashi

DoB: "2222", 2219, 2227, 2224

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cons: XP celebrity, little diplomatic experience, three people

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

Unlocked FRM

Ares Peacekeeping Grade - Access to planetary army formation

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

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

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

Cernunnos Consumer Grade - +1 to all Soccom actions

Cernunnos Enterprise Grade - NOT UNLOCKED

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

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

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

Hermes-Ishtar Production Grade - NOT UNLOCKED

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

MSI Enterprise Grade - NOT UNLOCKED

Original Tech

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

Defence Coordinator:

Name: Maria Awhina

DoB: 2165

Current Position: Military Committee Delegate from the Radiant Veterans Guild

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pros:

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

Cons:

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

Command Traits:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-None

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

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

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

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

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

Solarian Marines now spread throughout the system

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

Mobile Force:

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

CO: Commodore Stephanie Rousseau

CNS Velasco, United States of America-class Fleet Carrier

-CO: Captain Esteri Attar

-Orca Wing, Switchblade-type strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: Wing Commander Jasmine Ang

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

-CO: Wing Commander Heloisa Kimura de Lima

CNS Shieldmaiden, Great Heathen-class Light Cruiser

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

CNS Shamhat, Great Heathen-class Light Cruiser

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

CNS Righteous Tempest, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: Captain Vehement Shade

CNS August Willich, Cossak-class Frigate

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

CNS Elysium, Cossak-class Frigate

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

CNS Asphodel, Cossak-class Frigate

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

-

Home Force:

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

CO: Commodore Erina Kozlova

CNS Blaire Mountain, New Model-Class Strike Corvette

-CO: Captain Guillermo Kageyama

CNS Scutum, Comet-Class Patrol Corvette

-CO: Captain Martin Pagonis

CNS Buckler, Comet-Class Patrol Corvette

-CO: Captain Samuel Smiles

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

-CO: Captain Jean-Paul Beaumont

-

Radiant System Self Defence Force:

Current Orders: Defend Radiant, comet patrol

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

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

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

Switchblade Wing, Switchblade-type strikecraft

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

Apogee Wing, Switchblade-type strikecraft

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

Battery A, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery B, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery C, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery D, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery E, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery F, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Shoal A, Macross-Pattern TAM Shoal

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Radiant Orbital Yard 1

Current construction: None

Radiant Orbital Yard 1

Current construction: None

-

Gaid System Self Defence Force:

Current Orders: Defend Gaid

CO: Commodore Victor Raine

Battery A, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery B, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery C, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery D, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery E, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery F, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

Shoal A, Macross-Pattern TAM Shoal

Shoal A, Macross-Pattern TAM Shoal

Shoal A, Macross-Pattern TAM Shoal

Zephyr Wing, Switchblade-Type Strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: Wing Commander Ara Helge

Aeolus Wing, Switchblade-Type Strikecraft (Customized)

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

Gale Wing, Switchblade-Type Strikecraft (Customized)

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

-

Frontier Force

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

CO: Commodore Shayla McLean

CNS Kiel Mutiny, Kaiserreich-class BattleCruiser

-CO: Captain Inana Devlin

CNS Choreographer, Janissary-class Light Tender

-CO: Captain Karl Xanthopoulos

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

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

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

-CO: Captain Fool's Errand

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

-CO: Captain Rouge Napier

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

-CO: Captain John Rankin

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

-CO: Captain Nkiru Chaudhari

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

-CO: Captain Sumac Barros

CNS Revolutionary Will, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: Captain Yamamoto Hanae

CNS Revolutionary Grace, Cossak-class Frigate

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

CNS Under New Management, Don-Class Fast Tanker

-CO: Captain Adras Kierenos

CNS Liberte, Hollywood(C)-Class Frigate

-CO: Captain Colin McRae

CNS Egalite, Hollywood(C)-Class Frigate

-CO: Captain Adelia Swift

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

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Torgamous · Mar 3, 2023

Jim Starluck said:
I know it's unlikely and unrealistic but I hope this is an in-universe meme, at least among those familiar enough with centuries-old entertainment to get the reference.

Millennials keep singing about Gaston and nobody knows why.

"He was like my generation's Robespierre," said one millennial, despite the historical record being very clear that his generation's Robespierre was Catra. Click here for an article on why millennials are so bad at history.

Winged One · Mar 3, 2023

Torgamous said:
Click here for an article on why millennials are so bad at history.

Even our descendants have stupid sterotypes about us.

Acc. No. 1409 · Mar 4, 2023

Well finally managed to catch up with what is going on with the quest, and apparently we're now in a sacred war scenario. Would have thought the voters would choose the maskirovka route again, to be honest.

Still, enjoyed the updates and the various character POVs shown. Found Sylvia to be an interesting and sympathetic character.

Hopefully the invasion wouldn't wreck too much stuff.

DracoDracul · Mar 4, 2023

Acc. No. 1409 said:
Well finally managed to catch up with what is going on with the quest, and apparently we're now in a sacred war scenario. Would have thought the voters would choose the maskirovka route again, to be honest.

Still, enjoyed the updates and the various character POVs shown. Found Sylvia to be an interesting and sympathetic character.

Hopefully the invasion wouldn't wreck too much stuff.

It was a super close vote. War only won by 1 vote.

Acc. No. 1409 · Mar 5, 2023

Really? Well, Today I Learned.

Anyway I am sort-of internally debating whether this was a good thing considering that we do plan on redoing the whole stunt with Santiago again. Something that I am mostly sure will lead to us not getting invited to diplomatic stuff in the future considering it looks like the start of a trend.

Captainwolf · Mar 5, 2023

To be honest, I think it would be better propaganda if we weren't able to send our ambassador to the meeting, because instead of going in bad faith, we can go "Well, we wanted to go in good faith, but the Compact decided we needed to die despite the cease-fire"

Really twist the knife about us saying we were going to attend until the cease-fire violation.

Nyvis · Mar 5, 2023

Captainwolf said:
To be honest, I think it would be better propaganda if we weren't able to send our ambassador to the meeting, because instead of going in bad faith, we can go "Well, we wanted to go in good faith, but the Compact decided we needed to die despite the cease-fire"

Really twist the knife about us saying we were going to attend until the cease-fire violation.

We could also go but change the kind of bad faith we bring: refuse to discuss anything but our current invasion. Disrupt every other session by loudly bringing it up. Make it clear we don't care about anything being proposed if it isn't an answer to our current issue.

MSH · Mar 5, 2023

A lot of the precise form of post-war/mid-war diplomancing the Compact is going to depend on the outcome of Case Princess, but we know that VB and her actions have been a massive headache for people all across the loyalist and reformist systems, and we will be able to use that fact to leverage concessions and reparations.

A fait accompli is one thing, but if VB takes her shot and loses? Particularly if we end this war with control over Bastion? She'll be made a traitor for it. Politicians of JN OK and Greene's calibers aren't going to miss their opportunity to milk "disloyalty and warlordism within SolNav during the present crisis" for every bit it is worth. The fact that we will technically be the ones breaking the ceasefire (if anybody from 3rd BG survives to tell the tale) is probably going to be a minor point in the face of that.

Not to say that they aren't still going to try to ratfuck us, but they're going to reinforce the use of soft power and public opinion as the means of doing so. Expect a lot of blaming us for VB going crazy, that we should have complied with her, hey are you actually sheltering an ASI godling, etc, etc.

But first we have to win the war. I decided to replay Homeworld 1&2 since it is a partial inspiration of Tyrants space combat, as training. My initial observation is that Switchblades are probably equivalent of Scouts.

DracoDracul · Mar 5, 2023

MSH said:
The fact that we will technically be the ones breaking the ceasefire (if anybody from 3rd BG survives to tell the tale) is probably going to be a minor point in the face of that.

Technically the ceasefire will be broken once 3rd BG enters Thoa.

Setsul · Mar 5, 2023

DracoDracul said:
Technically the ceasefire will be broken once 3rd BG enters Thoa.

Or as 1st and 2nd BG enter Bestreer.
For those who may not remember: The ceasefire explicitly specified

AKuz said:
The Commonwealth sends no warcraft coreward of Thoa and Bestreer and no Charter and Compact military craft will be sent spinward of Relay, Pasnato, and Arizona.

MSH said:
A fait accompli is one thing, but if VB takes her shot and loses? Particularly if we end this war with control over Bastion? She'll be made a traitor for it. Politicians of JN OK and Greene's calibers aren't going to miss their opportunity to milk "disloyalty and warlordism within SolNav during the present crisis" for every bit it is worth. The fact that we will technically be the ones breaking the ceasefire (if anybody from 3rd BG survives to tell the tale) is probably going to be a minor point in the face of that.

The important part is how we handle a victory.
We won't be fighting our way to KC. That's not happening.
We want another ceasefire, or even an outright peace treaty.
Even in a hypothetical absolute best case for Princess, where we've used those captured troop transports to actually occupy Bastion instead of just raiding 9th Fleet's supply lines, it's much, much better for us to hand over Bastion without a fight and return to the exact same ceasefire terms than continuing to fight a war, even though we're in what looks like an advantageous position.
The Compact doubling down on the "RVB went rogue" narrative is much better for the galaxy as a whole than us "proving" that the anarchists can't be trusted or expected to stay within their borders and need to be taken out before they attack more SolNav bases.
Because the former means confirming that Frontier Marshals don't actually have the right to go wherever they please, that Compact laws don't apply to us anymore. Everyone will carefully avoid spelling it out, but that's as good as acknowledging us as a sovereign nation.
Of course we'd be a hostile foreign nation, not best buddies with the Compact, but it's one of those things that can't be taken back and will have a lasting impact, for better or worse.

alphaomega325 · Mar 5, 2023

Of course there is a third, much worse, option. That RVB wound up using her list of justifications as a checklist for how she would institute the 'police action' to us. Which would cause mary hell to the compact if we win. For we can just ask the question on where else she got the bio-weapons, atomics, and grey goo. Along with performing all those taboos if not implicitly endorsed by the Compact.

In which case every anarchist group in the galaxy will see that and understand implicitly that all of those taboos are just lies meant to keep the power of the Compact. And the Compact will perform those taboos eagerly and willingly to secure their power. Henceforth why shouldn't they develop those taboo technologies and perform those taboos first against the Compact. Causing the death of the Compact to become much much more violent than before.

Captainwolf · Mar 5, 2023

alphaomega325 said:
Of course there is a third, much worse, option. That RVB wound up using her list of justifications as a checklist for how she would institute the 'police action' to us. Which would cause mary hell to the compact if we win. For we can just ask the question on where else she got the bio-weapons, atomics, and grey goo. Along with performing all those taboos if not implicitly endorsed by the Compact.

In which case every anarchist group in the galaxy will see that and understand implicitly that all of those taboos are just lies meant to keep the power of the Compact. And the Compact will perform those taboos eagerly and willingly to secure their power. Henceforth why shouldn't they develop those taboo technologies and perform those taboos first against the Compact. Causing the death of the Compact to become much much more violent than before.

we have no reason to think she has or will deploy something like that

Ahriman · Mar 5, 2023

alphaomega325 said:
Of course there is a third, much worse, option. That RVB wound up using her list of justifications as a checklist for how she would institute the 'police action' to us. Which would cause mary hell to the compact if we win. For we can just ask the question on where else she got the bio-weapons, atomics, and grey goo. Along with performing all those taboos if not implicitly endorsed by the Compact.

In which case every anarchist group in the galaxy will see that and understand implicitly that all of those taboos are just lies meant to keep the power of the Compact. And the Compact will perform those taboos eagerly and willingly to secure their power. Henceforth why shouldn't they develop those taboo technologies and perform those taboos first against the Compact. Causing the death of the Compact to become much much more violent than before.

Hell, in the best of the best case scenarios, we can probably yank out the fact that even if we do show our hand and reveal we're crossing those lines, we can almost certainly show that RVB didn't know we were, which further undermines SolNav's ability to 'enforce' these treaties onto breakaways because hey, why listen to them if you're just going to get invaded anyways. Like, that's the nightmare scenario for Cosmoliberalism, because all of a sudden the taboos they've spent more than a century building up get an ax taken to them in a single instant, hell, one of the reasons that IRL we're having so many issues with the DPRK is because the Kim dynasty thinks that they're fucked without nukes and so won't give them up, and they've seen that giving them up just leads to exactly what they're afraid of happening to them (see the optics of what happened with Saddam).

Setsul · Mar 5, 2023

Ahriman said:
Hell, in the best of the best case scenarios, we can probably yank out the fact that even if we do show our hand and reveal we're crossing those lines, we can almost certainly show that RVB didn't know we were, which further undermines SolNav's ability to 'enforce' these treaties onto breakaways because hey, why listen to them if you're just going to get invaded anyways. Like, that's the nightmare scenario for Cosmoliberalism, because all of a sudden the taboos they've spent more than a century building up get an ax taken to them in a single instant, hell, one of the reasons that IRL we're having so many issues with the DPRK is because the Kim dynasty thinks that they're fucked without nukes and so won't give them up, and they've seen that giving them up just leads to exactly what they're afraid of happening to them (see the optics of what happened with Saddam).

I don't think it's that easy. She was willing to do a "peaceful" inspection first. The argument that she would've fabricated "proof" if we had gone along with it and she hadn't found anything while revealing that we were in violation of the seven points isn't going to help us.
The Compact will see their fears confirmed and RVB partially vindicated, while revolutionaries might be more hesitant to cross these lines if SolNav is willing to violently enforce them even during a ceasefire. No one wants to be the first that SolNav goes after.

Watching RVB fail at fabricating evidence would've been the Ishtar route.

Ahriman · Mar 5, 2023

Setsul said:
I don't think it's that easy. She was willing to do a "peaceful" inspection first. The argument that she would've fabricated "proof" if we had gone along with it and she hadn't found anything while revealing that we were in violation of the seven points isn't going to help us.
The Compact will see their fears confirmed and RVB partially vindicated, while revolutionaries might be more hesitant to cross these lines if SolNav is willing to violently enforce them even during a ceasefire. No one wants to be the first that SolNav goes after.

Watching RVB fail at fabricating evidence would've been the Ishtar route.

My contention is that usually, when you ask for the capacity to dig into someone's stuff, there's usually something you're citing to give you the impression it needs to happen. If we show that the common standard of privacy (when it comes to government work at least) that is Reasonable Suspicion is being upheld, it's still a blow along the lines I noted

Setsul · Mar 5, 2023

Ahriman said:
My contention is that usually, when you ask for the capacity to dig into someone's stuff, there's usually something you're citing to give you the impression it needs to happen. If we show that the common standard of privacy (when it comes to government work at least) that is Reasonable Suspicion is being upheld, it's still a blow along the lines I noted

That's ... not really how it works for WMDs? You can't just say "you invaded even though you couldn't prove we had WMDs. By the way, we actually do have WMDs, but that's beside the point."

Even ignoring the whole grace period where we definitely would've had a fair chance to prove to RVB beyond any reasonable doubt that we didn't violate any of the seven points (yeah, no), if you want to view this as space cops then it works roughly like this:
RVB put on one funny hat (Fleet Admiral) to warn her other funny hat (Frontier Marshal) that crime is afoot. E.g. the "unauthorized buildup of military material outside the bounds of the laws as codified under Section 14 of the Constitution of the Solarian Compact within their claimed territories", which is something the CO of 9th Fleet definitely would've had a Reasonable Suspicion about after the battle of Bestreer.
The second funny hat (Frontier Marshal) then issues the equivalent of a search warrant for the first funny hat (Fleet Admiral).
The first funny hat (Fleet Admiral) then executes said search warrant.

Yes, there are a couple of problems with that, like the complete lack of separation of powers. But it's the Frontier, full of CEZs where most laws just straight up don't apply, so due process was never really that much of a concern. This one is a bit worse because under normal circumstances it would lead to a constitutional crisis, but I think that ship has already sailed.

MSH · Mar 5, 2023

Setsul said:
Even in a hypothetical absolute best case for Princess, where we've used those captured troop transports to actually occupy Bastion instead of just raiding 9th Fleet's supply lines, it's much, much better for us to hand over Bastion without a fight and return to the exact same ceasefire terms than continuing to fight a war, even though we're in what looks like an advantageous position.
The Compact doubling down on the "RVB went rogue" narrative is much better for the galaxy as a whole than us "proving" that the anarchists can't be trusted or expected to stay within their borders and need to be taken out before they attack more SolNav bases.
Because the former means confirming that Frontier Marshals don't actually have the right to go wherever they please, that Compact laws don't apply to us anymore. Everyone will carefully avoid spelling it out, but that's as good as acknowledging us as a sovereign nation.
Of course we'd be a hostile foreign nation, not best buddies with the Compact, but it's one of those things that can't be taken back and will have a lasting impact, for better or worse.

In the event that we take systems during this war, they're an important resource - the question is what kind of resource. Bastion is a fleet base and lacks inhibited planets, just major space stations. I doubt that we'd be very welcomed there or likely to hold it indefinitely, but returning it to the Compact after it was "conquered by the Warlord of the 9th" should come at a cost to the Compact. How kind of us!

Our best policies in terms of highly inhabited systems that might be involved in this:

Arizona - Allow resettlement efforts to continue with unarmed craft, but otherwise try to break them off from the Compact. Depending on how much the population of Arizona hates us (unknown), try to get the Arizona System Republic as a free society and ally of the AIC. Minimum of a non-aggression and free movement pact. Provide jailbreak and food shipments (if that's still a problem) unconditionally. This is by far the most likely system to actually join the AIC eventually, but the resettled Drakeans probably hate us as much as Asgard does.

Inspiration - This system is odd because it's one of those insane VaultTec style social experiments systems, but the executive who controls Spielberg seems to be at least sane if not liked outright. Technically has honest-to-fuck absolute monarchy on a couple of the airless worlds. Kamau is Space Hollywood. Fellow victims of Hermes-Ishtar. I think we could take this place or leave it, but if it is anything like real Hollywood there will be no shortage of people looking to get the fuck away from the Compact, at least on the monarchy worlds and Kamau. Maybe cut a deal with the Spielberg exec to pursue her apparent True Passion to revive dinosaur ecosystems without any of the HI bullshit. If we do return it, do so with a joint RBC venture through SolComm and at least make sure the monarchies are not engaged in genuine atrocities for ratings' sake.

If we do have Inspiration as a member or ally, we will have two of the major nodes on the Grand Tour...worth considering.

Bastion - The 9th fleet's base, for now. Population is probably loyalist, but you never know for sure with the Compact. For my money, I don't think this place is worth keeping short of a wildly overzealous victory, but I think that if we destroy or functionally destroy the 9th we could reasonably demand it be made a demilitarized neutral system in the enforcement of the new ceasefire. The Compact isn't going to want this place very much if they don't have a fleet to base there, and the whole thing can be made tainted with paranoia fairly easily if we continue to play up the AIC-IPA-9th Fleet-Compact mutual backstabbing angle. Gradual pull into orbit through soft power operations on the stations after demilitarization.

Iyuhi - VDC-aligned but also deeply sunk in the Charter shadow war. Might have pre-existing rebels or organized crime. I suspect resentment of Charter and Compact here is going to be widespread, but we otherwise barely know them. Give them a shot at freedom with VDC cooperation and see if they seize it, otherwise disallow military forces per the Bastion DMZ or make it the DMZ should we not take Bastion. One of the systems that Roussau will pass through if Case Princess is successful.

Checkpoint - Along the Dragon's Spine past Relay, it is possible this system could get involved. Ares terraforming boodoggle project. Asgard is also Ares, but I don't know how much they still care about that element. Might or might not have preexisting rebels. The most conservative ceasefire limit for the Dragon's Spine, as IMO we should make Relay a DMZ in that case.

Fallback - Literally under some prepper's personal ownership, dead end system from Checkpoint. Technically he was an Ares guy, but I think those ties are severed now. A15WG nutjob, as well. The other 11,999 people in this system might appreciate what is more of a rescue than anything else. He definitely has the whole thing rigged with antimatter charges. This system is not inhabited in a rational way and I don't think anybody other than Drake and similar will care what we do here.

Freespace - Up the Dragon's Spine from Checkpoint, another VDC system. Has risen up for the cause of Spacer independence before. Had MSI minders, definitely an IPA target. One Last Job might not even be needed to strangle the IPA out of this system, but it couldn't hurt. I think they'll jump to allied status fairly easily, with how we are going to be BFFs with the VDC and make Spacer independence a simple reality.

Waypoint - Top of the Dragon's Spine, borders Asgard, IPA Funko Pop hellscape. Has had unrest before. Taking this system is a dangerous proposition for both us and Asgard, but I bet people here really would like to not be in the Funko Pop hellscape anymore. If we really manage to get this far, make this the DMZ system and try to get Asgard to chill the fuck out enough to do joint projects with us and Trescore to remove the IPA's influence.

Incaros - Honorable mention. This system is officially uninhabited, has no system bodies, and an unimproved jump point. A good place to hide something. I wonder how empty it truly is.

Some of these, particularly the Dragon's Spine, are unlikely to come into play immediately, but destruction of the 9th puts this entire region up for operations with only the threat of Asgard in one direction and ~~the threat of the secret IPA empire past Akleod on the other just saying~~ . I didn't include Trinity because I think it is even less rational to get threateningly close to Symphony than Asgard, at the moment.

And to be clear, when I say we should "take" a system I generally mean we should destroy Charter or 9th presence, connect with sympathetic forces or otherwise cut deals with existing leadership, import free fabrication if it has been contained since the Broadcast, and to the extent possible respect the autonomous will of the populations there despite de facto conquering their space and reformatting their society. If they want the Compact, they can have it - without further military buildup on the edges of the independent space of the Amaranthine Interstellar Commonwealth. Getting a DMZ between us, Asgard, and Symphony for the near future is going to be the single best thing for our health, the question is just where that DMZ is drawn. We can begin working with Trescore and the VDC on wider scale after that, and get ansibles to comrades over in coreward and trailing.

You know, if we don't lose the war.

Memphet'ran · Mar 5, 2023

Wrote and then discarded longer post about how I think Humanism (anti-augment/anti-transhumanism politics) would very much have a "socialism of fools" dynamic in a society like the Compact, but I think my main (hopefully constructive) criticism of the worldbuilding/writing in this is I think anti-augment prejudice should have had less of a "crystal dragon version of anti-black and anti-Hispanic racism and racialized Islamophobia" vibe and been more like a weird mix of antisemitism, resentment of immigrants and Third World laborers perceived as "taking our jobs," and somewhat esoteric forms of anti-autistic ableism.

Like, I don't think "augments are dumber and more violent than regular humans, basically barely tamed dangerous animals restrained only by the threat of force" makes much sense as a common prejudice, cause it immediately brings to mind that almost nobody would want to deliberately create people with those traits.

Setsul · Mar 5, 2023

MSH said:
In the event that we take systems during this war, they're an important resource - the question is what kind of resource. Bastion is a fleet base and lacks inhibited planets, just major space stations. I doubt that we'd be very welcomed there or likely to hold it indefinitely, but returning it to the Compact after it was "conquered by the Warlord of the 9th" should come at a cost to the Compact. How kind of us!

Our best policies in terms of highly inhabited systems that might be involved in this:

Arizona - Allow resettlement efforts to continue with unarmed craft, but otherwise try to break them off from the Compact. Depending on how much the population of Arizona hates us (unknown), try to get the Arizona System Republic as a free society and ally of the AIC. Minimum of a non-aggression and free movement pact. Provide jailbreak and food shipments (if that's still a problem) unconditionally. This is by far the most likely system to actually join the AIC eventually, but the resettled Drakeans probably hate us as much as Asgard does.

Inspiration - This system is odd because it's one of those insane VaultTec style social experiments systems, but the executive who controls Spielberg seems to be at least sane if not liked outright. Technically has honest-to-fuck absolute monarchy on a couple of the airless worlds. Kamau is Space Hollywood. Fellow victims of Hermes-Ishtar. I think we could take this place or leave it, but if it is anything like real Hollywood there will be no shortage of people looking to get the fuck away from the Compact, at least on the monarchy worlds and Kamau. Maybe cut a deal with the Spielberg exec to pursue her apparent True Passion to revive dinosaur ecosystems without any of the HI bullshit. If we do return it, do so with a joint RBC venture through SolComm and at least make sure the monarchies are not engaged in genuine atrocities for ratings' sake.

If we do have Inspiration as a member or ally, we will have two of the major nodes on the Grand Tour...worth considering.

Bastion - The 9th fleet's base, for now. Population is probably loyalist, but you never know for sure with the Compact. For my money, I don't think this place is worth keeping short of a wildly overzealous victory, but I think that if we destroy or functionally destroy the 9th we could reasonably demand it be made a demilitarized neutral system in the enforcement of the new ceasefire. The Compact isn't going to want this place very much if they don't have a fleet to base there, and the whole thing can be made tainted with paranoia fairly easily if we continue to play up the AIC-IPA-9th Fleet-Compact mutual backstabbing angle. Gradual pull into orbit through soft power operations on the stations after demilitarization.

Iyuhi - VDC-aligned but also deeply sunk in the Charter shadow war. Might have pre-existing rebels or organized crime. I suspect resentment of Charter and Compact here is going to be widespread, but we otherwise barely know them. Give them a shot at freedom with VDC cooperation and see if they seize it, otherwise disallow military forces per the Bastion DMZ or make it the DMZ should we not take Bastion. One of the systems that Roussau will pass through if Case Princess is successful.

Checkpoint - Along the Dragon's Spine past Relay, it is possible this system could get involved. Ares terraforming boodoggle project. Asgard is also Ares, but I don't know how much they still care about that element. Might or might not have preexisting rebels. The most conservative ceasefire limit for the Dragon's Spine, as IMO we should make Relay a DMZ in that case.

Fallback - Literally under some prepper's personal ownership, dead end system from Checkpoint. Technically he was an Ares guy, but I think those ties are severed now. A15WG nutjob, as well. The other 11,999 people in this system might appreciate what is more of a rescue than anything else. He definitely has the whole thing rigged with antimatter charges. This system is not inhabited in a rational way and I don't think anybody other than Drake and similar will care what we do here.

Freespace - Up the Dragon's Spine from Checkpoint, another VDC system. Has risen up for the cause of Spacer independence before. Had MSI minders, definitely an IPA target. One Last Job might not even be needed to strangle the IPA out of this system, but it couldn't hurt. I think they'll jump to allied status fairly easily, with how we are going to be BFFs with the VDC and make Spacer independence a simple reality.

Waypoint - Top of the Dragon's Spine, borders Asgard, IPA Funko Pop hellscape. Has had unrest before. Taking this system is a dangerous proposition for both us and Asgard, but I bet people here really would like to not be in the Funko Pop hellscape anymore. If we really manage to get this far, make this the DMZ system and try to get Asgard to chill the fuck out enough to do joint projects with us and Trescore to remove the IPA's influence.

Incaros - Honorable mention. This system is officially uninhabited, has no system bodies, and an unimproved jump point. A good place to hide something. I wonder how empty it truly is.

Some of these, particularly the Dragon's Spine, are unlikely to come into play immediately, but destruction of the 9th puts this entire region up for operations with only the threat of Asgard in one direction and ~~the threat of the secret IPA empire past Akleod on the other just saying~~ . I didn't include Trinity because I think it is even less rational to get threateningly close to Symphony than Asgard, at the moment.

And to be clear, when I say we should "take" a system I generally mean we should destroy Charter or 9th presence, connect with sympathetic forces or otherwise cut deals with existing leadership, import free fabrication if it has been contained since the Broadcast, and to the extent possible respect the autonomous will of the populations there despite de facto conquering their space and reformatting their society. If they want the Compact, they can have it - without further military buildup on the edges of the independent space of the Amaranthine Interstellar Commonwealth. Getting a DMZ between us, Asgard, and Symphony for the near future is going to be the single best thing for our health, the question is just where that DMZ is drawn. We can begin working with Trescore and the VDC on wider scale after that, and get ansibles to comrades over in coreward and trailing.

You know, if we don't lose the war.

I think you're aiming a bit too high there.
My point was that a ceasefire lets us continue to do stuff (spies don't use military ships), while indefinite war that draws more SolNav ships does not. Returning Bastion just to get the same ceasefire again is sort of the lower bound. I wouldn't say no if we get more, but we really don't need more. We can get more done finally working on wormholes again and the SPACER designs than anything a misguided attempt to make the Compact pay would yield.

Anyway, Inspiration is part of the SFREA and not something SolNav or the PM can or will hand over to us. Arizona the SFREA pretty much annexed, though with the help of SolNav, so things are very, very complicated. Iyuhi could be similar, we don't know.

I don't really see us walking away from this with the SFREA handing over Arizona, unless you also want to fight a war against the SFREA at the same time or right after.

What I think we'll get out of a victory is that 9th Fleet will cease to matter. Barring something truly unexpected happening, this war ends only after 9th Fleet is physically incapable of winning it.
In the worst case, that means grinding it to dust, but it'll most likely happen in Bestreer or even further into AIC territory. We will not be handed Arizona without even setting foot in that system. We could conceivably fight the SFREA and take the orbitals by force, but I'd rather focus on post-war recovery at that point.
If we get a chance for an earlier out, I'd take it.
So in the best case, 3rd BG is gone and Rousseau is in Bastion, we'd see parts of 1st and/or 2nd BG retreating. An assault on Radiant isn't more than wishful thinking after that, but 9th Fleet can still easily keep us out of Arizona and Bastion. But their power projection is gone. They might get absorbed by the SFREA because Bastion is within SFREA territory, but even if we have to fight the remnants again later, I'd still take the reprieve.
Because covertly, we can then do whatever the fuck we want, and even not so covertly, we can probably make things happen along the Dragon's Spine. Like, imagine that 9th Fleet really folds like a house of cards in late April, we return to the status quo ante bellum, except 9th Fleet is reduced to ~1.5 Light Battlegroups. They're not allowed into Thoa anymore, and we're not allowed into Relay anymore, but who would stop us? Can you imagine what would happen if 9th Fleet tried to send a Squadron to blockade Relay again, without passing through Thoa? They'd have to go through Asgard. Asgard, who just expected that we might finally start sending the ships we promised ourselves instead of by proxy, would somehow find a way to escalate from burning with the rage of a thousand suns to burning with the rage of a million suns.

That's why I think just getting Thoa and Bestreer back is good enough.
A new ceasefire itself is worth so much more than trying to extort any concessions or reparations.

BurnBright · Mar 5, 2023

Memphet'ran said:
Wrote and then discarded longer post about how I think Humanism (anti-augment/anti-transhumanism politics) would very much have a "socialism of fools" dynamic in a society like the Compact, but I think my main (hopefully constructive) criticism of the worldbuilding/writing in this is I think anti-augment prejudice should have had less of a "crystal dragon version of anti-black and anti-Hispanic racism and racialized Islamophobia" vibe and been more like a weird mix of antisemitism, resentment of immigrants and Third World laborers perceived as "taking our jobs," and somewhat esoteric forms of anti-autistic ableism.

I mean, there actually is a decent amount of that? There is very much a worry about augments being too capable, though this is also put on AGIs and ASIs. We just don't get to see a lot of in depth humanist perspectives, we only get QM statements.

bdun140 · Mar 5, 2023

Memphet'ran said:
Like, I don't think "augments are dumber and more violent than regular humans, basically barely tamed dangerous animals restrained only by the threat of force" makes much sense as a common prejudice, cause it immediately brings to mind that almost nobody would want to deliberately create people with those traits.

Half of them aren't deliberate though? Like, a goodly portion of inheritable augmentations trace their roots back to the old DemFed, and you know how HORRIBLE that place was. Most non-inheritable augmentations, meanwhile, come from very specific circumstances. Usually either someone trying to wring out the very last possible drop of productivity from themselves in order to not be fired, or a boss making it borderline mandatory for all employees in service of a larger version of that same goal. So in that regard, Anti-Augment prejudice is a sublimation of anti-poor people prejudice.

MSH · Mar 5, 2023

Setsul said:
Returning Bastion just to get the same ceasefire again is sort of the lower bound. I wouldn't say no if we get more, but we really don't need more. We can get more done finally working on wormholes again and the SPACER designs than anything a misguided attempt to make the Compact pay would yield.

To be clear, my intention isn't to do maximum damage to the Compact, but to gain maximum breathing room for the AIC. The prior ceasefire was razor-thin and precarious by nature, and we should seek to obtain a more solid ceasefire at minimum instead of the old one. The terms of the old one most likely won't even be valid - if the 9th is totally or functionally destroyed, then the space from the old ceasefire line to Bastion is fatally undefended.

A DMZ is the rational expansion of this reality - we don't approach Asgard or Symphony, and they don't approach us. Even better, having neutral systems in the DMZ will allow us to eliminate the blockade element of the old ceasefire. We will have to allow their civilian craft to visit our space, but so too will they have to allow ours to visit theirs. Or at least the DMZ for handovers and interactions. JN OK and Greene are both likely to see good opportunity in recovering VB's clusterfuck through these neutral systems, so it is enticing to the Compact as well.

Anyway, Inspiration is part of the SFREA and not something SolNav or the PM can or will hand over to us. Arizona the SFREA pretty much annexed, though with the help of SolNav, so things are very, very complicated. Iyuhi could be similar, we don't know.

I don't really see us walking away from this with the SFREA handing over Arizona, unless you also want to fight a war against the SFREA at the same time or right after.

The majority of the SFREA is outside the Far Spinward - I believe there's good reason to think their hold and willingness to engage in holding a flipped Inspiration and especially Arizona is extremely limited. They are a big fish compared to us and disastrous on top of the 9th, but we aren't even their main concern. Their main force is matched against Asgard.

A solid ceasefire with the Compact will ward off the SFREA, I think. They're kind of straddling the line between reformist and loyalist, but they so far haven't been separatist.

What I think we'll get out of a victory is that 9th Fleet will cease to matter. Barring something truly unexpected happening, this war ends only after 9th Fleet is physically incapable of winning it. In the worst case, that means grinding it to dust, but it'll most likely happen in Bestreer or even further into AIC territory. We will not be handed Arizona without even setting foot in that system.

I think that it is more likely this war will end between Arizona and Bastion than anywhere else, regardless of how Princess goes off. The 9th will retreat if sufficiently damaged, and we would be wise to pursue them. Thus, I think taking systems is just a thing that is likely to happen, even if it proves temporary.

So in the best case, 3rd BG is gone and Rousseau is in Bastion, we'd see parts of 1st and/or 2nd BG retreating. An assault on Radiant isn't more than wishful thinking after that, but 9th Fleet can still easily keep us out of Arizona and Bastion. But their power projection is gone. They might get absorbed by the SFREA because Bastion is within SFREA territory, but even if we have to fight the remnants again later, I'd still take the reprieve.

My read of VB is that this is do or die for her. She's not going to stop because she can't stop, she'll come home to be arrested unless she defeats and occupies the AIC. The 9th might depose her and offer a return to ceasefire, but that radically changes the scenario such that prior planning is irrelevant.

Also, I just think it is important to make the lesson sink in on a stellarpolitical level that fighting us comes at a cost. It is paradoxically more pragmatic and more likely to lead to peace if we make additional demands or take systems, because if we don't manage that then it sends a lesson that we can be warred on and returned to ceasefire at will, and that they can just keep doing that sort of thing. There needs to be a serious consequence to the Compact as a result of VB's actions because it will force them to corral SolNav and the SFREA away from trying to Oops us. Won't help against the IPA, though.

Not too harsh, but neither too light. Just enough to be a loss that the Compact sees but does not obsess about returning. A loss that will be blamed on the act of attacking the AIC in the Compact's name, and thus entice them not to allow it to repeat.

Setsul · Mar 5, 2023

MSH said:
To be clear, my intention isn't to do maximum damage to the Compact, but to gain maximum breathing room for the AIC. The prior ceasefire was razor-thin and precarious by nature, and we should seek to obtain a more solid ceasefire at minimum instead of the old one. The terms of the old one most likely won't even be valid - if the 9th is totally or functionally destroyed, then the space from the old ceasefire line to Bastion is fatally undefended.

A DMZ is the rational expansion of this reality - we don't approach Asgard or Symphony, and they don't approach us. Even better, having neutral systems in the DMZ will allow us to eliminate the blockade element of the old ceasefire. We will have to allow their civilian craft to visit our space, but so too will they have to allow ours to visit theirs. Or at least the DMZ for handovers and interactions. JN OK and Greene are both likely to see good opportunity in recovering VB's clusterfuck through these neutral systems, so it is enticing to the Compact as well.

A DMZ within the SFREA's territory, and officially dissolving 9th Fleet and/or giving up its base is not politically palatable.

MSH said:
The majority of the SFREA is outside the Far Spinward - I believe there's good reason to think their hold and willingness to engage in holding a flipped Inspiration and especially Arizona is extremely limited. They are a big fish compared to us and disastrous on top of the 9th, but we aren't even their main concern. Their main force is matched against Asgard.

A solid ceasefire with the Compact will ward off the SFREA, I think. They're kind of straddling the line between reformist and loyalist, but they so far haven't been separatist.

If the SFREA only cared about population numbers, they wouldn't have annexed Arizona.
They very much do care about territory, and the majority of that is in the Far Spinward.

According to the QMs, there have been some unspecified unfortunate events that further reduced the SFREA's fleet even beyond Blue Squadron leaving. They were not a match for Asgard before then, and they definitely not a match now. But they were never planning to fight Asgard.

MSH said:
I think that it is more likely this war will end between Arizona and Bastion than anywhere else, regardless of how Princess goes off. The 9th will retreat if sufficiently damaged, and we would be wise to pursue them. Thus, I think taking systems is just a thing that is likely to happen, even if it proves temporary.

Pursuit through a defended gate, which the Arizona-Bestreer one is, is really, really difficult.
And don't assume that the SFREA would just shrug and let us do whatever we want to 9th Fleet in Arizona. Emily explicitly wants to fight a war against us, if we invade Arizona, even just in pursuit of 9th Fleet, whatever ships the SFREA can spare will fight us. As will the gate defences and strikecraft from the hangars they've been building. They're not going to simply roll over after building all that.

Like I said, we could probably fight the SFREA if we beat up 9th Fleet badly enough and the SFREA didn't have time for a buildup of their own, but I really, really don't want to.

MSH said:
My read of VB is that this is do or die for her. She's not going to stop because she can't stop, she'll come home to be arrested unless she defeats and occupies the AIC. The 9th might depose her and offer a return to ceasefire, but that radically changes the scenario such that prior planning is irrelevant.

It's do or die for RVB, but if she loses Bastion it's probably over. We'll see an officers coup if she isn't officially relieved.
The hard way where 1st and 2nd BG stay in Bestreer anyway is possible, but if the war ends with the loss of Bastion, then it's because RVB isn't a concern anymore.

MSH said:
Also, I just think it is important to make the lesson sink in on a stellarpolitical level that fighting us comes at a cost. It is paradoxically more pragmatic and more likely to lead to peace if we make additional demands or take systems, because if we don't manage that then it sends a lesson that we can be warred on and returned to ceasefire at will, and that they can just keep doing that sort of thing. There needs to be a serious consequence to the Compact as a result of VB's actions because it will force them to corral SolNav and the SFREA away from trying to Oops us. Won't help against the IPA, though.

Not too harsh, but neither too light. Just enough to be a loss that the Compact sees but does not obsess about returning. A loss that will be blamed on the act of attacking the AIC in the Compact's name, and thus entice them not to allow it to repeat.

That's exactly what we shouldn't do.
We will not be able to "teach the Compact a lesson."
The PM has pretty much no control over the SFREA and with SolNav it depends entirely on the Admiral, as we've just seen.
The entire point of the ceasefire is to divide and conquer. The assumption is that SolNav will break it once enough systems have been brought back in line diplomatically that the last holdouts can be overwhelmed.

If we get a ceasefire again with everything being blamed on RVB, then other Frontier Marshals can't easily use the same procedural trick on other systems anymore and the ceasefire is more likely to hold everywhere.

If we make ourselves a big enough problem by demanding that the PM needs to hand us some SFREA systems and keep the SFREA in line with the Triage Command, then I'll bet it's not going to be the loyalist-ish SFREA that'll be threatened with the Triage Command.
It'll be us. "Take the deal or die."
And I don't even know where to begin with your plan that dictating even more humiliating terms would force the PM (or who is "them"?) to "corral SolNav."
JN OK has literally zero ways of stopping the Spinward Triage Command from deleting our navy if it wants to, just like he had no way to stop RVB's pro gamer move.

MSH · Mar 5, 2023

Setsul said:
A DMZ within the SFREA's territory, and officially dissolving 9th Fleet and/or giving up its base is not politically palatable.

It is in the context of winning this war. We are not nothing. We are a danger, and a proven danger at that, since the Broadcast. The Compact didn't offer us a ceasefire out of pique, but out of recognition that a true reconquest of the current breakaways is beyond the means of the Compact. All of their recent diplomatic moves are meant to eventually stich us and the other breakaways back into the Compact on at least a basic level.

Sure, every fleet in the galaxy could fly over to the far spinward and crush us, but that's never going to happen, so it is irrelevant. It only matters what level of military engagement, and what level of relations, exists between us and the Compact. To fight us means taking away resources that could fight elsewhere. It is not something to be done casually, or it could worsen the Compact's stability even further.

If we had broken or simply refused the ceasefire, that would be one thing. It would show that we intend to continuously fight the Compact. However, we kept the ceasefire, and lost it on the failure of the Compact to maintain the loyalty of its admiral, a concern that they have very specifically had with the admirals before.

By doing what she has done, VB has put herself outside the Compact, and the 9th Fleet with her. That isn't officially true yet, but it will be if we win. It is in the interests of the Compact to limit the damage this action does to them, and damning the very memory of the 9th fleet is such a thing. It is in the interests of the Compact to re-establish the ceasefire, but nobody will actually believe we intend to take the same deal that got us invaded.

A DMZ is a more significant barrier to war, the 9th is practically and ideologically compromised beyond return, and we have shown we have the potential to join the total war revolutionaries. Given the choice between yet another fire and the radicalization of current fence sitters, and making a solid agreement and cutting a number of "pathetic far-flung colonies" loose, the correct choice for the Compact is obvious.

If the SFREA only cared about population numbers, they wouldn't have annexed Arizona.
They very much do care about territory, and the majority of that is in the Far Spinward.

According to the QMs, there have been some unspecified unfortunate events that further reduced the SFREA's fleet even beyond Blue Squadron leaving. They were not a match for Asgard before then, and they definitely not a match now. But they were never planning to fight Asgard.

The high population systems of the SFREA are Symphony, Echo, Trinity, Inspiration, and freshly Arizona. Symphony, Echo, and Trinity are all ones we should not touch. However, Arizona is barely a member of the SFREA and Princess will be occurring through Inspiration. Both of these are also defended by the 9th instead of SFREA battlegroups. Inspiration might be loyal, but it isn't clear as of yet. Arizona has reasons to join us and will likely be taken in the course of the war.

I did not know that the SFREA had been weakened, good to know. They might not be planning to fight Asgard, but they certainly can't ignore the possibility that Asgard could be planning to fight them. Symphony is a tempting prize for Ares, and Hermes-Ishtar is now weak. They expend ships fighting us over a survivable loss at their own risk. I don't want to fight the SFREA right now, but I bet they also do not want to fight us. By making this a Compact fuckup, they have an excuse to seek compensation from them instead.

I'll also point out that the SFREA's military forces, while significant, appear inferior to a standard SolNav fleet if their battlegroups are even remotely similar sizes.

Pursuit through a defended gate, which the Arizona-Bestreer one is, is really, really difficult.
And don't assume that the SFREA would just shrug and let us do whatever we want to 9th Fleet in Arizona. Emily explicitly wants to fight a war against us, if we invade Arizona, even just in pursuit of 9th Fleet, whatever ships the SFREA can spare will fight us. As will the gate defences and strikecraft from the hangars they've been building. They're not going to simply roll over after building all that.

Like I said, we could probably fight the SFREA if we beat up 9th Fleet badly enough and the SFREA didn't have time for a buildup of their own, but I really, really don't want to.

What the situation with the gate looks like will depend on the war, so it's not worth thinking about at the moment. Just gate defenses isn't much, while gate defenses plus a defending fleet typically take dreadnoughts. No telling where on that scale we will be.

However, so far as we know there are no SFREA battlegroups in Arizona or anywhere spinward of Trinity , only the 9th fleet. Travel lag will mean that if we do take Arizona, it will be weeks until the news reaches Symphony. They'll be about as mad at SolNav as they are at us for that, but sending their battlegroups spinward will still mean reducing the defense of their remaining systems. More importantly, however, they might be doing so in contravention of a Compact declaration of law.

It's do or die for RVB, but if she loses Bastion it's probably over. We'll see an officers coup if she isn't officially relieved.
The hard way where 1st and 2nd BG stay in Bestreer anyway is possible, but if the war ends with the loss of Bastion, then it's because RVB isn't a concern anymore.

I don't really see either of those things happening to VB. She's a warlord now. She intends to return with a prize to buy back her legitimacy, but the 9th fleet are outlaws even if many of them do not fully understand that yet. Because of this, official recall will not be accepted. An officer's coup is possible, but that is a rare and difficult thing. I think we've seen more rogue captains and enlisted revolts than we've seen officer's coups.

If VB dies fighting us, maybe then. Though if Princess works, then the 9th fleet isn't going to have anywhere to go regardless. Their docks and refitting facilities in Bastion will be destroyed. Surrender is also a possible end to this.

That's exactly what we shouldn't do. We will not be able to "teach the Compact a lesson." The PM has pretty much no control over the SFREA and with SolNav it depends entirely on the Admiral, as we've just seen. The entire point of the ceasefire is to divide and conquer. The assumption is that SolNav will break it once enough systems have been brought back in line diplomatically that the last holdouts can be overwhelmed.

The law of the Compact certainly doesn't protect regular people from the Charters, but it sure as hell protects the Compact from the Charters. Hermes-Ishtar, and thus the SFREA, are attempting to retain their status as a legitimate Charter. What the Compact agrees to falls upon them. Will they obey? It depends on how they feel about getting in real bad with a government that partially centers around an anti-Charter faction.

If we get a ceasefire again with everything being blamed on RVB, then other Frontier Marshals can't easily use the same procedural trick on other systems anymore and the ceasefire is more likely to hold everywhere.

If it is true that the ceasefires are simply to divide the revolutionaries for bite-sized reconquests, then this is a terrible outcome.

If we make ourselves a big enough problem by demanding that the PM needs to hand us some SFREA systems and keep the SFREA in line with the Triage Command, then I'll bet it's not going to be the loyalist-ish SFREA that'll be threatened with the Triage Command.
It'll be us. "Take the deal or die."
And I don't even know where to begin with your plan that dictating even more humiliating terms would force the PM (or who is "them"?) to "corral SolNav."
JN OK has literally zero ways of stopping the Spinward Triage Command from deleting our navy if it wants to, just like he had no way to stop RVB's pro gamer move.

We will not be demanding anything. We will simply be engaging alongside the Compact with the so-unfortunate material reality that in our rigorous self-defense against the foul postsolarian warlord Rina the Regulator, it was necessary for our security that we entered, occupied, provided philanthropic aid, and held popular referenda with several systems who's status is currently ambiguous due to the fact that they fell beneath the warlord state of the 9th Solarian Navy Fleet.

What a messy situation. We'd love to return to the ceasefire of course, we would never blame the Compact for the actions of a criminal SolNav Admiral, but there are a number of practical concerns that have to be addressed in how her rise and fall changed the landscape between us. After all, look at all these abuses and violations of Compact law we discovered, as well as these petitions for immediate sovereign commonwealth status by the populations of these systems.

Perhaps it would simply be to everyone's best interest if a wider cordon of zero military activity were created, while we attempt to renormalize relations with the Solarian Compact. And since that is the case, the systems beyond this cordon only naturally must be recognized as having a greater practical closeness to the AIC than the SFREA...

Edit: To be clear, I don't think we should attempt to force systems to join us through this. That would be quite foolish. It's just an effective means of creating a political narrative the Compact can agree to for leaving us and systems near us alone.

Redshirt Army · Mar 5, 2023

SFREA is not going to give up Arizona, not when they've been building up as a buffer against us alongside 9th fleet, nor will they surrender Inspiration. Similarly, there are exactly zero outcomes where Jason Nnamadi Okorie surrenders possession of the Bastion SolNav base that his father initially commissioned to a bunch of anarchists. We can maaaybe do something with Iyuhi, depending on what the ground conditions there are like and how deep the VDC's influence is, but Bastion, Inspiration, and Arizona will remain enemy territory.

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