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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bdun140 · May 2, 2023

Foreword by Bdun140: Not a lot of meat on this one, but I'm just happy to have managed to put words in front of other words in a way that kind of makes sense. Originally there was going to be one last entry from Rousseau, but I wasn't confident in my read on her character and Kiarael is too busy with the combat engine, so FUCK IT WE BALL.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
{In which Mobile Force writes poetry}

The Ultimatum was issued on Feburary 1st, and stated that the AIC had until March 31st to comply.

After a contentious debate that raged for more than a day, the General Congress decided to run out the clock, using the time they had to make preparations for the commencement of hostilities on April 1st.

Not long after, approval was given to War Plan PRINCESS. Thanks to the newly developed Wormhole Communicators, Frontier Force was given orders to redeploy to the expected front line of the brewing conflict days before it even would have been alerted to the issuing of the Ultimatum had it been limited to conventional communications.

With the die now cast, all Mobile Force can do is wait for Frontier Force to arrive, and count down the days until all hell breaks loose…

===============================
Posted to Open Archive on February 3rd, by Felix Hansen, posted under Freeform Poetry:
[Into The Maelstrom]

Top Rated Reviews:
Clumsy but earnest

Not bad for a first stab at freeform poetry

TBH I'm not sure I'd be able to keep it together if I knew I was gonna die, props to Hansen for admitting he isn't actually 100% sure he'll be able to do so himself

Am I the only one concerned by the implications of him literally calling this a DEATH POEM in the author's notes?!

===============================
Posted to Open Archive on February 9th, by Elizabeth Silverson, posted under Freeform Poetry:
[Danse Macabre]

Top Rated Reviews:
Inspired by her colleague's foray into poetry last week, and as wild and free wheeling as you would expect from the renegade heiress

A distinctly adrenaline-junky-ish look at combat, mixed with a love letter to the liberty that The Ultimatum is directly threatening

"Better a monster and a madwoman than a copy of a copy!" - If I'm not mistaken, this line right here is throwing some SERIOUS shade at her mom and grandma. Props for that.

Okay serious is folks hyping themselves up to FUCKING DIE going to be a thing now?! WTF?

================================
Posted to Open Archive on February 13th, by George Williams, posted under Religious Material:
[Prayer of the Free Man]

Top Rated Reviews:
Powerful stuff, distinct Sheolite influence but more hopeful than you tend to see from them

Weep, ye mighty, for those you have poisoned and harmed now rise. Weep, ye wealthy, for that which you have hoarded shall aid you not. Weep, ye slavers, for the judgment of the lord is upon ye.

Our ancestors smile on us from heaven, Dutchname. Yours watch from hell as you repeat their mistakes.

So I guess Mobile Force Death Poetry is a thing now. Not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. But it's 100% a thing.

=================================
Posted to Open Archive on February 18th, by Roark Macdougal, posted under Freeform Poetry:
[One Kind of Hero]

Top Rated Reviews:
Technical composition is only slightly better than some of the things my classmates and I wrote in highschool, but there's a nice emotional arc from the first verse to the last. A good first attempt, let's hope it won't be the last.

Harkening way, way back to the old earth anarchist Leslie Fish? Or arriving at a similar place from first principles? You decide.

It's an interesting cross-section of opinions that we've gotten so far. You have combat as a storm that descends if you're ready for it or not, as a chaotic yet exhilarating intersection of life and death, as a righteous calling to be faced with all possible courage, and now as a grim but necessary duty. You could write a paper on this.

Roark. It's Nick, from back on the Scutum. I know the death of Captain Pagonis hit you harder than you thought it would, I just want you to know we're here if you need us. Also, the new guy's shaping up pretty good, a bit twitchy but a fast learner. Stay safe out there.

=======================================================
Posted to Open Archive on Feburary 25th, by Andrew Dufort, posted under Song Lyrics:
[These are MY rocks]

Top Rated Reviews:
A cheerful little ditty about kicking ass and taking names, sung to the tune of a stuffy old song about excessive alcohol consumption. A polite but firm reminder that the point of war is not to die for your beliefs, but to make the other poor bastard die for his.

Someone should do a recording of this, not like the original copyright holders will be able to complain lmao.

Caught myself humming the tune to this, but it was Captain Dufort's version of the lyrics running through my head. Good work from the big dude.

Someone should send this to Dutchnames, make her think twice about coming through that gate.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
And there you have it. For Felix, and appropriately dramatic way to express his uncertainty and doubt, particularly in the wake of the Grim Reminder that was The Battle of Besteer-Arizona. For Elizabeth, a summation of all that she has become, and why she will never, EVER go back to the way things were. For George, a reaffirmation of his faith, and of the actions he takes in the name of his faith. For Roark, a means of coming to terms with his survivor's guilt, and to reassure himself that he will not be found wanting when the time comes. And for Andrew, an announcement that he thinks his fellow captains are being silly.

TheArcanist · May 2, 2023

Ultrackius said:
PENGLIA FALLS!!!!!!!!

ETERNAL VICTORY AGAINST THE COMPACT, TRIUMPH OVER A THOUSAND YEARS OF SLAVERY!

NO, COMRADE

PENGLAI LIVES, HAS LIVED, SHALL LIVE!

clockworkchaos · May 2, 2023

The Laurent said:
The Second Democratic Federation, whose remit now includes essentially all of North and South America, is not very attached to "American" except in the broadest, "Well we are on the continent" sense. They're even less attached than DemFed One.

However, on Penglai there are plenty of descendants of Blue Americans or (uniquely) Red/Black Americans, as well as dispossessed and angry survivors/following generations of the DemFed, and those at times have a more complicated relationship with "American-ness" than those who stayed in the DemFed and found themselves largely defined outside the scope of "American" identity.

clockworkchaos said:
They're attached to it only in the sense that Columbia can't have it (because Columbia wants it) because pissing on Columbia is now the official hobby of the western hemisphere of Earth. (Columibia was more than willing to make SA miserable in it's vengeance on the DF)

So like, giving this more thought than my slightly silly one, I don't think the Democratic federation identifies with America much, even for annoying Columbia, so they are willing to let Columbia claim it but...

Well I'm a transwoman, and one of the slurs used against me is TIM (Trans-identified Male). I don't 'identify' with the slur, I'm not male. I don't see it as me. But if someone starts talking about TIMs, I know they are talking about me, and I react like so. I think "American" for much of the DF, is the same. "American" in that sense is a insult about violent people who were never really civilized. Granted it was usually used against Columbia (there were worse slurs for DF) but it was one that insulted them by saying "you are like the Democratic Federation people" so still an insult. Not one they identify with, but one stuck to them, if that makes any sense?

The Laurent · May 2, 2023

Yeah, and in this case, Penglai is also a location for as I said Blue and at least a surprising number of Red/Blck Americans. It's also kinda, to an extent, a place a number of disaffected Columbians wind up going (relatively speaking) in the same, "Oh, if you're so Liberal, move to Europe" vibes of America.

So there is a small sub-population that has a very complicated relationship with "American-ness" via "Columbian-ness" via long-dead history that nonetheless informs some of their cultural processing.

AKuz · May 2, 2023

Suffice it to say that "American" is a very fraught term.

After the US collapsed and Christian Dominion groups did some stochastic ISIS/Heavenly Kingdom shit before the remainder of the former US became anarchist/communist/leftist. And as Europe made a fascist turn at the same time (not like RETVRN to 1930s fascism, but a new type of fascism which grew out of a reaction to the American Warlord Period and the return of mass proletarian politics at home inspired by that) "Americans" lost their Whiteness, or rather with the entire settler colonial project across the "new world" blowing up so spectacularly and completely they were retroactively declared to have always been broken for various ethnonationalist reasons and "White" as a racial category was quietly dropped as it'd always been mostly attached to the colonial program anyway.

(A lot was made about American populism, this being used to suppress Europe's own inclinations towards leftism by comparing any kind of populism with both the American left and right)

And as much of the rest of world didn't have fond memories of American Empire, all of the problems of climate change, global capitalism, and so forth were dropped at the feat of an Empire which had just slit its own throat and whose successor was disinclined to protect its good name. And even retroactively a lot was made of Chattle Slavery being a uniquely American enterprise, and the US always being an expansionist violent empire which refused to fully expand the franchise even to its dying day. (Imagine all the usual leftist complaints about the United States of America, except some European fascist is using them out of context of a wider capitalist system it to explain to you why ameromutts are subhumans and always were (Why even the Nazis were inspired by the Americans! The Nazis were bad, not like modern fascists, who are good. Hitler was too American and that's why he failed, by trying to implement American Manifest destiny.))

And with the way that the death of the Democratic Federation played out, the DF was painted as another apocalyptically fanatical rogue state who would kill the world rather than abandon a failing ideology. So American is often applied as a pejorative with a meaning of being fanatically inflexible, or being so fanatically wedded to a cause that you'd rather commit murder suicide than admit you were wrong.

There's a lot of caliper use and bad history deployed to link this to settler colonialism, Christianity, and some fundamental cultural defect in the Anglo character. But the practical upshot is that people expect an "American" to be blindly fanatical, xenophobic/isolationist, and always have an undercurrent of violence.

Someone in the 2250s who calls themself an American (And lives outside of Sol) tends to be completely unhinged. Because they're someone who looks at the stories of American Empire and goes "Based".

Naturually "American" as a geographic descriptor still exists, but much as the confusion between US citizens and inhabitants of the western hemisphere cause the term American to be a bit awkward to use purely geographically, the same sort of thing still applies in the future.... And there are people who live in the territory which used to be the USA and call themselves "Americans" proudly because to them America is throwing off the british crown, defeating the confederacy, killing Nazis, kicking the Army of God's Law off the continent, and saving the world from climate change. And that's what they they and their ancestors have been. (And like, in that context it's often also used in a recuperative sense. Especially in the early days of the DF "American" could mean "The 'Whites' and 'Christians' tried to exclude us from their country, but we have every right to be here as they do. We are equals. They tried to deny us America, but we took it with our own two hands!" Identity is complicated!)

Angelform · May 2, 2023

AKuz said:
"American"

I am continually amazed at how cursed you manage to make your worldbuilding.
Particularly given the setting has borderline post-scarcity levels of technology.

AKuz · May 2, 2023

Angelform said:
I am continually amazed at how cursed you manage to make your worldbuilding.
Particularly given the setting has borderline post-scarcity levels of technology.

Thank you, this is high praise indeed!

>: )

Whenyouseeyou · May 2, 2023

Holy shit wow no one likes America as an identity anymore figures because they ruin themselves in the modern era

AKuz · May 2, 2023

Whenyouseeyou said:
Holy shit wow no one likes America as an identity anymore figures because they ruin themselves in the modern era

One of the issues is that it was hard to recuperate the brand because the people with media reach in the capitalist world were invested on Othering Americans. And because during the American Warlord Period Christian Dominionists stochasically Taiping Heavenly Kingdom'd a hundred million people in the name of "America" it wasn't as hard as it otherwise would have been.

It's vaguely like how "Russian" as an identity is really not super popular in the "western" world right now and people start talking about "The Russian psyche longing for the Tsars" and shit like that.

Again, there is a positive "American" identity there.... On Earth and in some areas of the former US, and there is no will by outside forces to address that identity as anything other an a weird curiosity like the people who said they were Romans when Greek Authorities arrived in the 1920s to tell them they were Greek, actually.

Professor Vesca · May 2, 2023

AKuz said:
Suffice it to say that "American" is a very fraught term.

After the US collapsed and Christian Dominion groups did some stochastic ISIS/Heavenly Kingdom shit before the remainder of the former US became anarchist/communist/leftist. And as Europe made a fascist turn at the same time (not like RETVRN to 1930s fascism, but a new type of fascism which grew out of a reaction to the American Warlord Period and the return of mass proletarian politics at home inspired by that) "Americans" lost their Whiteness, or rather with the entire settler colonial project across the "new world" blowing up so spectacularly and completely they were retroactively declared to have always been broken for various ethnonationalist reasons and "White" as a racial category was quietly dropped as it'd always been mostly attached to the colonial program anyway.

(A lot was made about American populism, this being used to suppress Europe's own inclinations towards leftism by comparing any kind of populism with both the American left and right)

And as much of the rest of world didn't have fond memories of American Empire, all of the problems of climate change, global capitalism, and so forth were dropped at the feat of an Empire which had just slit its own throat and whose successor was disinclined to protect its good name. And even retroactively a lot was made of Chattle Slavery being a uniquely American enterprise, and the US always being an expansionist violent empire which refused to fully expand the franchise even to its dying day. (Imagine all the usual leftist complaints about the United States of America, except some European fascist is using them out of context of a wider capitalist system it to explain to you why ameromutts are subhumans and always were (Why even the Nazis were inspired by the Americans! The Nazis were bad, not like modern fascists, who are good. Hitler was too American and that's why he failed, by trying to implement American Manifest destiny.))

And with the way that the death of the Democratic Federation played out, the DF was painted as another apocalyptically fanatical rogue state who would kill the world rather than abandon a failing ideology. So American is often applied as a pejorative with a meaning of being fanatically inflexible, or being so fanatically wedded to a cause that you'd rather commit murder suicide than admit you were wrong.

There's a lot of caliper use and bad history deployed to link this to settler colonialism, Christianity, and some fundamental cultural defect in the Anglo character. But the practical upshot is that people expect an "American" to be blindly fanatical, xenophobic/isolationist, and always have an undercurrent of violence.

Someone in the 2250s who calls themself an American (And lives outside of Sol) tends to be completely unhinged. Because they're someone who looks at the stories of American Empire and goes "Based".

Naturually "American" as a geographic descriptor still exists, but much as the confusion between US citizens and inhabitants of the western hemisphere cause the term American to be a bit awkward to use purely geographically, the same sort of thing still applies in the future.... And there are people who live in the territory which used to be the USA and call themselves "Americans" proudly because to them America is throwing off the british crown, defeating the confederacy, killing Nazis, kicking the Army of God's Law off the continent, and saving the world from climate change. And that's what they they and their ancestors have been. (And like, in that context it's often also used in a recuperative sense. Especially in the early days of the DF "American" could mean "The 'Whites' and 'Christians' tried to exclude us from their country, but we have every right to be here as they do. We are equals. They tried to deny us America, but we took it with our own two hands!" Identity is complicated!)

Truly these are the most American of all the Americans. Throwing down Tyrants from their thrones and beating them with their own crowns is a long and storied American tradition! Even, especially, when those tyrants are ourselves.

greendoor · May 2, 2023

AKuz said:
Suffice it to say that "American" is a very fraught term.

NGL, I can almost see the concept of Anglo-Americans losing perceived whiteness in Europe's eyes be a kind of poetic justice given how conditional our acceptance of perceived racial minorities has always been. The Empire reduced to yet another periphery full of uncivilized others.

Almost poetic justice, because there is no justice to be found under capitalism or racial hierarchies, no matter how ironic the result.

I can also absolutely see Europe doing exactly this, given how some people like to talk about how inherently racist and violent Americans are (and also Americans talking about Chinese and Russian people being 'Inherently authoritarian'). Otherizing people is easy.

So uh, extremely cursed and also painfully plausible. Well done.

AKuz · May 2, 2023

greendoor said:
NGL, I can almost see the concept of Anglo-Americans losing perceived whiteness in Europe's eyes be a kind of poetic justice given how conditional our acceptance of perceived racial minorities has always been. The Empire reduced to yet another periphery full of uncivilized others.

Almost poetic justice, because there is no justice to be found under capitalism or racial hierarchies, no matter how ironic the result.

I can also absolutely see Europe doing exactly this, given how some people like to talk about how inherently racist and violent Americans are (and also Americans talking about Chinese and Russian people being 'Inherently authoritarian'). Otherizing people is easy.

So uh, extremely cursed and also painfully plausible. Well done.

Yeah, we tend to draw this stuff from current trends then extrapolate.

So you get Europeans pointing at American School Shootings, leading directly into the Warlord Period and then with no irony turn around and say some of the most heinous shit you've ever heard. (But of course there are also people in Europe who think that's bullshit and wave red and black flags... shit's complicated!)

And in our world you can't really give a blanket statement like "All Amerians are bastards, and no one likes the term", because that's casting a wide net over real people! These things are always complicated!

So like, during the American Warlord Period, you're going to have the Christian Identarian Fascist child soldier who is fighting for "America" standing in a battlefield across from both the "White" cismale dude who fucking loves Union Dixie, loves Unions, hates the British Monarchy, thinks America is the land of opportunity and the second generation "non-white" immigrant who both consider themselves "American" as well.

Then because the DF was such a patchwork there was no one to impose an "American" identity, and those who wanted to discard it did so, while others hung on, even as "American" to them sort of faded into a complicated regional identity as they wrestled with their own history... And then the DF was forcibly collapsed.

ThatGazzer · May 2, 2023

PUNK GAN EDAN

CHAPTER 4:
HAS-BEEN

"...you always
cursed when you drank,
your hair
coming down
you wanted to explode
out of
what was holding you:
Rotten Memories
of a
Rotten
Past—
and you finally got
out
by dying,
leaving me with the
Rotten
Present."
— Eulogy To A Hell Of A Dame,
Charles Bukowski

You're not entirely sure how you ended up here.

[MENTAL WIKI]: Morbid curiosity?

[INLAND ISEKAI]: A desperate need for distraction?

[EMPATHY]: A desire for understanding?

[L'ESPRIT DE CAPITALE]: To account for what you owe?

[PAIN THRESHOLD]: Or pure Masochism.

[LOGIC]: No, the most likely answer is all of the above.

Garte, for reasons beyond you at the time, but in hindsight probably amounted to wanting you and your general Youness to be away from him. Also— he probably thought your reaction would be funny? People are hard to understand, sometimes.

In any case, he'd lead you to the security office, which had basically lain empty and unused since the early days of what Garte Called "The Return."

You asked him why he called it that. He just gave you a look and muttered "tourists" as if it explained anything.

[EMPATHY]: If you really want to know, you'll have to earn his trust. Garte is not a man who is often vulnerable, or willing to share.

He'd shown you how to pull up the files, and tell the VI which face in its library of guest pictures it was meant to find, and focus on and what days.

And being perfectly honest with yourself?

It was so much worse than you imagined. But also— in entirely different ways than you had imagined.

[AESTHETIC]: Surprisingly tasteful angles, though. Then again, it is Hermes-Ishtar Surveillance.

How do you mean? You're interested, but you are somewhat distracted as you watch a stranger in your body yell and half mumble an incoherent but strangely compelling mess of poetry, song lyrics, political jargon and occasional digressions into Self-Loathing that she somehow turns into a larger point against systems of oppression.
[L'ESPRIT DE CAPITALE]: They're set up to make it easy to turn any shot into potential Commercial Fodder, while this requires more cameras to make it truly effective at the job of security. However HI in general sees this as a feature— not a bug. Requires the consumer to buy more cameras, more often.

"Flesh covers the bone!" slurs the past Silvia Green from the footage, currently at a tight angle, the lighting casting her half in darkness. It's a little too dramatic to be real and you think the VI is doing live Color Grading and FX to fit the perceived mood of the footage.

[PERSPICACITY] (Challenging Success): Interesting. Her Nose isn't broken. Wherever that happened, it happened *after* this. During the Drugs?

"aand the flesh searches for more than flesh!" You watch as The Used-To-Be-You stumbles her way up onto the stage. "there's no chance at aaallll!" she opines, caterwauling into the mic. The few Patons still awake this late look on, their morbid fascination mirrors your own. "We are all trapped by a singular fate! Nobody…nobody…fuck…I forget the rest. I'll just…go now." it was a pity, it was like watching a fire sputter out. She deflates, all the gusto of the past few minutes suddenly gone. She looks so tired all of the sudden, and so very sad.

[MENTAL WIKI]: "nobody ever finds the one." That's how that stanza finishes. It's a 20th century poem by C. Bukowski. Alone With Everybody. Published as part of his 1977 collection Love Is A Dog From Hell.

That's depressing. You note, squinting at the touchscreen and pulling it to zoom in just a bit more.

[AESTHETIC] (Easy Success): Bukowski was a man of extremes, when it came to his writing, his most well known work was either bitterly sad or desperately hopeful. I can see why it resonates with her.

Her—

Not–

You.

It feels like a slip of the tongue from your inner artist – but it feels right.

You're watching a recording of Silvia Green trip and stumble as she makes her way out of the room, muttering to herself…

She really doesn't feel like you.

And it hurts. Like a hot iron rod through the chest, it hurts— Looking at her you'd hoped for this to stir some memory, or create some connection or recognition.

Anything.

She has your face, sure.
She has your voice, sure.
She even walks the same, when she isn't doing so over her own feet.

But there is Nothing there.

So the question is, what walks like a duck, talks like a duck, acts like a duck.

But isn't a duck?

The security room is cold. Abel is just outside. You had asked for privacy. You run a hand through your hair and the motion fails to soothe you, but you keep trying anyway.

[COMPOSURE] (Impossible Failure): Why does it hurt so much?
"She left me behind." You accuse under your breath. And there is so much in those words. She did not choose to make you. You did not choose to be born. She did not choose to die, if what she did could be called dying. But She did leave you behind.

With that, you took on her burdens. Fulfill her promises, fix her life, solve her problems.

You aren't her.

Looking at her now, seeing her as she was.

You cannot be.

You are made up of the same parts— perhaps the same thoughts, in a strange new configuration. Silvia Greene broke herself— throwing herself into the Void-Sea and it dashed her against the Cliffs and you are what crawled up and out.

An eldritch creature, fresh and newborn from the deepest depths of the dark ocean of her mind.

Just

You.

[PHARMACOLOGICAL]: Fuck, Soul-Sister, I could really go for that smoke.

[GRINDSET]: Shit, I'll second that! Get your head back in the game, Hoss!

[VOLUTION]: I'd rather we not lean on chemical assistance like this. But for once – I get it.

You snort, correcting yourself.

You and your…Gallery of Broken Parts.

[INLAND ISEKAI]: Ohhh! I wish I had thought of that name.

LOADING…
Tip: *Most people* are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions— their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
LOADING…

"Abe." You step out of that dark little reliquary of someone else's memories. "Could I have a smoke?"

[PROPRIOCEPTION] (Easy Failure): Your hand is already reaching for the pocket they're hidden away in.

[PHARMACOLOGICAL]: Bless you, my sister! The grand quest of My Life is so close to completion!

He raises a single brow, his lips slightly down turned.

[EMPATHY]: It's an expression of deep concern from a man as reserved as Abel.

"That bad…?" Itsumi pauses, as if stumbling over the words.

Why?

[DISCOURSE]: He's hesitating because he's not sure what to call you at this moment. The man may have been a spy, but he only ever was only pretending to be himself and doing very little actual spycraft. This is not a game he's played. Shall we prompt him a little?

Discourse shoulders her way through your crowded mind to you from the Gallery, and the closer that she gets, the clearer you can almost see her.

Like every Aspect, it is a synesthetic experience, a mixing of sensation that feels dreamlike as it intrudes into the real.

Discourse is, as best as you can put it— Purple. Purple soft, like velvet gloves or Purple smooth like dark aged wine. Purple refined, like royalty. Purple loud, like a wholesale-auto-owners tie. Purple sweet, like your favorite grape candy. Purple in whatever shade she needs to be— The only thing that ties it all together is her confidence.

It is that confidence that makes you think that The Expression would fit better on her than you.

Confidence— After all *is* the defining trait of a Con Artist.

[DISCOURSE]: "Holmes. Lets you and I just stick with Holmes, Abe. It's a good name, and it fits me better than the last one. I trust you understand?"

When Discourse speaks, she speaks not *for* you but with you— letting you lean on that confidence.

"Very well, Holmes" he nods, handing you one (1) single cigarette into your trembling (and totally eager) hands. "But if you start calling me Watson, I'm never letting you pick a codename for yourself ever again."

You smile a little at the joke as the pair of you walk outside the hotel, when Capitale notices something in the way of his word choice.

[L'ESPRIT DE CAPITALE]: He thinks it's part of the job, doesn't he? That the rebranding is ultimately a temporary ploy. You'll have to say something, eventually— that this is a change of management. Before he figures it out for himself.

Right. Add it to the list. And check this one off.

[INLAND ISEKAI]: You drag deep from this tubular salvation, the Cannaco™ branded paper hissing as it burns, like a drug filled snake that was stepped on in the middle of its nap – the burn a fanged bite – Its venom flows into you, and the ache is an old friend.

(Quest Complete! Weed Habit Acquired.)

(Quest Added: Really Tell Abe Who You Are)

[PROPRIOCEPTION]: in goes the smoke to your lungs, past your bronchi and into your bloodstream. Tension you had not known you were holding is released, muscle uncoiling as you savor the feeling, then exhale.

[PHARMACOLOGICAL]: Told you we needed this! We're gonna need this kind of energy Soul-Sister – if we wanna work this negotiation thing in top form.

[LOGIC] (Medium Success): You really only feel better because you're going through withdrawal. This indulgence has abated it, for the moment. It will be back.

[PHARMACOLOGICAL]: Way to harsh the vibe, dude.

[LOGIC]: Wasn't meant as an admonishment. For every action or inaction there is a response, a re-action, an if/then rule. The Universe is made up of them. The fact of the matter is you cannot avoid this withdrawal, you can only put it aside for a little while. Know that you will face it eventually and prepare.

You nod quietly in agreement with yourself.

"So while you were doing whatever…that was in the security room," Abel interjects, undoubtedly noticing your drifting focus. "I made a list. People we need to talk to, in order to make sure the negotiations go smoothly. We should start with the Royal Holdings representatives, which I don't know much about, besides rumors of infighting, we'll want to figure that out before we can move forward. Then there are two major factions within The London Commune keeping their side of the current unofficial ceasefire. The Billy Shakes Vanguard and The Tunnelrat Union."

Wow. "Those are some…interesting names." You finally push out between sweet sweet breaths of smoke.

Abel lifts the right corner of his lip in an almost imperceptible smirk. "True enough. But the names are sensible within context. The BSV for example are literally a quasi-Adamist militant group composed almost entirely of Former the various London Cast Members and their dependents. Name comes from the fact that they trace their origins to the RSC-"

RSC?

[MENTAL WIKI] (Easy Success): An abbreviation of The Royal Shakespeare Company, previously known as the Shakespeare Memorial Company. Which was refounded under the new name in the mid 20th century, the name remained until England was bought out by HI, who then renamed it the Shakespeare Experience Club. (a name which lasted for 5 years before it was quietly changed back and people gaslit into thinking they'd collectively imagined it.)

Why do we know so much about Shakespeare? And why does it feel like this? There are quotes, of course, a synopsis of his works in your ramshackle brain. But something about it resonates within the echo chamber of your soul that Greene left.

[AESTHETIC]: During college, Greene's final project for her minor in design was a home concept that suggested themes of Shakespeare's work. She focused primarily on The Tempest as her source of inspiration. His own final of a sort— she found the symmetry quietly amusing, and followed the thread.
In those frantic passion filled nights of work,
She became most herself. Just as we are becoming.
She is dead, my Darling. That we know, now.
But everything she was will haunt us, how could it not?
After all-

"-Hell is empty and all the devils are here." Abel's words snap into focus like a radio signal as they match frequencies with your inner world, and you realize you've disassociated again somewhere in the middle of what he was saying.

"Sorry Abel, what?"

"Hell is Empty, or Infernus Inanis Est" he repeats, in the same tone one uses to describe the weather. "It's the BSV's motto. Perhaps they picked it to sound scary? Some Black Catholicism in the group? Something to keep in mind." You see him flick a inklus out of his pocket and click it to write into a notepad, then flipping back a page.

[PERSPICACITY] (Hard Success): His notes are written in a tight hand, neat and practiced in a way that suggests many long hours of writing in the traditional fashion, a rarity for most in an age where children learn to type before they learn to write, but what really draws your attention are the little doodles in the margins. They are remarkably cute, a chubby disproportionate rat in cover-alls and a hardhat is half falling into a junction box. Not a talent you would imagine the straightlaced Abel to have.

[L'ESPRIT DE CAPITALE]: He spent many long hours waiting for someone's husband to cheat, and many other configurations of that same job besides. What else is there to do, when the tedium of capital demands the whole of your attention even when it does not need it? Capital only cares for art when the art or artist is dead. It does not pay any mind to doodles until it has sucked everything else of value out of a person.

"As for the Tunnelrats, they're the backend gigs, mostly living and working in the converted Old Underground, they're the electricians, plumbers, connectivity servicers, waste collectors, everything that keeps the city running, all kept hidden away by HI as to avoid 'ruining immersion'."

[EMPATHY]: He seems more comfortable as he explains, this sort of work is more his speed, speculation, information, facts. His is a world of knowns and unknowns, certainties and hypotheses. He would have been a skilled Analyst.

[L'ESPRIT DE CAPITALE]: Fitting— It was all but his unofficial title, before this.

"There are of course front end service industries that required someone to play a character, but by and large, it was kept out of sight and out of mind. The work was seen as unsightly, embarrassing and," he is quoting directly from the page, now. "'low-skilled work'. The Tunnelrats used this layer of ignominy to deflect eyes as they built up and distributed Boxes and gathered feedstock, often sourced from the very trash that tourists threw away and consumerism encouraged."

[AESTHETIC] (Easy Success): There's a kind of poetry to that — isn't there Darling?

[THEORY]: It's a beautiful thing, a well organized revolution. Wish We could have seen it happening. Being on the ground for that would have been fascinating!

You can't help but agree, but still, you're sort of glad you weren't. You don't seem built for the kind of hard labor that would require? You and Abel have only been walking for 15 minutes and you already feel out of breath.

[PHARMACOLOGICAL]: That's the smoke inhalation. For a hand-me-down body its not *that* bad, ya dig? Plus the hangover, probable blood loss, low-blood sugar, lack of REM sleep. It doesn't add up to a healthy body, Soul-Sister. She really ran the thing ragged before We got here.

The edge of the inklus traces his notes, the speed smooth and consistent. "They're larger than the BSV, and function as a sort of Congress under which dozens of smaller union groups can organize, like the Gofers. As a result, they are less unified politically than the Vanguard. At least, based on my preliminary observations." he shrugs and you can't help but feel you're missing something.

"What about the RH Reps? The Bougie Landlords, Do we know where they're staying?"

"The Golden Apple, a yacht docked nearby." Abel nods, with a slight frown. "They have thus far refused to leave it. Hence the limited information on them. All we do know is that the Current Crown Prince, one Charles-Howard Middleton, also known by the Streamer-Tag RoyalChow personally selected one, the other is a career HI folk. Or what's left of HI, now."

You find a hand running through your hair and you sigh. "You're gonna have to help cover me a little there Abel. When it comes down to it, my brain is kind of...swiss cheesy in consistency. I can baffle them with bullshit, keep a strong front going— but I need you as a counterweight, keep us all upright."

He nods, and gently takes the burning stub of the cigarette from your hand —Your attention having drifted from it some time ago— he drops it on the ground and stomps it out with a heel, "Don't worry, 'Detective'." Abe raises an amused brow, his ears twitch, bending, focusing on some noise you are not built to hear, or perhaps expressing some bit of body language you do not have context for. "I'm well used to keeping you balanced. It's what you hired me for."

[L'ESPRIT DE CAPITALE] (Easy Success): He says it in such a way that what he really means is "I would do this for you even if you didn't pay me." You owe each other too much to count your debts by something as paltry as numbers.

[EMPATHY]: It's been said once, we'll say it again. In all the ways that matter, he is your brother. Possibly the only family you actually have, Holmes.

Why is that the most expressive part of his face is the upper third?

[INLAND ISEKAI]: I wonder if the first Elfmorph designed the ears to do that because it happened in anime or because of some practical reason?

[MENTAL WIKI]: Both, it's probably both.

[LOGIC]: It is in part because you avoid eye contact, that is the section of his face you spend your time looking at, so it is the part you notice the most.

Oh shush.

LOADING…
Tip: As it turns out, we don't "all" have to pay our debts. Only some of us do.
LOADING…

You've not gotten close to the yacht, yet but you can see it already, standing where you are on the Quick-Rail platform. It's hard not to, when it glows gently in the light like it does. Blocking and yet reflecting the sun— like the moon would.

[COMPOSURE] (Hard Failure): Fuck me that's huge. Don't make eye contact with it, it might see that as aggressive and squish us. Look down and away!

But you turn your eyes away from it to see where it's actually sitting. It's taken up a section near the end of the River, not too far from where it empties out into the sea.

A Dockyard is nearby, where The Golden Apple is mored, you come up to a corroding pastel sign, shot through with bullet holes — from some recent skirmish before the ceasefire? — proudly proclaiming TIDEPOINTE LONDON LUX MOORING & DOCKING.

The wind is cold and damp and filled with salt. It pushes out into the sea and you cannot help but feel as if the vast bend of the ocean before you is somehow calling you to it.

[INLAND ISEKAI]: This used to be Southend, but most of England is London, now. The Wind shoots through creaking wood and metal. It almost sounds like a woman in mourning.

[THEORY]: It's funny, England used to be *the* Colonial Power, and what remains was forced into eating itself to survive. Its people and culture flattened into an amusing caricature, a plaything in the hands of uncaring elites. What goes around comes around, I suppose.

These are actual people we're talking about. You protest internally, frowning.

[THEORY]: It was actual people the Colonial Machine was chewing up then too.

[L'ESPRIT DE CAPITALE]: That's the thing, isn't it? The gearing is finer, the tech more advanced. But it's still the same Machine.

This is digressing a little too far from the subject at hand.

You mentally move past the discussion in the Gallery until it feels more like a murmur, white noise in the back of your head.

By the time you do that, you're actually near the berth where The Golden Apple rests to make out detail.

It's Huge. And like its namesake, absolutely covered in gold and other obvious signs of material wealth.
[PERSPICACITY]: Wait a second, on that third deck there, with the Transparent Alloy windows. That's a whole park. No…not a park…oh god is that a golf course?

You glance over at the spot, and note the vague shape of a Windmill from within. You shake with an involuntary shudder of disgust, like when you smelled your breath this morning. You're almost certain you hate Golf, but you can't place a finger on why.

The Yacht itself is fully too big for one berth, now that you're looking, It seems to take up twice the space that it needs too, the amount of opulence on display giving it the weight and mass that existed beyond it's already impressive physical form.

[LOGIC]: It is sort of shocking that it's even floating on water in the first place. They have to be using some metamaterial in its construction to even keep it buoyant with the amount of actual gold this thing is covered in.

[AESTHETIC] (Hard Success): The Yacht— this Golden Apple— can hardly be called a ship. It is a hideous thing, grotesque in its opulence, and bute-like in countenance. If it was at all comfortable in itself, or even self aware, one might call it Camp! But No! Whoever designed this was a soulless fucking cubejocky who fed a VI Wealthy sounding Keywords! It exists only as a temple to its own grandiosity, it is— in a word, Gauche.

There's something truly withering in the way Aesthetic says that. It is a biting judgment that makes the imposing stature of the ship somehow lesser to your eye. More like a child's toy blown wildly out of scale, rather than some floating castle on the River.

What strikes you first at this moment is something this big? It could be housing a complex worth of families and individuals, easy! and its primary occupants are only two people, plus whatever staff is needed to actually make it run.

All you can think about now is what a waste of space it is.
Aloud you say "It's sort of…ugly, isn't it?"

Abel hums in agreement, ears twitching with unstated laughter. "That's underselling it."

[DISCOURSE]: Now would be a good time to check in with Abe, Chairwoman. Before you go into the lion's den.

"Looks like it has a golf course." You offer, studying his reaction to see if he too shares your loathing of golf.

[DISCOURSE]: I wasn't talking about that, but nice icebreaker I guess? We could use this.

Abe gives you a glance and raises a brow "I've always been more of a pinball person, myself."

You are about to give a witty return when a throat is cleared nearby.

[COMPOSURE] (Easy Success): You start, shoulders leaping an inch before you're back in control of your body. Calmly, slowly, you turn.

[PERSPICACITY] (Formidable Success): Before you is a tall gaunt faced man whose lean body and soft unmarred hands and fine, perfectly unruffled clothes and too clean bullet proof vest all but scream at you "I was bred for war but I personally have never seen a gun, let alone touched a real one" He is physically impressive, and perhaps even well trained, but he is as new to the idea of actual war and conflict as you are to the universe itself.

[L'ESPRIT DE CAPITALE]: He was a child once, in many ways a child still. He misses his mother, his brothers. He is and has always been a faithful son. That does not mean he is innocent. far from it.

[DRAMA]: As The Bard once said, Sire. Here's the smell of the blood still! all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.

"Good day, Miss," The Gaunt Man says, looking down his hawkish nose at you, all the while ignoring Abel as if he were made of air —already mentally filed away as 'The Help'— something that if you're judging Abel's reaction right he is used to, but still deeply annoyed by. "I am Sir Robert Buteo The Fourth, Knight-Retainer for the Royal House Middleton and Representative of His Highness's interests here in Sol. Dame White is inside, please, come aboard. We've been expecting you for some time."

[AUTHORITY]: He probably isn't lying. But the important thing is, every single gesture and word he has used is purely an attempt to assert an implied hierarchy that places him at the top.

[DRAMA]: He knows what he's doing, Sire. The Duel is already at hand, ready thy blade and riposte!

You smile at him with perfect teeth and breath that smells like tobacco and weed, choosing to entirely ignore his subtle social signaling with all the grace of a bulldozer and a sort of manic persona that feels like a perfect rebuff of his play, at least in the moment. "Hello Bobby, I'm Judith Holmes," you point beside you to Abe, not speaking, and starring unblinkingly until he is acknowledged, hesitantly, with a nod. "That's Abel! It's a lovely day, and your uselessly big golden dildo of a boat is ruining everyone's view of the harbor. But I suppose we all have our jobs to do, eh? So come on!"

You walk past the man on the gangplank, The Knight stares at you, mouth agape. You only put your hands triumphantly on your hips as you reach the main deck, tie fluttering in the wind.
"Let's talk!" You cannot see it, but you can feel your perpetual expression take a sharper air. Your Impression is made. Buteo knows now that he cannot simply strong arm you with status. He is not cowed, but you can already see his mind working as he rethinks his strategy.

The metaphorical knife that is your tongue rasps against your teeth, and you ready yourself for the conversational fight of your life.

CornyBones · May 2, 2023

AKuz said:
Suffice it to say that "American" is a very fraught term.

After the US collapsed and Christian Dominion groups did some stochastic ISIS/Heavenly Kingdom shit before the remainder of the former US became anarchist/communist/leftist. And as Europe made a fascist turn at the same time (not like RETVRN to 1930s fascism, but a new type of fascism which grew out of a reaction to the American Warlord Period and the return of mass proletarian politics at home inspired by that) "Americans" lost their Whiteness, or rather with the entire settler colonial project across the "new world" blowing up so spectacularly and completely they were retroactively declared to have always been broken for various ethnonationalist reasons and "White" as a racial category was quietly dropped as it'd always been mostly attached to the colonial program anyway.

(A lot was made about American populism, this being used to suppress Europe's own inclinations towards leftism by comparing any kind of populism with both the American left and right)

And as much of the rest of world didn't have fond memories of American Empire, all of the problems of climate change, global capitalism, and so forth were dropped at the feat of an Empire which had just slit its own throat and whose successor was disinclined to protect its good name. And even retroactively a lot was made of Chattle Slavery being a uniquely American enterprise, and the US always being an expansionist violent empire which refused to fully expand the franchise even to its dying day. (Imagine all the usual leftist complaints about the United States of America, except some European fascist is using them out of context of a wider capitalist system it to explain to you why ameromutts are subhumans and always were (Why even the Nazis were inspired by the Americans! The Nazis were bad, not like modern fascists, who are good. Hitler was too American and that's why he failed, by trying to implement American Manifest destiny.))

And with the way that the death of the Democratic Federation played out, the DF was painted as another apocalyptically fanatical rogue state who would kill the world rather than abandon a failing ideology. So American is often applied as a pejorative with a meaning of being fanatically inflexible, or being so fanatically wedded to a cause that you'd rather commit murder suicide than admit you were wrong.

There's a lot of caliper use and bad history deployed to link this to settler colonialism, Christianity, and some fundamental cultural defect in the Anglo character. But the practical upshot is that people expect an "American" to be blindly fanatical, xenophobic/isolationist, and always have an undercurrent of violence.

Someone in the 2250s who calls themself an American (And lives outside of Sol) tends to be completely unhinged. Because they're someone who looks at the stories of American Empire and goes "Based".

Naturually "American" as a geographic descriptor still exists, but much as the confusion between US citizens and inhabitants of the western hemisphere cause the term American to be a bit awkward to use purely geographically, the same sort of thing still applies in the future.... And there are people who live in the territory which used to be the USA and call themselves "Americans" proudly because to them America is throwing off the british crown, defeating the confederacy, killing Nazis, kicking the Army of God's Law off the continent, and saving the world from climate change. And that's what they they and their ancestors have been. (And like, in that context it's often also used in a recuperative sense. Especially in the early days of the DF "American" could mean "The 'Whites' and 'Christians' tried to exclude us from their country, but we have every right to be here as they do. We are equals. They tried to deny us America, but we took it with our own two hands!" Identity is complicated!)

How does this play into an entire ship class being called the United States of America? Hubris? Secret Public Discrimination? Nobody thought about the subtext of naming a ship class the equivalent of"""Hitler Nazi""""

AKuz · May 2, 2023

CornyBones said:
How does this play into an entire ship class being called the United States of America? Hubris? Secret Public Discrimination? Nobody thought about the subtext of naming a ship class the equivalent of"""Hitler Nazi""""

Ares Capital craft were all named after historical Empires. Kiel Mutiny is a Kaiserreich class vessel that was succeed by a Deutsches Reich-class. There is a Soyuz Sovyetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik class, that is newer Much older craft were like "Imperium Romanum", and there absolutely was a "Großdeutsches Reich" class warship!

AKuz · May 2, 2023

Suffice it to say that Ares was being edgy with their naming scheme, they thought they were cute by having the successor to the British Empire class fleet carrier be the United States of America class. Presumably the successor to the United States of America class would be the Democratic Federation-class

notbirdofprey · May 2, 2023

JustGazzer said:
-Snip-

You smile at him with perfect teeth and breath that smells like tobacco and weed, choosing to entirely ignore his subtle social signaling with all the grace of a bulldozer and a sort of manic persona that feels like a perfect rebuff of his play, at least in the moment. "Hello Bobby, I'm Judith Holmes," you point beside you to Abe, not speaking, and starring unblinkingly until he is acknowledged, hesitantly, with a nod. "That's Abel! It's a lovely day, and your uselessly big golden dildo of a boat is ruining everyone's view of the harbor. But I suppose we all have our jobs to do, eh? So come on!"

You walk past the man on the gangplank, The Knight stares at you, mouth agape. You only put your hands triumphantly on your hips as you reach the main deck, tie fluttering in the wind.
"Let's talk!" You cannot see it, but you can feel your perpetual expression take a sharper air. Your Impression is made. Buteo knows now that he cannot simply strong arm you with status. He is not cowed, but you can already see his mind working as he rethinks his strategy.

The metaphorical knife that is your tongue rasps against your teeth, and you ready yourself for the conversational fight of your life.

This whole thing was beautiful, but the ending as Judith shut the pompous ass down was glorious!

greendoor · May 2, 2023

AKuz said:
Ares Capital craft were all named after historical Empires.

So what I'm hearing is sometime soon we're going to see a Solarian Compact-class warship out of Ares.

CyberFemme · May 2, 2023

JustGazzer said:
The metaphorical knife that is your tongue rasps against your teeth...

I love this, and I especially love this line.

AKuz · May 2, 2023

CornyBones said:
How does this play into an entire ship class being called the United States of America? Hubris? Secret Public Discrimination? Nobody thought about the subtext of naming a ship class the equivalent of"""Hitler Nazi""""

Like I hasten to clarify that "American" isn't some uniquely evil term. It's often used by extra-solar or old world populations in a derogatory manner that is driven by bigotry and victim blaming of an impoverished population

"Americans" deserve to be poor because they're bad people, so the savages deserved what we did to them. Is the unconscious thinking.

But this applies in context, like some guy lives on Magellan and goes "The American Empire was based, so that's why I'm an American" is going to be a real "Speer Hoodie"-tier freak-weirdo. Even for Columbians "American" is like a precursor identity, that informs what they are now, (if one held very dearly to a lot of people) so if a Columbian identifies as "American" before being a Columbian, they're going to have some rancid politics. (naturally there are a lot of Columbians who do so, enough that in terms of modern Compact Politics "American" is tied to reactioanry politics in sort of the same way a UK political party insisting that they're "English" is a Bad Sign (to draw a tenuous analogy)

Which again contrasts to the "American" living in some post-DF commune in the midwest that was founded by driving off a fascist army and decalring that "America" stands for everyone before merging into the Democratic Federation, and now considers that a sort of regional identity that's tied to a complicated history but means rebellion, and democracy to them.

Professor Vesca · May 2, 2023

AKuz said:
Like I hasten to clarify that "American" isn't some uniquely evil term. It's often used by extra-solar or old world populations in a derogatory manner that is driven by bigotry and victim blaming of an impoverished population

"Americans" deserve to be poor because they're bad people, so the savages deserved what we did to them. Is the unconscious thinking.

But this applies in context, like some guy lives on Magellan and goes "The American Empire was based, so that's why I'm an American" is going to be a real"Speer Hoodie"-tier freak-weirdo. Even for Columbians "American" is like a precursor identity, that informs what they are now, (if one held very dearly to a lot of people) so if a Columbian identifies as "American" before being a Columbian, they're going to have some rancid politics. (naturally there are a lot of Columbians who do so, enough that in terms of modern Compact Politics "American" is tied to reactioanry politics in sort of the same way a UK political party insisting that they're "English" is a Bad Sign (to draw a tenuous analogy)

Which again contrasts to the "American" living in some post-DF commune in the midwest that was founded by driving off a fascist army and decalring that "America" stands for everyone before merging into the Democratic Federation, and now considers that a sort of regional identity that's tied to a complicated history but means rebellion, and democracy to them.

I can imagine actual Americans from America probably hate hate hate *hate* people from off world appropriating the term in that way. (The region/western hemisphere).

AKuz · May 2, 2023

Professor Vesca said:
I can imagine actual Americans from America probably hate hate hate *hate* people from off world appropriating the term in that way.

This is why we have both sides of the political spectrum apologizing for calling people "Americans" >: V

Professor Vesca · May 2, 2023

AKuz said:
This is why we have both sides of the political spectrum apologizing for calling people "Americans" >: V

A Columbian walks into a bar and starts belting out "And I am proud to be an American!" and immediately gets dogpiled by the Americans patronizing said bar.

AKuz · May 2, 2023

Professor Vesca said:
A Columbian walks into a bar and starts belting out "And I am proud to be an American!" and immediately gets dogpiled by the Americans patronizing said bar.

As I said, Identity is complicated. Columbians are in large part directly descended from the Blue and White American diaspora and based much of their founding mythos on being exiles rebuilding their kingdom in the wilderness. Seeking to make their new world better than the last. Do they not also have a claim to "Americaness"? Does their love of an American figure like... Ronald Reagan disqualify them from being "American" while the current GOP love for the same figure would clearly read "American" to us?

Columbia has inherited a different part of the American tradition than the "Americans" who live in the borders of the old United States. And even there there are "Americans" who came back from Columbia, back from the diaspora. Are they less "American" despite having a freaky Israeili-Palestinian thing going on in some parts of the old USA where they've chosen to resettle?

It's a fucking mess when you dig down. But from the high level position, that of pop history, and media soundbites "Americans" have a very negative stereotype attached to them, driven by yes, much of what the American Empire did, but also by the refusal of the rest of the world to accept their own complicity AND by their own desire to have a bottom rung. For Europeans, and Chinese, and Nigerians to look down on Earth's "Americans", and for Penglai liberals to feel smugly superior to Columbian "Americans".

Vlad vonCarstein · May 2, 2023

In the far future of the 23rd century, people continue to find increasingly bizarre ways to be racist...
More seriously, I'm somewhat interested how the public image of a nation like Brazil comes out in all this. They're easily targetable with the aforementioned slavery attack lines, but I don't think they ever became part of the DF, but are still on the American continents. This question could apply to most of South America

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