I guess the gazette thread was the wrong place to look for responses to my various concepts. I really did want a sort of up-or-down vote of confidence on my ideas there.
Anyway, here's a repost:
THE BLAKES
What do Blakes believe in? Freedom. A laudable goal, for sure, but they also believe that blowing things up, in disrupting life for the average Fen is a reasonable tactic in gaining this "freedom." Who are they trying to be free from? Everyone.
Call them anarchists. Call them nihilists. Call them libertarians, or socialists; terrorists or madmen. In the wake of the destruction of Boskonianism, there was a gap in general mayhem in Fenspace and the Blakes were all too eager to fill in that gap.
Started as a group that opposed the Federation's growing power in Fenspace, the Blakes staged daring prison breaks, destroyed power stations, disrupted trade and travel. They soon broke up into many competing factions, eager to fight each other as their supposed oppresors. Some of the many, many factions of Blakes include the Real Blakes, True Blakes, Continuity Blakes, The Avon Brigade, and the Blakes 700.
THE BLACK MONOLITHS
There's a rumor in the Jovian system, a rumor born from a half-glimpsed nothing where a star should be, a rumor that's spread in Browncoat watering holes and transit stations when all that're left in the bar are the last holdout drunks, stringing together half-remembered tall tales from other bars and that one moment of strange terror when they perhaps were at the edge of the mystery. And it comes down from parent to child as a warning, an admonition to do right.
And the rumor is this: that in a useless moon are a strange cult of fens who truly left behind their bodies to go AI; AIs shaped like Black Monoliths. That in their caves of dust and ice, they plot the future of human evolution, testing it and shaping it with perverse bioreactors and kidnapped victims who were reduced to component chemicals and reshaped in the Black Monoliths image of potential superhumanity or into slaves or just kept as puddles.
And mothers say to their children, "Be careful or the Black Monoliths will get you."
BALEY SECURITY SERVICE
Now there's a lot of good to be said about the B-Men, and it's all true. They won't let anything stop them from getting to the truth, from getting their man. And they'll follow due process, chain of evidence; anything and everything to let everyone know that when they've pinched someone, it's the real deal. And they also respect human rights. Now, some security services, they'll do everything for their bosses. The B-Men know how to do their jobs without being monsters. They're professionals and they don't let things like anger, expedience, or just the righteous feeling of giving a bugger a toe in get in the way of doing the job. Catching the bad guy. Protecting their clients. Upholding the law. Whatever it is that they're there for, they'll do it. Their way. The Right Way.
And there's a lot of bad to be said about the BS, and it's all true, too. Arrogant? Oh, yeah. Superior? If they stuck their noses further up, they'd break their necks and a good thing, too. And they're willing to work for anybody. A 'Danecrat trying to steal all the unreal estate or freestate, claiming the moon and the asteroids and the stars as theirs? Oh, the BS'll work for 'em, and gladly. A little tinpot, madman would-be dictator that's just taken over his asteroid/space station/planet and wants to rule it with an iron grip? BS'll work for that nutter, too, saying please and thank you all the way to the bank. A Robber Baron Industrialist decides that all those pesky worker rights are getting in the way of maximum profit? The BS'll come a running to bust up that undemocratic union. Oh they may not break any bones doing it, won't hold the leaders in jail for too long, but they'll do it and cash the blood money with a whistle on their lips and a spring in their step.
And that's Baley Security Service for you.
SLANS
The Slans started off as your average Fens, really. Maybe a bit self-absorbed and melodramatic, but basically alright. Then they all, and there were only a few of them in the beginning, not as much as there are now, who took the same batch of 'wavium with the same wish: to become Slans.
And they got it.
They got the enhanced physiology, the waving tendrils, and even a form of telepathy. It's really just integrated biological FTL-comms, but they can talk to each other over long distances, and even with anything else with FTL-comms all without having to pay a service carrier.
So naturally this makes feel superior. And you know what, having a bunch of smug so-and-sos around wouldn't have been that bad if they weren't also the most whiny, supercilious jerks with overinflated martyr complexes in all of Fenspace. Basically because nobody thinks they're as great as they do, they feel persecuted. And they tell everybody that they're persecuted loudly and in as grating a manner as possible.
Maybe there's a nice, well-adjusted Slan out there somewhere. But nobody's found him yet.
THE QUATERMASS INSTITUTE
While the rest of fendom gleefully go out into space like intoxicated five year olds in a playground filled with broken bottles, the Quatermass Instute grimly watch the indifferent depths of space for signs of the inevitable alien invasion. While the Federation and the Republic talk about how first contact will herald a true galactic awakening in humanity, Quartermass is far more skeptical, thinking it more likely that the alien hordes are waiting to dupe the young and the hippies into going stupidly and gleefully to their own deaths as food for the aliens.
Depending solely on hardtech, as they believe that handwavium may be a plot by the unseen aliens to weaken humanity as a prelude to their inevitable genocidal feast, Quatermass stands ready and vigilant to defend humanity at any and all costs. Dismissed by much of fendom as paranoid doomsday fanatics, it is rumored that Quatermass has a storehouse of nuclear weapons, mass drivers, railguns and kinetic missiles standing by to repel any alien invasion, even if it means destroying 99.9% of humanity and the planets to do it.
THE AEUG
The Anti-Earth Union Group is simply a coalition of various fens who resent any encroachment of 'danes into fenspace. The reason why they went to space in the first place was to get away from them, and now that they're trying to wrest control from the fens, from those that truly tamed space, and take all the rewards and impose rules and regulations that have no basis on life in fenspace . . . well! The AEUG won't stand for it, that's all.
But it's not like they're Blakes or anything. Goodness, no. They're peaceful fens who'll fight with peaceful means. Protests, letter campaigns, "legal" action on Earth. Any and all of that. And, no, there are no secret fleets massing in the Asteroid Belt. And the idea that there's an army of mecha being built on the Moon is just plain ridiculous. And these aren't uniforms, man! It's just fashionable to have epaulettes on your red space suit these days. And so what if I am wearing sunglasses indoors?
METROPOLIS
The fabled AI-city/station, it's a city run by AIs and for, for the most part, AIs to come and feel at home. With docking ports of all sizes for ship-borne AIs to maintenance shops and manufactories to repair and upgrade androids and gynoids. Begun when some handwavium interacted with an already-existing satellite and a car factory turned spaceship, that was the birth of Metropolis. Hanging in the asteroid belt, it's a home away from home for many in the AI community and for their human friends as well. Metropolis is not just some hunk of unfeeling metal but a place where people and AI can interact on many different levels. Filled with parks as well as a beautiful modernist cityscape, Metropolis has its own native population of AIs and humans, who live in the peaceful community of Alphaville.
Metropolis is home to Harbou Ship-builders, makers of the Friede line of interplanetary ships, and also to Maria Rossum's Universal Robots Corporation, building industrial robots and AIs to meet any needs.
-murmur the fallen
You'll note that I kept these ideas as fan-based as possible
Anyway, here's a repost:
THE BLAKES
What do Blakes believe in? Freedom. A laudable goal, for sure, but they also believe that blowing things up, in disrupting life for the average Fen is a reasonable tactic in gaining this "freedom." Who are they trying to be free from? Everyone.
Call them anarchists. Call them nihilists. Call them libertarians, or socialists; terrorists or madmen. In the wake of the destruction of Boskonianism, there was a gap in general mayhem in Fenspace and the Blakes were all too eager to fill in that gap.
Started as a group that opposed the Federation's growing power in Fenspace, the Blakes staged daring prison breaks, destroyed power stations, disrupted trade and travel. They soon broke up into many competing factions, eager to fight each other as their supposed oppresors. Some of the many, many factions of Blakes include the Real Blakes, True Blakes, Continuity Blakes, The Avon Brigade, and the Blakes 700.
THE BLACK MONOLITHS
There's a rumor in the Jovian system, a rumor born from a half-glimpsed nothing where a star should be, a rumor that's spread in Browncoat watering holes and transit stations when all that're left in the bar are the last holdout drunks, stringing together half-remembered tall tales from other bars and that one moment of strange terror when they perhaps were at the edge of the mystery. And it comes down from parent to child as a warning, an admonition to do right.
And the rumor is this: that in a useless moon are a strange cult of fens who truly left behind their bodies to go AI; AIs shaped like Black Monoliths. That in their caves of dust and ice, they plot the future of human evolution, testing it and shaping it with perverse bioreactors and kidnapped victims who were reduced to component chemicals and reshaped in the Black Monoliths image of potential superhumanity or into slaves or just kept as puddles.
And mothers say to their children, "Be careful or the Black Monoliths will get you."
BALEY SECURITY SERVICE
Now there's a lot of good to be said about the B-Men, and it's all true. They won't let anything stop them from getting to the truth, from getting their man. And they'll follow due process, chain of evidence; anything and everything to let everyone know that when they've pinched someone, it's the real deal. And they also respect human rights. Now, some security services, they'll do everything for their bosses. The B-Men know how to do their jobs without being monsters. They're professionals and they don't let things like anger, expedience, or just the righteous feeling of giving a bugger a toe in get in the way of doing the job. Catching the bad guy. Protecting their clients. Upholding the law. Whatever it is that they're there for, they'll do it. Their way. The Right Way.
And there's a lot of bad to be said about the BS, and it's all true, too. Arrogant? Oh, yeah. Superior? If they stuck their noses further up, they'd break their necks and a good thing, too. And they're willing to work for anybody. A 'Danecrat trying to steal all the unreal estate or freestate, claiming the moon and the asteroids and the stars as theirs? Oh, the BS'll work for 'em, and gladly. A little tinpot, madman would-be dictator that's just taken over his asteroid/space station/planet and wants to rule it with an iron grip? BS'll work for that nutter, too, saying please and thank you all the way to the bank. A Robber Baron Industrialist decides that all those pesky worker rights are getting in the way of maximum profit? The BS'll come a running to bust up that undemocratic union. Oh they may not break any bones doing it, won't hold the leaders in jail for too long, but they'll do it and cash the blood money with a whistle on their lips and a spring in their step.
And that's Baley Security Service for you.
SLANS
The Slans started off as your average Fens, really. Maybe a bit self-absorbed and melodramatic, but basically alright. Then they all, and there were only a few of them in the beginning, not as much as there are now, who took the same batch of 'wavium with the same wish: to become Slans.
And they got it.
They got the enhanced physiology, the waving tendrils, and even a form of telepathy. It's really just integrated biological FTL-comms, but they can talk to each other over long distances, and even with anything else with FTL-comms all without having to pay a service carrier.
So naturally this makes feel superior. And you know what, having a bunch of smug so-and-sos around wouldn't have been that bad if they weren't also the most whiny, supercilious jerks with overinflated martyr complexes in all of Fenspace. Basically because nobody thinks they're as great as they do, they feel persecuted. And they tell everybody that they're persecuted loudly and in as grating a manner as possible.
Maybe there's a nice, well-adjusted Slan out there somewhere. But nobody's found him yet.
THE QUATERMASS INSTITUTE
While the rest of fendom gleefully go out into space like intoxicated five year olds in a playground filled with broken bottles, the Quatermass Instute grimly watch the indifferent depths of space for signs of the inevitable alien invasion. While the Federation and the Republic talk about how first contact will herald a true galactic awakening in humanity, Quartermass is far more skeptical, thinking it more likely that the alien hordes are waiting to dupe the young and the hippies into going stupidly and gleefully to their own deaths as food for the aliens.
Depending solely on hardtech, as they believe that handwavium may be a plot by the unseen aliens to weaken humanity as a prelude to their inevitable genocidal feast, Quatermass stands ready and vigilant to defend humanity at any and all costs. Dismissed by much of fendom as paranoid doomsday fanatics, it is rumored that Quatermass has a storehouse of nuclear weapons, mass drivers, railguns and kinetic missiles standing by to repel any alien invasion, even if it means destroying 99.9% of humanity and the planets to do it.
THE AEUG
The Anti-Earth Union Group is simply a coalition of various fens who resent any encroachment of 'danes into fenspace. The reason why they went to space in the first place was to get away from them, and now that they're trying to wrest control from the fens, from those that truly tamed space, and take all the rewards and impose rules and regulations that have no basis on life in fenspace . . . well! The AEUG won't stand for it, that's all.
But it's not like they're Blakes or anything. Goodness, no. They're peaceful fens who'll fight with peaceful means. Protests, letter campaigns, "legal" action on Earth. Any and all of that. And, no, there are no secret fleets massing in the Asteroid Belt. And the idea that there's an army of mecha being built on the Moon is just plain ridiculous. And these aren't uniforms, man! It's just fashionable to have epaulettes on your red space suit these days. And so what if I am wearing sunglasses indoors?
METROPOLIS
The fabled AI-city/station, it's a city run by AIs and for, for the most part, AIs to come and feel at home. With docking ports of all sizes for ship-borne AIs to maintenance shops and manufactories to repair and upgrade androids and gynoids. Begun when some handwavium interacted with an already-existing satellite and a car factory turned spaceship, that was the birth of Metropolis. Hanging in the asteroid belt, it's a home away from home for many in the AI community and for their human friends as well. Metropolis is not just some hunk of unfeeling metal but a place where people and AI can interact on many different levels. Filled with parks as well as a beautiful modernist cityscape, Metropolis has its own native population of AIs and humans, who live in the peaceful community of Alphaville.
Metropolis is home to Harbou Ship-builders, makers of the Friede line of interplanetary ships, and also to Maria Rossum's Universal Robots Corporation, building industrial robots and AIs to meet any needs.
-murmur the fallen
You'll note that I kept these ideas as fan-based as possible