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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StarSingerBlue · Aug 11, 2023

T_of_A said:
That's a fairly easy answer IMO: no, they're probably dead.
I bet they'd have been way to poor to afford life extension treatments. So far we've only seen billionaires afford them, and CLAMP definitely aren't comparable to JKR.

Noooo
😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

And I bet X/1999 was never finished as well.
We'll never know what Kamui's true wish was.
This is truly a dark future.

The Laurent · Aug 11, 2023

We also just don't want to get into, like, "The far future version of X media product" except as a throwaway joke. Because nothing dates sci-fi faster than that sort of shit.

StarSingerBlue · Aug 11, 2023

The Laurent said:
We also just don't want to get into, like, "The far future version of X media product" except as a throwaway joke. Because nothing dates sci-fi faster than that sort of shit.

I'm actually really grateful for that.
I do not want to know what Hermes-Ishtar has done to my favourite works; the brief mention of pro-capitalism Star Trek was bad enough.
I literally can't think of a single franchise they can't mess up.
Like, maybe the Fate franchise, but the only parts of that I ever bother with are the really old stuff like Kara no Kyoukai and the non-Servant stuff like El-Melloi Case Files.

yeastmobile · Aug 11, 2023

The Laurent said:
We also just don't want to get into, like, "The far future version of X media product" except as a throwaway joke. Because nothing dates sci-fi faster than that sort of shit.

The people need a Columbo remake discussion.

Balmung1 · Aug 11, 2023

StarSingerBlue said:
I'm actually really grateful for that.
I do not want to know what Hermes-Ishtar has done to my favourite works; the brief mention of pro-capitalism Star Trek was bad enough.
I literally can't think of a single franchise they can't mess up.
Like, maybe the Fate franchise, but the only parts of that I ever bother with are the really old stuff like Kara no Kyoukai and the non-Servant stuff like El-Melloi Case Files.

Imagine the clusterfuck Gundam would be.Since they would have to essentially retcon most of the UC timeline due to how eerily similar Anaheim is to Ares in terms of corporate shitfuckery and the tendency to sell to every side imaginable and how a good chunk of it's message is 'we really need to stop having corporations and governments exploit the planet'

wallabon · Aug 11, 2023

yeastmobile said:
The people need a Columbo remake discussion.

H-I would, and you KNOW it would be bad.

nocarename · Aug 11, 2023

wallabon said:
H-I would, and you KNOW it would be bad.

Columbo but he's conventionally attractive and swans around with the rich people when he's not solving cases.
Also, the murders are all lower class.

clockworkchaos · Aug 12, 2023

So on the Columbo and Gundam stuff..

Like those could be produced. And we know they can be produced under shitty capitalism, because uh... they were produced. Granted yes, they would likely be worse, since the orginals were good and remakes usually aren't as good but like...
HI is entirly fine with media that has evil rich people, evil corps, evil Ares expy.

Like, third story post in the thread has this.

AKuz said:
Sometimes what she'd reported seemed to be entirely on the up and up (usually the reporting on the other Charter's sins,

All of those, which focus on evil individuals (and I love GWhich, but the main chars are running a corp, it's far more about evil/sad people than systems). Even far more radicle stuff could be made in this future, because capitalism subsumes all critiques of it into itself. They would be made, just less central, and the critiques less blunt. Evil corps bad, but you can have good corps with good people type things. Like, on average HI shitty corpbaggery made things shit, in they way that so many movies become bland now, and it blunts the sharp ones, but that doesn't mean good stuff doesn't get made.

TheArcanist · Aug 12, 2023

Capitalism doesn't care about critiques of capitalism so long as your critique doesn't verge into actual, material replacements for capital.

That's why we see stuff like revolutionaries being portrayed as Understandable But Misguided Extremists. It's fine to point out that the world is monstrously unjust, but once you start proposing concrete, actionable ways to dismantle that injustice the propaganda machine kicks into gear to start portraying those proposals as insincere/evil/inevitably doomed to fail/ect.

trooperist · Aug 12, 2023

What was that quote from Disco Elysium? Something like the strength of Capitalism is that it can absorb critiques about itself and simply turn them into another product to sell.

Titanic Toxicity · Aug 13, 2023

TheArcanist said:
Generally speaking, the policy the setting has for "is X person from our time still alive?" is either 'no' or 'yes but they're irrelevant' for one reason or another, because the QMs don't want to get bogged down with relitigating real-life current day politics(or at least not any more than you would with an explicitly political work like this one).

There are a couple of exceptions like Rowling but that's mostly at the whims of particular GMs who find it amusing

Wait Rowlings still alive!? Why, how, and when? How did I miss that?

Torgamous · Aug 13, 2023

Amorous Intent said:
Knight of the Realm: Hey I'll have you know this is a vry important business trip. I needed to research as the new Head-Writer for the upcoming Potter Reboot.

Edinator: I'm sure this trip was very work-related.

Knight of the Realm: Hey they sent me, and I spent a good… 4 hours a day doing work-stuff.

Edinator: 4 hours? Well then, color me humbled.

Knight of the Realm: Also like, not to be iffy, but the like original writer was cool but kinnnnda anti-augment? Wanted to make sure I was a 'real woman' which is like a little far you know? I can see why they don't have her do interviews. But like I get it, she's pretty old, like… pre-Space old.

clockworkchaos · Aug 13, 2023

Titanic Toxicity said:
Wait Rowlings still alive!? Why, how, and when? How did I miss that?

Yes those as noted, she's not relevant other than as a cut-away joke.

Redshirt Army · Aug 14, 2023

Titanic Toxicity said:
Wait Rowlings still alive!? Why, how, and when? How did I miss that?

She's young enough and rich enough that she got access to some of the first-gen life extension stuff, which let her hang on long enough for the tech to improve.

There's also a fair bit of luck involved - to my understanding, basically all of the current IRL ultra-rich didn't make it, either because of the political situation, or just because early life extension wasn't good enough.

StarSingerBlue · Aug 14, 2023

To be fair, Hermes-Ishtar probably has run a few dramas featuring evil corpos over the years.
Something where the plucky daughter of a CEO is forced to go on the run by her father's treacherous underling, who couped him treacherously, but comes back years later under an assumed identity and rises meteorically through the ranks thanks to her Bold Ideas and charisma, culminating in the Big Finale where she dethrones the usurper and rises to the position of CEO to the cheers of all the employees, who all secretly despised the unrighteous villain and held deep loyalty to the true boss.
That technically features corpos as the villain.

Titanic Toxicity · Aug 14, 2023

StarSingerBlue said:
To be fair, Hermes-Ishtar probably has run a few dramas featuring evil corpos over the years.
Something where the plucky daughter of a CEO is forced to go on the run by her father's treacherous underling, who couped him treacherously, but comes back years later under an assumed identity and rises meteorically through the ranks thanks to her Bold Ideas and charisma, culminating in the Big Finale where she dethrones the usurper and rises to the position of CEO to the cheers of all the employees, who all secretly despised the unrighteous villain and held deep loyalty to the true boss.
That technically features corpos as the villain.

There is also almost certainly mainstream fictional corpo content set during the corporate frontier wars that likely feature whichever corporations the corporation making it hates the least as bad guys.

Torgamous · Aug 14, 2023

StarSingerBlue said:
To be fair, Hermes-Ishtar probably has run a few dramas featuring evil corpos over the years.

Empty Passages 2, in which the bad apple in charge of not-Sheol hunted people for sport, and gets deposed by not-Rousseau, but not before planting the seeds of her tragic extremism.

The conditions that led to its creation were somewhat extreme, but not (yet) unprecedented. They probably tossed out similar stuff before.

clockworkchaos · Aug 14, 2023

Torgamous said:
Empty Passages 2, in which the bad apple in charge of not-Sheol hunted people for sport, and gets deposed by not-Rousseau, but not before planting the seeds of her tragic extremism.

The conditions that led to its creation were somewhat extreme, but not (yet) unprecedented. They probably tossed out similar stuff before.

Yes. I think people underestimate how often HI has corps as bad guys, because a lot of the 'in universe' content we write is the brain-poison think pieces because those are fun to write. But like, Corpo bad guy is like a standard bad guy. What's important is that it's just as much a bad guy as like 'augment bad guy' or "AI bad guy" or (if you want to get applauded for being controversial/called out for being 'woke') "humanist bad guy".

All of whom are individuals that are bad. You have good ones and bad ones.

Redshirt Army · Aug 14, 2023

Again, keep in mind the 90's Bond films. Those had a number of corporate CEO's and industrialists as the villains - even if you'd certainly never call the James Bond series as a whole in any real way progressive!

You won't find much systemic critique in the Compact's mass media, but just saying "rich elites bad sometimes" doesn't make for a systemic critique, especially when all of the Charters have other Charters to cast as the bad guys.

Gravitas Hunt · Aug 14, 2023

Redshirt Army said:
Again, keep in mind the 90's Bond films. Those had a number of corporate CEO's and industrialists as the villains - even if you'd certainly never call the James Bond series as a whole in any real way progressive!

They're usually villains in a somewhat fantastical sense, though? Like, they're not simply evil in a 'work my employees to death and don't give them bathroom breaks' way but rather in the 'build a solar energy killsat' or 'trigger a nuclear conflict between the UK and China to sell more newspapers' manner, which is sufficiently over the top to... not really have any bearing on reality, even in a non-systemic manner.
That said, the Charters are like that in many ways.

nocarename · Aug 14, 2023

Gravitas Hunt said:
That said, the Charters are like that in many ways.

Once you've owned your first continent, you never go back to the company you were before. There are probably other break points higher than that, but I don't think they've been observed in the real world.

bookwyrm · Aug 15, 2023

AKuz said:
So I'm working away at something, and I thought I'd ask here for some inspiration:

I'm looking for things that would be part of Spacer Folk Religion. This isn't an organized religion, but a body of superstiions, cultural practices, and beliefs that are common across Spacer communities. This wouldn't be a fully coherent and orthodox body of beliefs, but a grab bag of things that have emerged in the past couple centuries since the 2050s and the advent of permanent orbital and space habitation.

(However, this folk religion would also inform some of the so-called "Cosmic Religions" that began to emerge in the 2100s that do have orthodoxies and fixed beliefs, commonly including their own versions of the False Earth Hypothesis and similar beliefs.)

You know I always like the Discworld idea of people not being truly dead until all the actions they put into motion have stopped, the soup they put in the pot is finished and eaten, all their knickknacks and household furnishings are packed up and regifted and auctioned off as they wished, their last letters are received in the mail, etc...

With relativistic light-delay bullshit, you could probably have a similar thing to like the whole ghost in the machine beliefs of the signalmen operating the Clank in the Grand Trunk Line, that the fallen are still with you as the light and radio signals of their last biometric readings are carried aloft by cosmic winds or something.

ThatGazzer · Aug 18, 2023

PUNK GAN EDEN:
CHAPTER 5
Who Built Thebes?

"Wer baute das siebentorige Theben?
In den Büchern stehen die Namen von Königen.
Haben die Könige die Felsbrocken herbeigeschleppt?
-
Who built the seven gates of Thebes?
The books are filled with names of kings.
Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?"
- A Worker Reads History, Bertolt Brecht

In contrast with the outside of the ship, much of the inside is the dead off-whites and dull gray-blacks of Corporate Minimalism. As you pass through the halls, there is little here which does not call to mind that Too-Clean-Too-Neat feeling of a place that isn't meant to be lived in, but shown off.

With so little stimulus, it is little wonder that The Gallery becomes prominent in your mind. Proprioception (kvetching and grumbling) keeps your body moving as you listen in to conversations you're having with yourself, the running commentary on the Golden Apple being somewhat amusing.

[GRINDSET]: Oy-fuckin-vey! pick a style and fucking commit you worms! Whole-ass it, not half-ass! Have some follow through, what was this made by, a fucking committee of indecisive fail-kids?

[AESTHETIC]: I can't believe that *this* is what gets us to agree on something.

[GRINDSET]: Hah! I'd say fuck you, Aes, but that'd be a little too masturbatory for me!

[LOGIC]: Technically, that depends on how one defines masturbation.

[GRINDSET]: A waste of time, a biological inconvenience ya know— not the kind of grind we're into.

[LOGIC]: Fascinating

What? What does that mean?

[LOGIC]: Not a single idea, Captain. I require more information.

Uh, yeah. We'll worry about that later. Definitely Later.

[Thought Gained: Aces High]
Problem: What is Grindset talking about? Sex, a waste of time? Absurd! Sex is how most Humans created legacy before Immortality was easy getting a shot.
Masturbation doesn't seem like the sort of thing a person does because
'being horny is annoying'?
But we have Greene, on record, thinking it!
What does it mean? Are you broken? Was Greene? Can you fix it, if you are? Should you?
Why would anyone Make Fuck anyway!?
Does everyone feel like this, and you're just bad at ignoring it?
What Does It All Mean!?

Before long, you are seated across from your first opponent, Robert Buteo. The meeting room had appeared entirely empty, until the table had risen from the floor as a seamless cube, the chairs pushing themselves out hiss of air look a lot more like modern art than usable furniture.

The chairs are deeply uncomfortable and you spend a lot of time trying to figure out a way to sit in it without hurting yourself.

You do not, but you take comfort in the fact everyone else is (literally) in the same boat— except Abel, who chose to stand— citing a bad back.

[EMPATHY]: You feel for him, and not just because every second you stay in this chair is one step closer to having problems with your back.

[DRAMA] (Failure): Oh damnation! Sire, I wish I had thought of such a clever deception, alas, 'tis too late.

Anybody else have something to contribute? You ask, shifting some more in this awful chair— fuck why is it poking your spine?

[PAIN THRESHOLD] (Heroic Failure): Boss, I swear I'm better at this whole pain thing normally and I hate to be a yutz here but this body is an oversensitive fucker in the weirdest ways. Personally, I feel Greene fucked us, could have committed autoegocide well rested, but nooooo.

[MENTAL WIKI] (Heroic Success): That specific hiss of air is actually trademarked by Soundisfaction™, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hermes-Ishtar. It's actually completely unnecessary, as the whole system holding that block together is electromagnetic. The sound itself is played by hidden speakers.

Really? Nothing more useful to give me?

[L'ESPRIT DE CAPITALE]: this mostly empty room is larger than most residential apartments. A room this size would require a minimum rent price twice the average salary of the everyday wage worker. In an office on Symphony, one such worker is nonetheless dreaming of a home this size, and will never be able to achieve it. That idle fact is one that still depresses you most about this whole endeavor.

That was the opposite of useful. You huff, rolling your eyes.

[INLAND ISEKAI]: Sometimes, that's just how the dice roll. We are a Child of the Universe, and the universe is an arbitrary bitch.

[HALF-LIGHT] (Easy Success): Speaking of bitch— mean girl alert, dead ahead.

You glance up to see the face of the HI Rep.

[PERSPICACITY]: Her allegiance is made obvious by the Hermes-Istar pin secured to her lapel. Round cheeked, with a slightly upturned nose and pursed lips.

[EMPATHY] (Medium Success): You think this is her attempt at a Serious and Professional Face. But the only impression she's making with you is of a gerbil biting into a lemon and being surprised by the taste.

[AESTHETIC] (Medium Success): Oh Darling. An angular blunt bob cut with a face that round isn't doing you any favors. It's giving last place in an Anna Wintour look-alike contest.

She is shortly standing before you, hand out-held, her manicured nails a stark contrast to your gnawed at, dirt-crusted hands. How did you even get dirt into your nails like that? What was Greene doing?

[LOGIC]: Could be any number of things— it could be just as likely that she was in a community garden or digging through trash, as she was hiding a body in a graveyard before her ego-death and your subsequent birth. If you want answers, I require data. As your namesake once said. "Data, data data! I cannot make bricks without clay."

"Hello Miss Holmes, I'm so happy to see that the Employees in London are willing to be reasonable, even in these difficult times. I'm Mina Moser, I'm a Leo! So watch out for the claws." She starts pawing at the air and laughs at her own bad joke "Anywho! I'm The CAE for the LPE HR-"

What? The Moser Woman with a bad haircut is just sprouting letters at you now.

[L'ESPRIT DE CAPITALE] (Easy Success): Let me translate that, I'm fluent in Corpo-ese. CAE = Chief Assistant-Executive, she's part of the C-Suite for managing London, but she's about as low as you can go for a Chief.
As far as anyone above her is concerned— she's a patsy if anything goes wrong or easy to take credit from if anything goes right. She likely knows that— and took the job anyway.

So she's Desperate, or Arrogant. You note to yourself, and Capitale nods lightly in agreement.

[L'ESPRIT DE CAPITALE]: Those are both likely, yes. LPE, at a guess, is 'London Park Experience', HR is of course, Human Resources. So, she's given you her title, what can we take from it?

[LOGIC]: To you— This all adds up to a person important enough to matter on paper but –critically– not important enough to mean anything to the Meritocrats sending her here as a potential sacrifice and whose job it is to find the best way to exploit the Working Class, or failing that protect what's left of the Company from liability or responsibility.

[L'ESPRIT DE CAPITALE]: An image manager, born and bred. Her whole family is probably like that. The only difference between Autocrat and Meritocrat are the prefixes really. Means the same thing, in the end.

"-But everybody calls me Mimi." she says letting go of your slightly clammy hand with well covered distaste, hardly a twitch in her stepfordian expression.

[AUTHORITY] (Easy Success): That's because no one respects her— let alone herself.

That's harsh. It's a pretty cruel read of someone you've only got a basic idea of, you think.

[AUTHORITY]: It's true. respect, even just the illusion of it— requires first from oneself *some level* of self-respect or blind arrogance. We've got both in spades, depending on the hour. She doesn't. So she gets called a name meant for a child or eye-candy, and pretends it doesn't bother her. Thinks she's claiming ownership of it, by putting it out into the world. But really it's claiming ownership of her.

[AESTHETIC]: In short, Darling— she's not wearing that dress, that dress is wearing her. We can use that.

[DRAMA]: Indeed, the game of diplomacy is a complex and many faceted puzzle, one that must be played carefully and cleverly if one wishes to complete it. The tension! The game of velvet glove and cutting words!

[DISCOURSE]: A game you won't really be playing. After all, you have different goals here.

Wait, we do? I thought we were just gonna do the whole thing right now. To be perfectly honest, you had sort of forgotten the plan almost entirely when faced with this yeti of a yacht. You might be feeling better, thanks to the application of Drugs. But with your possible (probably very real) concussion.

Well—

you're not as sharp as you could be.

[DISCOURSE]: Yeah no, we're not here to end negotiations right now. That's rushing things, Chief-

[INLAND ISEKAI] (Challenging Success): Plus, It'd be rushing the plot along a little too fast, senpai. You're here to live in the world, not speedrun it.

[DISCOURSE]: Kai is a bit of an odd duck, but they have a point. We're here to fish for information, stall a bit, get context, maybe even leverage, if we can find it.

Right, yes. Information, context, leverage. I can do that.

"Hello Memle," Mimi twitches. "This is my partner, Abel." you say deliberately mangling her diminutive as you gesture to the dour man.

[EMPATHY]: Abel nods slightly, eyebrow raised in a way that means "I don't know where you're going with this Boss, but I hope it works."

You take the opportunity to stand, away from the cursed chair, and look the sad little gerbil in the eye, The Expression on full blast "I hate your hair. It's the wrong style for the shape of your face. Whoever told you it looked good was lying to you."

"Oh. Uh. Well-that's-I'm sorry?" the woman's face doesn't know what to do. She knew that haircut was bad but was trying to play it off.

[EMPATHY]: She's close to a tipping point, if you're planning on pushing her over. She's certainly off balance, but what exactly are you planning to do now?

Honestly I'm not picky. Drama leans to whisper to Discourse, you can feel the murmur at the back of your skull— It actually sort of tickles? Weird.

[DISCOURSE]: Oh–! Clever! Let me help you?

[DRAMA]: Oh please! Why else would I ask? By your leave, Sire?

Sure, I need all the help I can get.

Discourse and Drama crash into the body eagerly— the phantom impact making things go fuzzy at the edges of your vision. They move to share your flesh with you and give you the words. "Here's the thing about you, Minnie Mouse. And I could tell the moment I saw you. I looked into your soul. You're…" you pause dramatically, finger out, pointing at her— waiting for her to start to gather her resolve. "Not a Leo."

[EMPATHY]: Honestly? not the angle I was expecting.

Her brow furrows. 'How did you know?' she mouths at you.

[DRAMA]: I could tell just by looking at her, she's such a Cancer.

[DISCOURSE]: A real Leo wouldn't use that awful joke, that's for sure.

Was Greene like…big on astrology or something? A sharp pain dances across your forehead and scalp as you squint slightly, holding onto the pose as that feels appropriately psychic. I feel like it's kind of bullshit?

[L'ESPRIT DE CAPITALE] (Challenging Success): No, she thought it was bullshit too. But you know that she had to deal with people who did think the world ran on it. The vague spiritualism and false community offered by it is just a kind of patch-fix to help cover the holes in the corporate owned soul. People want– desperately– to be connected. To be a part of something. Capital exploits it, even as it drives us to that desperation.

[THEORY]: Capital, Comrade, would rather you not have a community so that it can sell you one.

Fuck, the more I hear about this Capital stuff the more I hate it. You feel Capitale shrug, sort of helplessly.

[L'ESPRIT DE CAPITALE]: To know that the wheel turns is not enough to break it.

[ENDURANCE]: You have to be willing to stand in its way.

[THEORY]: It's almost like you're an anarchist or something.

She's looking at you suspiciously as you zone out, standing there with your finger extended. "I paid out the nose to have my birthday changed!" she pouts like a child-- glancing back to Sir Bobby-or-whatever-his-name-was then to you again and walking around the table to lean in and whisper. "Do you…you know…have The Sight?"
Wow. That's redic-There was that moment with Abel, and the balcony. That shiver was so…different from the others. Wait. Do I?

[LOGIC] (Easy Success): There is no proof of any kind of paranatural or psionic abilities we possess that could not be explained by more mundane means.

[INLAND ISEKAI]: Hold on– don't be such a doubter! She might be onto something.

[DRAMA] (Hard Success): Possible psionic powers aside— Sire, I think we can use this. Lean into it.

You place two fingers to your temple. "There are some who say that I do-"

[DRAMA]: Dramatic Pause!

"For I am Judith Holmes, Psionic Detetrix!"

[INLAND ISEKAI](Easy Success): You can almost hear the Musical Sting.

Abel sighs. His ears droop ever so slightly. Then he notices Mimi looking to him for…confirmation?

[EMPATHY]: He's thinking, 'I can't believe I have to back this up.'

Abel coughs, and straightens himself. "Yes indeed," he says, dryly and with as little emotion as possible. "Holmes is a known practitioner of the.." he forces the next words out like they're thick, and unpleasant. "mental arts."

Oh nobody would believe that. You're a little disappointed in Abel's lack of commitment to the role actually.

HR Mimi is wide eyed. "O-M-G!" she's bouncing out those three letters like they meant something.

You just sort of nod. "Exactly." The smug rictus that is The Expression is probably covering most of what you're feeling right now. You've never been so happy to have your face stuck like this in your whole very short life.

Bobby coughs. Loudly.

You look at him. Did he breathe in his own spit? I hate when that happens. It'd happened at least five times since you woke up, and it was awful every time.

[EMPATHY]: No, Robert is getting annoyed. He feels that this is not how his day was meant to go.

Time to focus up.

"My Fantastic Mental Abilities aside." You pull your fingers from your temple and place a greasy hand on the table. "I am here to inquire as to what exactly your goal is. As Far as I can tell, The people of this commune don't want you here, and you are free to leave. Preferably without shooting any more of them."

Robert only scoffs as if he was made for it. "The Crown does not recognize The Commune as any kind of ruling authority. It never has."

"Also," Mimi chimes in, sort of meekly, perhaps still in awe of your psionic authority, even if you are, like, really gross to look at. "Every cast and crew member in England signed a contract waiving certain rights, boilerplate stuff, in exchange for benefits like guaranteed permanent employment-"

[THEORY]: Isn't that just serfdom with more steps?

Sounds like it.

"-What they're all doing is a huge violation of their contracts, but I have permission from The Company to forgive the attached fees, that is, if they'd all just…get back to work." Mimi finishes weakly.

Are you doing too much eye contact or something?

Oh fuck.

Did you forget to blink again?

[PROPRIOCEPTION] (Medium Failure): I honestly can't tell. Eyes do feel a little dry. But that might just be the weed you had earlier.

[AUTHORITY]: We can be very intimidating.

You make sure to blink, slowly and deliberately, just in case. "Now I might be a paranatural detective and psionic mistress of the mental arts. But I don't need that to get the distinct impression," you begin, shoving that god-awful chair back into its weird cubicle hole. Good riddance, that thing is basically a weapon. "That they don't want to work for you anymore? Do I have that right?"

Mimi smiles in a way that seems to stretch a little too tight. "The disruption of services is regrettable," she says regrettable, you notice, like someone might say a-fucking-travasty-that has-ruined-my-life. "But I believe we can work together to find an equitable solution that keeps The London Park Experience-"

You hold up a hand.

"The Commune is more than a simple disruption of service. It's a movement, an organization, an independent political body that demands respect. Or at the very least, acknowledgement that it exists. Is that, or is that not possible for you?"

"I-" Mimi physically wilts.

[DISCOURSE]: Oh. Oh that's interesting. She can't. Question is, why?

[AUTHORITY]: Orders from on high?

[L'ESPRIT DE CAPITALE]: Financial consequences are likely. She still lives in a world where they matter as more than a tool of control.

Sir Robert growls. Like, actually growls. It's a frustrated, animal noise. It makes you jump a little, and you can see him take pleasure in your instinctive reaction.

"Fine, they want to be 'Real State'?" Part of the movies and shakers, and do away with hundreds of years of the Royal Family keeping a guiding hand on the rail? Then the fact remains that this so-called 'returned' London Commune owes The Crown a great debt if it wishes to own itself as a proper policy would. If they wish to leave the safety of the nest and make wing on their own, The Crown insists that it be paid equal in size to the assets lost."

[COMPOSURE] (Medium Success): You barely manage to hold back a scoff, the momentary twitch of your face ignored as a symptom of your broken nose.

[DRAMA]: The Gaunt face of the Knight begins to take a vulturous quality. You know now the price of this man's soul, for all that he pretends at valor, and honor, and all those ineffable things. He is a corpse eater, plain and simple. He only ever fights things that can't fight back. He is far too used to it.

[AUTHORITY] (Trivial Success): Pounce, and show him what it's like to fight living prey.

You stop paying attention to the shape of your face and let The Expression pull itself into corpse-like rictus. Your perfect teeth feel sharp, your once heavy tongue feels quick, like a fencing blade. You feel like you belong here, in this kind of fight, rather than anywhere else.

Allez! "Bobby, you seem like a man for whom history is important. Let me ask you this. Who built Thebes?"

Circle-parry. "What does that have to do with anything?"

Press. "It's a question. Just a question. But it's an interesting one. Who built Thebes? Who moved all that stone? Who carved it, fitted it and made it whole? Was it the kings?"

Appel to Derobement. "This is nonsense!" Robert is annoyed. One hand twitches like it wants to reach a weapon. Unnoticed by Robert, Abel has one hand ready to draw his own. "The Crown must insist on payment."

Attaque au fer. "The answer," You respond with a measured tone, pace building with every word– a relentless verbal beating. "That I won't hesitate to point out you're avoiding– is of course 'No.' Kings didn't build Thebes. Just like the Crown did not build London. Hermes-Ishtar did not build London. 'Imperial Rome/Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up?/Over whom did the Caesars triumph?/Byzantium lives in song/Were all her dwellings palaces?' History is full of Great Men. Of one person being the driving force for change. History is lying, which isn't a surprise, as much of it was written at the request of those very special boys and girls with their very fancy hats. I'm sure the Commune of London will reject your proposal."

Riposte "Then the ce-" you press a finger to his lips. His eye twitches, but Abe coughs and pats the bulge of the firearm in his jacket pocket to draw Robert's attention to possible consequences.

Recovery to reprise "I wasn't done– as I was saying." You pull your finger back and boop him on his nose. "The Commune of London may likely reject your proposal. But I have to return with said proposal so that it could be debated, then voted on by all interested parties. I'll return with a response and counter proposal when that's done. Enjoy your giant, ugly yacht in the mean time."

Touché. "Fine. By Crown and Country, you may be the single most annoying task that has ever been set before me. But fine– Go speak to your Masters and I'll speak to mine." He makes a dismissive gesture, as if giving you permission you don't need.

[SENSORIUM] (Easy Success): You can hear his teeth grinding. That's got to be expensive.

"And to be clear— It's not my yacht, Miss Holmes." he calls after you as you leave– needling for the last word to soothe his battered ego.

[AUTHORITY]: Well now, can't let him have that. You're in charge here, after all.

You turn to look back at him, your uncanny Expression taut against pallid skin.

He doesn't flinch, but the meeker Moser does.

"Right." You nod in agreement. "It isn't."

Your tone makes it clear that you aren't just talking about a boat.

EDIT: Made some small edits to the text, grammar and flow.

Also, while I have your attention.

Hey Folks! Thanks so much for the likes and other reactions, it feeds my soul! But I also have to feed my belly, and while I'd hate to have to monetize my hobbies- I'm currently between jobs and living on my savings, and that's kind of forcing my hand here

If you've enjoyed my work with Punk Gan Eden so far, and really want to make my day– please feel free to help me pay my bills over on my recently created Ko-Fi! I'd appreciate it!

Hope you enjoyed the chapter! See you next time!

BurnBright · Aug 18, 2023

I remain incredibly confused, because Disco Elysium is like that, but I love it!

Torgamous · Aug 18, 2023

JustGazzer said:
Wait, we do? I thought we were just gonna do the whole thing right now. To be perfectly honest, you had sort of forgotten the plan almost entirely when faced with this yeti of a yacht.

This is a very useful quality in a viewpoint character, because same.

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

Been Better

Zenryoku Zenkai !

Zenryoku Zenkai !

Cinnamon Roll AI

Aspiring Gynoid

Cannon Fodder

Zenryoku Zenkai !

Aspiring Gynoid

Cannon Fodder

On one, not scared

Doom of Public Libraries

Minds Eye Bind

Aspiring Gynoid