Racing the Darkness - An Alpha Centauri Photologue

[Trenacker]

The cable car system of Lagos, Nigeria, a local innovation for a global problem of weak government.

Gondola lifts, first used for passenger service in 1908 on Old Earth, were a relatively uncomplicated solution for shuttling people and cargoes over extreme changes in altitude. Many urban neighborhoods around the world fell back on hand-crafted, cable-operated lifts to link high-rise arcologies when municipal services collapsed, drawing on the successful Nigerian example.

Despite questionable mechanical safety records, these ersatz solutions were robustly popular. They were the obvious solution to inundation or seasonal flooding in coastal cities, when urban geography changed with the wind and tides. Provided that care was taken in the siting and defense of their infrastructure, they were also considerably safer for their occupants than boats. Gondola lift systems could be built and maintained with local skills and scrap materials. The engineering concepts behind such systems was relatively simple, and they did not require as much supporting infrastructure as bus systems or railways. Additional gondolas could be cut and welded from junked vehicles in a matter of days. High-grade steel and cable for a pulley system were readily salvaged in urban settings where skyscrapers and bridges were abandoned to decay. Intervening buildings along a route could be converted to way-stations or load-bearing elements.

The atomization of systems, impossible to contemplate when cities were well-governed, became a draw. Smaller networks limited the potential impacts of structural failure and preserved the insularity of neighborhoods already sensitive over their abandonment by "the powers that be," including the corporations that had previously supplied modern conveniences such as transit service. Then, of course, there was the naked truth: without the lifts, most urban high-rise architecture would have been rendered inaccessible to populations already afflicted by severe overcrowding. Ambitious urban renewal campaigns in the 2020s such as China's Sunshine Plan and the Atoms for Peace Program's "Big America" Project created residential tower complexes that soared to 1,800 or 2,000 meters in height.

New York City, view south from The Old Battery. The Atomic Development Administration building, a Koch-era catch for the city, looms in the foreground while the Neo-gothic John V. Landsay Building looks out on the "The Fill," huge hulls of garbage that have been barged into the Upper Bay to extend the city south and create flood barriers. The Lindsay, which housed more than 40,000 people, has been colonized by unauthorized tramways.

Adoption of aerial lifts on Chiron was rapid and widespread, particularly by bases in mountainous or unfavorable terrain. Spartans built a series of gondola lifts to raise foraged supplies up to their redoubt of Xerxion. The Ascendancy likewise used cable cars to link their outposts along the Sawtooth rangetops, while the Hunters built similar infrastructure to access the permanent depot at High Hide and the Conclave used cable cars to shuttle between mesas in the Planetgorge.

Artist's rendering of Pardis. The imperial palace was situated on an artificial lake in the center of Tehran in 2022. It was a public relations disaster. Foreign journalists reported unfavorably on the Shah's diversion of water from an already-thirsty city. Architects and historians called the design a clumsy mockery of traditional architectural styles. Journalists quoted all the usual regime dissidents. They believed the project was a game of subservient theater for the throne's Anglo-American puppeteers--yet another indication that the Shah was engaging in shameful fantasism at his country's cultural expense.

Future leader of the Human Ascendancy, Tamineh Pahlavi, orbited the Peacock Throne until, at the age of 15, she lost both parents to a flu pandemic and left Iran for Switzerland, never to return. Her father, an aerospace engineer, was a cousin of Mohammad Reza Shah, while an older brother, Kamran, rose to prominence as commander of a squadron of tanks in the Imperial Guard. For years, she shared a tutor with the Crown Prince, Reza.

Young Taimneh was raised to regard the 1921 collapse of the Qajar Dynasty and the mid-century White Revolution as turning points in her country's history. She interpreted Iran's regional hegemony as evidence of the superlative quality of her family's leadership by comparison with the more tumultuous and theocratic politics of neighboring Pakistan and the Communist influences in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. One person, honed by the finest education, aided by the best associates, possessed of a worthy vision, and with all the levers of state at their disposal, could break the power of hidebound institutions. As a student of biology in California, Pahlavi went on to draw sympathetic parallels between the Shah's beleaguered position and that of Vesper Abaddon, haranguing her skeptical peers accordingly.

In the United States, Pahlavi often spent school holidays with a former courtier in Tehran, ex-Chilean president and exile Sebastian Valdes Riquelme, and his wife, Rayen. The two were enthusiastic participants in the growing Spiritual Perfection Movement, emphasizing the growth of personal efficacy through philosophical education and aerobic exercise, and flirted with solar worship. Like millions of other devotees who were encouraged to find a suitable historical archetype to emulate, the Riquelmes chose Alexander the Great following the 2031 discover of a partial copy of Adrianus's Alexandriad, previously known only by mention in the Suda, a Byzantine encyclopedia written in the 10th century. In the epic poem, Alexander is Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun. Enthusiasts recast Alexander as a precursor of modern multicultural values, ignoring the cultural destructiveness of Hellenization. The belief that certain great persons drove most historical events by reaching behavioral acmes was familiar to Pahlavi, reflecting the instruction that the first Pahlavi shah had passed down to his son.

Other decisive influences on Pahlavi's thinking included Kyrie Tallowan, a member of the board of biogenetics firm Imre-Meinertzhagen. The politically progressive Tallowan was an unlikely ally for Pahlavi, but they shared a belief in the power and moral correctness of top-down change. Tallowan put forward the critique that many of society's problems were drawing reactive solutions from politicians when they should be inspiring preventive measures, which were often cheaper. As a health insurance executive, Tallowan drove steep cost reduction by creating incentive structures for subscribers to make health choices. In the Unity Mission, she saw an opportunity to leverage stronger criteria for crew selection to avoid passing on "the seeds of genetic calamity."

Tallowan's many critics called her a Communist and a Darwinist. At the peak of her unpopularity, Imre-Meinertzhagen expelled her. But Pahlavi, still haunted by the ghosts of her parents and spouse, became a passionate believer in Tallowan's ideas, repeatedly petitioning the United Nations to insist that they apply genetic standards for recruitment, just as they did in the realms of physical fitness, mental stability, and professional aptitude. Though she often invoked ethics as justification for her position, arguing that passing on infirmity was a deliberate generational choice, her attempts to capture and communicate the compounding economic impacts of hereditary illness garnered considerably more attention, leading to a media narrative that consistently presented Pahlavi as a sociopath without feeling.

During her time as an executive with the American Reclamation Corporation, Pahlavi explored transmission of genetic memory in humans and animals, as well as Lamarckianism, the transmission of acquired physical traits, such as from use or disuse, from parent to child. She was aided in her work by access to the voluminous genetic databases created to assist the Vault Project, and often consulted on development of the brutal social experiments foisted on the residents of government vaults. Pahlavi was especially interested in developing experiments that could record the psychological impacts of hibernation and hermetic living, and physiological responses to the presence of androids in human societies, which she reviewed on a regular basis with ARC CEO Oscar van de Graaf.

Sources:
Speculative art depicting a future Lagos, Nigeria by Olalekan Jeyigous in his "Shanty Megastructures" series, as reported by CNN.

The "High Hide" was an aerial platform used in Michael Crichton's novel The Lost World.

The second image is "AI arts by Dyonics" by dyonix01 on DeviantArt.

The third image is concept art from the Walt Disney Company for Disney's planned Persian Resort, an idea that did not outlive the Iranian Revolution. I found this particular image at themeparktourist.com.

The Spiritual Perfection Movement hearkens back to MysticWind's post introducing Cuzco Sol. The idea for an Alexandrine religion is taken from the Lux Invicta mod for Crusader Kings II by Shaytana.

Research for this post came from the Wikipedia articles on the Shah and his father.

[Trenacker]

San Francisco, CA at twilight, September 2070. Golden Gate Park and much of the surface area of the city's eponymous bay have vanished beneath urban sprawl.

Chiron, too, faced a population boom a hundred years after the first human colonists arrived. The first generation clung timidly to their Landing Pods. Many survivors refused to quarter in pressure tents for fear of catastrophe. Raids were many, and most militias pitifully small and unreliable. To reduce strain on life support systems, the first free-standing structures were cramped. Colonists competed for space with failsafe devices, such as zipper-locked partitions, and the bio-hazard bags used to store their equipment.

In time, perceptions of the planet's habitability changed. Led by ex-spacers among the early colonists and unburdened by memories of easier lifestyles on the near-fictional paradise world of Old Earth, young people carved out private spaces wherever it was possible to do so: in vehicle cockpits, storage containers, and in the old survival shelters rejected by their elders. This boom resembled what had been seen before during every time of plenty and peace from time immemorial. Settlers came up against walls and ignored them, discounting threats that had once made them prisoners behind their own defenses. If Base Operations would not serve them, they ran drop lines to power, network, and oxygen conduits--placing their claims on "the common resources" that Planetary Governor Pravin Lal assured them they could not be rightly denied.

Commander Zorion Lekubarri, a native Basque, in his Spanish naval uniform, an impressively-complicated piece of smart clothing typical of materials issued to Unity bridge officers.

The topmost element worn on the right breast is a datalinks adapter for personal storage with a capacity of one high-density 25MB tape. The element just below is a dosimeter.

At the left breast, from top, are digital nameplate (color-coded to ship's emergency operations status), personal security credentials, and push-to-talk shipboard radio transceiver.

The large patch on the right arm controlled various medical features of the garment and was designed to be removable. Silver medication ampules, ready for remote injection, are visible at the right upper arm and along the placket.

Sources:
First image is "San Francisco 2077" by Kxmode on DeviantArt.

Second image is "Chariss Pikeman" by gingerbreadman84 on DeviantArt.

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A University hopper wildcats in the Garland Crater, hunting radiologicals. Faction leadership conducted such missions without the review or approval of the Academician, who referred all such matters to his mercenary commanders. Why else, after all, did he pay them? In this instance, a colonel of the Red Leaf Lancers correctly anticipated that any Data Angels threat response would be slowed due to competition within the faction's notoriously fractured officer corps.

Orbiting Uranus, Station Cole, named for the popular two-term American president who retired from public life in 2004, hosted the farthest permanent human presence in the Sol System until 2062. Experiments performed here furnished patterns for many of Unity's key systems, including: laser communications arrays, synthetic aperture radars, radar altimeters, solar greenhouses, water reclamation filters, and spin-gravity medical bays.

The station experienced a minor crisis in 2030 when, after taking aboard the surviving crew of a damaged Indian resupply tug, some of the Cole's supposedly demilitarized crew were discovered to be members of the U.S. Marine Corps.

The clutchrunner evolved to secret its larvae in the muck of Planet's nitrate beds. Scrambling on four legs, adult specimens were approximately as large as a regulation rugby ball. Prominent features included chitinous spinal plating and a four-bulbed heat-sensing organ facing the direction of travel. Clutchrunner metabolism was based entirely on heat absorption. Human settlement swiftly obliterated all known populations, as they gave up breeding to cluster at energy cables and cooling vents where they were swiftly dispatched as pests.

Sources:
First image is "Landing on a Distant Moon (AI)" by Dolphin Riders on DeviantArt.

Second image is "Space station Uranius" by GabiMedia on DeviantArt.

Monroe "Eagle" Cole, a character in the film "Welcome to Mooseport" (2004) was the last role played by actor Gene Hackman before his retirement.

Third image is "Grand Space Opera: Light Age Artstation Props Challenge" by Chien Jarvis on ArtStation.

[Trenacker]

The whale preceded the cow, sheep, pig, and chicken to the mess halls and cafeterias of Planet, joining more familiar grain and vegetable staples such as corn, squash, rice, barley, and beans.

Straightforward procedures carried out in the relatively primitive laboratory spaces aboard Unity landing pods sufficed to edit the genetic material of bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) embryos so that the animal might take to Chiron's deep waters.

Within a few short years, fleets of seafoils were harvesting more than 120,000 adult specimens each megacycle. This Hunter mothership departs through the ice gate at Admiralty Bay after a successful sale to University provisioners.

Sanctioned alcohols were served at the New Jerusalem Longhouse, but only to out-factioners.

Fungal beer's distressing odor and notoriously off-putting mouthfeel convinced many colonists to pursue only "the traditional can."

Mombassas, Tsingtaos, American Kings, Ice Choppers, Yompers' Best Bitter, and Titans were hoarded and savored. Beers were a staple of community life in Tribal strongholds, Hunter clutches, and on Pilgrim spreads. Morganite bosses guaranteed a quota of pints for every drone. Drinking alcohols were restricted to upper castes in [/i]L'etat nouvelle, but every ship's captain was expected to provide a supply of spirits for their crew.

Gaians strained "the Strong" over ground xenofungus, yielding the most-potent of Planet's signature beverages. Colonists in every faction pooled expertise, equipment, and time to brew weak mushroom beers that vied for popularity with re-hydrated coffees and teas.

This thirst for the familiar had its darker side. Pilgrim homesteads, considered inviolate even to the Governor, were firmly under "knout and lout." This formulation, popularized in by a nameless Gaian poet, so much reflected the truth that Oscar van de Graaf eventually humbled himself even before Sister Godwinson, pleading that she send spiritual balms to tame the wildness in his people. 

Inside the University, heavy drinking was the accepted prelude to any meaningful push for students' rights. Some Data Angels insisted that they did their best coding while inebriated. In the Spartan camp, Holnists threatened mutiny after attempts to regulate their consumption of liquors.

A citizen of the Cybernetic Consciousness has entered the peculiar trance that accompanies a transmission of energy without intelligible information, or... lunch.

The currents of certain hungers could be calmed only by consumption of a new kind of input: electrical energy, drawn from sockets to replenish biomechanical systems. Flavor and texture were irrelevant. Discriminating consumers sought guarantees of heat, voltage, amperage, and load reliability.

   

Source:
First image is from Avatar: The Way of Water (2022).

The first time I heard coffee referred to as "the Strong" was in the Scratch and Burn ditty "Sips from the Strong," a pardoy of Cypress Hill's "Hits from the Bong."

Second image is "Shahbod Hotel-Bar Design" by Gabriel Jiménez on ArtStation.

Third image is AI art, titled "Anime," created by Dmitriy Vilkov on playgroundai.com.

[Trenacker]

Zeboin [Zay-bo-inn] (born Aariz Mohiuddin, 2053-MY14) was a mercenary, adventurer, explorer, bodyguard, and courtier retained in the service of Sister Miriam Godwinson. A frequent collaborator of Conclavist expedition leader Major Vinchenson Parke, Zeboin joined Parke on all of his major undertakings and led the successful recovery of Parke's body after the latter's death from a fall while ascending Mount Iapetus in MY12.

The son of IOEZ cargo cultists, Zeboin traveled with his parents to the Shamashi mainland during infancy for a consideration of fishing equipment granted by the Commissioners of Seneref in Khasar. Rather than return with the gift to their clan, Parke's parents instead swore their allegiance to the Commission, signing away communal fishing rights to which they did not have exclusive claim. [1] (An uncle would later stab Zeboin's father to death in retaliation for the betrayal.)

Zeboin received the public education guaranteed to all Khasari residents. According to local custom, he was given a mononym at age 7. He chose the name of an obscure king of Judah in a nod to his mother's people, who were St. Thomas Christians. [2] His background made him a favorite target of bullies, and there were frequent fights. In later life, he covered the scar from a knife wound inflicted by a classmate with a prominent facial tattoo.

Disinclined toward formal education, Zeboin worked briefly as a commercial fisherman with the Seneref winter fleet, then as a local pilot guiding anti-piracy patrols. Here, he showed much élan as a member of boarding parties. The Dutch next hired him in West New Guinea for their infamous Veldpolitie, in which capacity he fought Indonesian patrols and, sometimes, the native tribes of the jungle interior. His willingness to "shoot it out" with the Indonesian Navy contrasted with an outspoken distaste for colonial policing. With the consent of his superiors, Zeboin attempted to uphold the self-imposed isolation of the indigenous tribes and did not retaliate automatically in their "internal affairs," which included, at times, traditional headhunting. Zeboin was known to be a generous giver of gifts and comfortable enough to eat the foods offered to him by the natives, including spiders and grasshoppers. [3]

He was regarded a natural leader among his fellow mercenaries, respected for his self-possession, and rapidly earned promotion to sergeant. Later, he came down to Port Moresby to accept Australian dollars for the same work. In a series of reports filed by colonial officers (usually disinclined to be generous toward IOEZ men), all found Zeboin to be indispensable. One commanding officer recorded that he was, "Superlative in courage and skill." Another rated Zeboin as, "Fit in all senses. Firm. Possessing excellent judgement." Zeboin frequently overcame serious calamities on patrol, from bouts of tropical sickness that put all members in mortal jeopardy, to incoming tsunamis.

On the recommendation of his superiors, Zeboin worked two years with the Australian Antarctic Patrol, but found that even skirmishing among the barren ice floes favored professional soldiers with extensive technical training and equipment well beyond the mercenary standard. There was other work for the hired guns: as stretcher-bearers,  mountaineers, and pathfinders scouting WARPAC positions and picking out tracks for armored vehicles to follow. After a difficult acculturation to the cold and arid climate, Zeboin took these lessons to heart but declined to renew his contract.

Rumors of fresh opportunity lured Zeboin to Bolivia in 2061. Crossing the Andes the following year, he was among 1,400 mercenaries retained by the Bolivian government to supplement their National Guard during a campaign to prevent foraging raids by Morganite mercenaries from bases in the former Acre state. Zeboin earned legendary status among his comrades when he braved enemy fire to reach a Portuguese fire base so that they and the Bolivians could coordinate a counterattack.

After the Callao Accords, Zeboin found work with American Christians doing mission work in the Amazon Sea, assisting them with boat operations and medical rescue. Though not himself religiously inclined, Zeboin came to admire his customers, many of whom died miserable and far from home in the service of others. By 2068, Zeboin had built an international reputation, and it was then that J.T. Marsh named the IOEZ mercenary to his reserve list.

Incapacitated by smoke inhalation, Zeboin was evacuated from Unity by Conclavists soon after waking. Upon recovery, he was appointed to the Kritarch's personal life guard. Unlike others in her circle, he was outspokenly critical of Miriam's early aggressions even while giving the raiders their basic instruction, a point that seems to have worked in his favor.

While Zeboin accepted that Miriam's faith was what impelled her to do good on behalf of others, he did not feel that such belief would benefit those who were otherwise possessed of a stable philosophy. Throughout his life, Zeboin remained a nonbeliever, though a quiet one. He was careful to describe Godwinson's resurrection (at which he had not been present) as "a medical miracle"--one that, although beyond his explanatory powers, was not necessarily empirically unexplainable. Miriam consulted with Zeboin often as a proxy for the large number of "religiously fallow" persons among her flock.

Zeboin was a close friend and collaborator with famed Antarctic Vinchenson Parke, whom he had never met before landing on Chiron. Zeboin planned for the physical security of Parke's Naming Expeditions and was often an appointed leader when Parke passed through disputed territories. Zeboin lost two toes to frostbite during the same climb that killed Parke. The two were well-known among the Hunters of Chiron, from whom they often successfully solicited friendly assistance in the form of rations, advice, and even transport. (Unbeknownst to both men, Miriam's disregard for political boundaries in ministry and exploration was consistent with Marsh's personal objective of preventing the development of effective barriers to his ranging operations.) Parke's expeditions were so consistent, it was an accepted convention among the Hunters that participants in the Peregrenation were entitled to call upon the Conclavist camps if low on fuel or supplies during their final run back to the High Hide.

Zeboin was mortally wounded during an explosion caused by an Ascendancy Probe Team at the Orchard in MY14. The Kritach's protective detail, trained by him, did evacuate her to safety. Subsequent analysis of the incident by computer systems of the Digital Oracle indicated that she was not the target, however. The Probe Team responsible for Zeboin's death was recorded taking tissue samples from his arm before shooting him in the head.

[1] Such legal fictions were a commonplace in the IOEZ. Unscrupulous actors exploited the lack of strong anthropological knowledge in U.N. and neo-colonial Admiralty Courts to press claims on resources belonging to displaced peoples. This was made easier by the prevalence of "big man" politics within the non-governmental, non-corporate resident population, which often drafted wealthy or otherwise powerful individuals to make binding agreements for the whole community in the expectation that material and other benefits would then be broadly distributed.

[2] Zeboin was the successor to King Amaziah, a leper, ruling for a period of less than one year.

[3] On the Korowai tribe of New Guinea, which practices headhunting to this day, see: Paul Raffaele, "Sleeping with Cannibals," Smithsonian Magazine [online], September 2006, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/sleeping-with-cannibals-128958913/.

Sources:
Image is "Silvaquirrrino like a soldier soldier cat warrior in world war 1, close-up, realistic face, sharp facial features, facial features, black and white, amazing digital art, hyperdetailed, art station, in the style of tony sart" in Lexica Aperture v2 on lexica.art.

[Trenacker]

Last weekend, inspired by the YouTube channel Useful Charts, I began tracing the relationships between the different RtD characters, with a focus on the major faction leaders. My hope was that the exercise would generate something meaningful to say about each one. While the chart itself is in no condition yet for sharing, some useful insights begin to emerge.

Plotting the relationships between faction leaders is a goal that extends back as far as 2014 when players in a forum-based megagame set in the RtD universe began asking for backstory to help them decide how their respective factions would likely interact after Planetfall.

I put Captain Jonathan Garland, now deceased, at the top of the chart. Later, I realized that some of the political and philosophical leaders like Apsara Mongkut and Jean-Baptiste Keller could be moved into a kind of plot firmament, above even the sainted Garland.

Garland's Executive Officer was Portuguese General Francisco d'Almeida, also lost during the Unity Crisis. All the senior officers reported up to Garland through d'Almeida, who was no fan of his new master.

Unity's Third Officer was future academician Prokhor Zakharov, then a Senior Commander and Chief Science Officer. Zakharov's command encompassed several subordinate divisions. These included: the Atomic Energy Laboratory overseen by Mission Area Director Johann Anhaldt, a Swiss mathematician that had sometimes operated as Zakharov's foil in academic discussions about the role of science in public policy during the 2060s; the Data Services Division, overseen by Lieutenant Commander Tạ Dọc Thân. Once Planetside, Zakharov's governance would quickly alienate two other notable characters: Australian-trained Kä naval commander Master Malakai Ro, who had cut her teeth hunting pirates in the Indian Ocean Exclusion Zone, and Genetic Sciences Division director Tamineh Pahlavi, an Iranian biomedical researcher previously employed by the American Reclamation Corporation. Zakharov's only other noteworthy relationship was with Lieutenant Commander Deirdre Skye, Scottish Director of the mission's Life Sciences Division, whose appointment he had opposed on grounds that her work was "amateurish" and "emotional." Zakharov preferred Pahlavi, whom he had never met, but with whose policy advocacy he sympathized, being himself an outspoken technological instrumentalist.

Zakharov was an inconsistent manager, leaving the flashy Than to conduct his own affairs while intervening often in Anhaldt's optimizing of the ship's reactors, a topic on which he was eminently qualified to make himself a royal nuisance.

Other direct reports to d'Almeida included French Contre-amiral Raoul André St. Germaine, Chief of the Aquatic Operations Section; [French-]Canadian loyalist General Marcel Salan of the United Nations Marine Corps; and Chief of the Air Operations Section, the West German commander, Kleisel Mercator.

D'Almeida's other "directs" included Chief Medical Officer Commander Pravin Lal and the expedition's Master-at-Arms and head of security, Commander Rachael Winzenreid, another product of Switzerland. Winzenreid pleased no one. Her background in civilian law enforcement (she was a former Commandant of the Swiss Federal Office of Police) elicited no confidence from military man d'Almeida, while a pronounced pessimism alienated her from Garland, well-known for his diplomatic approach to conflict resolution.

Winzenreid had supervisory authority over a number of important operations, including those of Indian Brigadier Sardul Singh's Corrections Services unit and Head Game Warden Jeremy Tanner Marsh's Forward Contact Team. Winzenreid was also the responsible officer for political affairs: Sub-commander Sheng-ji Yang and other political officers foisted on the mission by authoritarian regimes answered to Brigadier Singh. Somewhere deep down in Winzenreid's organization chart lurked a Sergeant, Corazón Santiago, respected for her calm professionalism.

Lal had his own supervisory pyramid. Pahlavi, Skye, the mission's Director of Psych Services Sister Miriam Godwinson, and Dr. Aleigha Cohen, Anglo-Burmese Chief of Neurosurgery. Both were warrant officers. Lal had a positive working relationship with all four, dealing primarily with Godwinson, Pahlavi, and Cohen as related to the problems of patient management during cold sleep. His interaction with Skye was more limited due to her involvement in matters outside his field of expertise.

Santiago knew none of the other leaders, but she did have first-hand experience fighting both against and alongside the private military contractors of the American Reclamation Corporation, once led by Proprieter Oscar van de Graaf. Van de Graaf incidentally blamed the world's richest man, CEO Nwabudike Morgan, for many of his misfortunes prior to entering government. Morgan had also had working knowledge of Marsh's past: both had run guns for the Biafran cause around the same time.

Van de Graaf had also previously employed Pahlavi and, on occasion, provided armed escort for Godwinson's embassies to secessionist leadership. Van de Graaf was mortally opposed to another stowaway, Pete Landers.

More to come. I started with my own creations, mostly, because of familiarity, but I'll eventually map the full range of characters associated with RtD.

[Trenacker]

Pholus looms at perigee, providing the light by which this Pilgrim get will sink a mine shaft in search of radiologicals. It was customary for the faction’s larger property owners to contribute machinery like this drilling rig and its service tug to such endeavors, even when performed by the smallest freeholders—both for a share of the output, and to promote general expansion and good feeling. Never were neighbors more in need than among the settlers of Chiron.

Scenes such as this one belie the limitations imposed by the faction’s overriding values. Pilgrims resented central planning, and the benefits of large-scale organization therefore often eluded them.

Social Engineering
An additional option for factions with the Industrial Automation and Chironian Landshaping techs and Mercantalistic, Planned, Command, or Post-Scarcity economics.


Controller
A specialist in the strategic deployment and effective use of heavy assets--Formers, Crawlers, and Rigs—for terraformation and resource collection. This profession, housed within Base Operations, combines the skills of agricultural and industrial engineer, forester, mining geologist, hydrologist, climatologist, foreman, fleet coordinator, and project planner. Sometimes called “industrial choreographers,” Controllers are the next step beyond the Road Crews of the Forward Contact Teams that served the First Generations: they decide where, how, and under what circumstances land will be worked, and with what resources. For the cost of +2 POLLUTION within a base’s radius, 2 Energy, and 1 Water per season, a Controller will increase the movement allowance of all supported ‘Formers, Crawlers, and Rigs by 1 and improve the yield of each square by 150%, rounding up.

A History of Fleet Control
Though unfamiliar with local conditions, the original mission survivors were well-positioned to eek out more than a mean existence. On average, crew members possessed nine years of advanced education and mission training. Cooperation-era mainline colonists (those recruited prior to the global Holnist Crisis) had seven. For Charterists, that number jumped to sixteen. Members of operations divisions had worked together in simulators for tens of thousands of hours each. Even the least-fortunate among the largest factions possessed dozens of city block-sized earthmovers and the benefit of support from J.T. Marsh’s 750-strong battalion of pioneers.

This expertise was difficult to reproduce on Chiron. Although native-borns found it far easier than Old Earthers to adhere to the routine inconveniences and basic physiological demands of life on an oxygen-deficient, high-gravity world, they had to be taught skills without the benefit of an educational and technological infrastructure equal to the task. A premium of clean spaces, precision tools, reagent, and large laboratories slowed the preparation of scientists and technicians who could provide meaningful insights about the physical world at their fingertips. Work in the field or in support of land use had to be balanced against work on base fundamentals: water sampling, sewage analysis, and air monitoring had higher priorities than mineral assays. The intensive survival training required for Road Crew replacements was also prized by faction militias; promising candidates were frequently hazarded on both assignments.

Then too, fleets were small. The ambitions of Chironian terraforming were Herculean, but some First Generation supervisors had experience in post-atomic environments directing the movements of millions of workers with tens or even hundreds of thousands of individual vehicles. Few factions recovered simulators, and most burned out quickly from hard use. The new generation could not train as their forefathers had. Nor were they often allowed. Fearful of losing their much smaller quantities of equipment to training accidents and lacking the industrial base to immediately replace out-of-service units, many factions kept the proven pilots from their original field crews at work past the age of eighty, reposing more faith in longevity treatments than apprenticeships. Factions flush with population responded to the shortage of trained crews by sending drones to dig alongside power shovels.

Interlink education had been well-respected on Old Earth, but few factions struck a good balance of investment between performing the work of today and preparing for the work of tomorrow. A student in the classroom or observing from a copilot’s couch contributed nothing immediately valuable to her society—less than did the drone unfouling treads five stories below.

Controllers were an innovation of the Chironian Renaissance, part of the flowering of the second mission century made possible by inter-factional exchanges of ideas, technology, and resources as well as the guarantee of safety delivered by increasingly competent militaries and achieved through clarity of borders. A Controller represented a huge investment of time, energy, and trust in interdisciplinary education and the promise of central planning.

Controllers also differed from Road Crews in a crucial way: they moved decision-making from the cockpit to the control tower. The Controller was a mathematical type. Road Crews—usually long-dead by the Controller’s time—would have reviled him as a Poindexter whose education had made him arrogant without making him wise. But the Road Crews were not of the same system: their billet was crafted with the idea of supporting a tailor-made economy in a complete wilderness setting. They were one part roughneck, two parts ranger, working to a five-year plan. Road Crews adapted after the Unity Crisis, of course, but filled a niche that was profoundly tactical. They could see a task, or a particular work group, through trouble. Controllers were vested with much greater responsibility and from the onset of their role faced an expectation to demonstrate strategic vision beyond what was set by the U.N. mission planners. By the Controller’s day, danger arose more from misuse than misadventure.

Sources:
First image is “Space Work” by iamrudja, created using AI tools, found on DeviantArt.

Second image is General Carlist Rieekan from The Empire Strikes Back.

[Trenacker]

The ironically-named Data Flows, a Peacekeeper base built over the Pools of Polyxo.

Ex-ruler of Gath, Vesper Abaddon, spent the final years of his life convalescing in this location while organizing the faction's archives. This unusual intranet, Lal called "my curative to the carelessness of Sathieu Metrion," whose approach to the telling the story of Old Earth's diplomatic history was simply to "dump" the files without any attempt at providing context.

It was too much for the Commissioner, who feared that release of the previously-classified revelations "untempered by robust liberal arts education" would ignite old national enmities and thwart, thereby, the project of mission reunification. Not for the first time, the Annunciator branded Lal a hypocrite, but heeded a MY51 directive from the Planetary Council to reserve the tranche of documents pending further deliberations.

A Believer hot jumper, the leads of his parachute still attached, prepares with his laser pistol to defend a salvage claim.

Both the collection, and therefore also the defense, of wreckage were important--sometimes critical--activities for the First Generations. Failed settlements and battlefield detritus were valuable sources of nutrients, water, equipment, medicines, minerals, and information or even slaves.

Many factions embodied special forces to carry out this most dangerous work. Standard tactical thinking called for rapid insertion of light infantry to hold valuable ground until relief could arrive. Ideally, this was to be accomplished by drop pod or jetpack if possible, but most factions made do with hoppers reworked as gunships and retrorocket-equipped parachutes. Casualty rates were atrocious.

Conclavists and Spartans prided themselves in that their salvage teams were all-volunteer, but the reasons seemed obvious to Santiago, who remarked on this in her Battle Manual: courage comes easier on an empty stomach.

The best target is one that inspires no sympathy. On an ill-fated raid, Dreamer infantry, armed only with hand weapons, are pinned by counter-attacking squads of Hive Security. Worse, the defenders have the high ground.

Poor results hardly deterred the Factor. Hives were unusually appealing to the Dreamers: Yang's people were many but had no reputation as fighters; there was very low risk of defection by the attackers themselves since the nerve staple would greet any surrender; and the unsentimental Chairman was always quick to overlook past abuse in the interest of future cooperation.

Sources:
First image is "Other world (49)" by ElneReel, created using AI tools, found on DeviantArt.

Second image is "The Last Breathing Create on the Planet" by iamrudja, found on DeviantArt.

Third image is "5-A" by IvanKhomenko on DeviantArt. This piece is marked as "Concept for Outrise project."

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Persephone, the City Borrowed, where Morganite ambitions clashed with ecoimmunilogical fern growth. When analysis at the University confirmed evidence of Terran gene lines in "those incorrigible weeds," the CEO immediately renewed vendetta against the old Gaian enemy.

A Hunter Cargo Foil of the Scalawag Lodge risks all to attempt trade contact with vigilant Tribal reefers. Anthropomorphic climate change ignited a revolution in sustainable settlement that echoed loud on Planet: rig construction, storm resilience, and micro-economies were all robustly familiar to the children of Earth--to the point that even the Kellerites got their hands on technicians skilled in those fields.

What began as an attempt at self-isolation gradually became a justification for renewed interest in the world beyond. Suddenly, the Kellerites found they had a significant stake in problems such as dumping, over-fishing, and planetary warming.

Humans continued to build fires even without any identifiable physical requirement for doing so. The Uranium Flats were well known to be free of Mindworm activity, but the psychological allure of the flames has tempted these Believers to gather around the light of vestigial flames.

Sources:
First image is "The Neon Jungle" by iamrudha on DeviantArt. Created using AI tools.

Second image is "Outpost" by Chains-of-Villany on DeviantArt.

Third image is "Camping On the Moon" by Stulti on DeviantArt.

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A Hive without pollen is no place for bees. - Saying of the Free Drones

All factions were prone to what Chinese Communist teaching had called "splittism"--countervailing modes of thought that resulted in defections, resistance, and general malcontent. The threat was most pronounced among Drones, the least-skilled, and least-valued valued, members of each society. Loyalty was preferable, subordination essential.

One obvious mechanism to achieve the latter was main force. The real purpose of Safe Haven and the Sabre Corporation were plain. Fear of physical retaliation flavored every discussion of serious political opposition even among the Peacekeeping Forces. Purist leaders were certain that Dr. Lal's decision to convert rather than punish the faction's Spartan prisoners--guilty of "plain murder" against their fellow crew--was taken only after they had pledged to act against his enemies.

Another option was discrimination. As late as 2040, the household of King Silas Benjamin of Shiloh included twenty-six servants who accepted chemical sterilization as the price of physical access to the person of the ruler and his immediate family. Silas believed the practice added to the majesty of his court as a lurid expression of his raw power over fate. He was also known to be deeply suspicious of competition from other political dynasties of comparable standing. Sterile servants were considered less likely to form independent familial attachments and lacked the cultural prerequisites to govern themselves.

Shakalo, an usher of the Surn Palace and a chemical eunuch, property belonging to the House of Benjamin.

Fear of competition from superior specimens wasn't confined to archaic monarchies. On seven separate occasions throguhout the twenty-first century, the United States Supreme Court repeatedly upheld executive orders barring cybernetic augments from filling sensitive positions in government on grounds that they were open to exploitation through phreaking (the hijacking of the phone lines delivering Internet service). Unity colonists carried popular prejudice against cyborgs to Chiron. Hivemen executed captured cyborgs as potential security risks rather than hold them as slaves. The Ascendancy carefully screened potential donors of genetic material for evidence of mechanical modification. Attitudes were warmer among factions most interested in the use of computers or the study of the mind. Cyborgs were a commonplace in the University, among the Dreamers, and with the Oracle and the Tomorrow Initiative.

Cyborgs lived under constant threat of tampering. Many factions introduced compulsory changes to code as a consequence for "misperformances" ranging from technical failures in the performance of assigned tasks to the expression of disfavored opinions. Commissioner Pravin Lal devoted much of his second term as Planetary Governor to outlawing a practice he recognized as "pure thought control," attracting strident support from a rehabilitated Corazón Santiago and Sister Miriam Godwinson, a position for which she paid dearly among her own people.

A University Overseer prepares corrective tape to modify the behavior of a cyborg that is thought to be "misordered."

Roshann Cobb promoted Somnacin and Stim abuse among his followers and exploited resulting addictions to preserve his vulnerable leadership. Sheng-ji Yang taught disciples to manipulate the nutrient value of rations as a corrective to brewing trouble: a weakened resistance would soon collapse. Morganite and Pilgrim proprietors dispensed heavy rations of fungal beer to dull the political instincts of their largely servile workforces.

Obedience was the default option on a world where survival often meant access to opportunities and resources held in a common trust and doled out according to the whims of a capricious ruling class chosen on the basis of political conformity. Assignment of defective equipment or high-risk jobs was as good as a death sentence.

Sources:
First image is "One Security Committee Member" by Floriane Tiam on ArtStation.

Second image is from Space: 1999.

Third image is "SPICE MINER" by Keith Christensen on ArtStation.

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Lazarus Beds like this one in Tamineh Pahlavi's private residence at the Tower of Tithonus were required to administer the second half of the treatment colloquially known as Longevity Vaccine: comprehensive blood purification to correct for abnormalities caused by unpredictable gene activation. The necessity to receive monthly treatments from one of two unreliable sources--Pahlavi or Cohen--dramatically altered the strategic landscape of Chiron, allowing both factions to antagonize their neighbors far beyond the limits that might otherwise be tolerated.

Talis Sørensen, seen here in the uniform of a Gathi Federal Air Force ensign, became aide-de-camp to Kleisel Mercator. In her diary, Sørensen described her superior as one for whom lying had become the acceptable price of leadership. "Each time," she wrote, "appears to be easier than the last." There is no evidence Sørensen assessed her own part in Mercator's exploitation of his followers' anxieties. As a Major in MY21, her service code was tied to the deletion of hundreds of faction datalinks BBS posts describing encounters with unidentified flying objects.

Political leadership on Chiron was concentrated in the hands of elders. This dynamic could be explained partly by survivors' respect for the original chain of command, but it also reflected the enduring effects of celebrity. Soviet citizens of the later twenty-first century had been taught to venerate Dr. Prokhor Zakharov as the national hero who had preserved their international relevance. Westerners knew him as the arch-villain of the Space Race. Nwabudike Morgan was rich and self-important enough to have involved himself in the wars of two hemispheres, trying and failing to unmake a superpower. Newspapers presented him as the man pulling the strings of governors and potentates themselves responsible for profound historic tragedy--including detonation of nuclear weapons on their own soil. In a ten-year retrospective on the Second American Civil War, The New York Times could not help observing that "The price for accepting Morgan's backing had been a stark choice between suicide and lethal injection. When his gamble failed, he recalled those Praetorians he did not abandon, and left his many clients to their fates." Another iconoclast, Aleigha Cohen, was at the center of classroom debates on scientific ethics and criminal justice. The theories of government put forth by futurist mathematician Johann Anhaldt were so controversial that mobs in Paris, Lyon, and Marseille had killed to reject them. Before awarding him a medal, Japanese Prime Minister Watanaka Obi praised Shoichiro Nagao as the man most-suited to preserving Terrestrial life elsewhere in the universe--an assessment that galled the ardent partisans of Lady Deirdre Skye, whose remit aboard Unity was just that.

Commander Dilyéhé Etsiddy, was chief of industrial safety. Etisddy had been a longtime resident of the sovereign lunar territory granted to the Navajo Nation by the United States Government in 2050 in recognition of the tribe's support against the Arizona and New Mexico secessionist movements and was recommended to the United Nations by the Chief Executive Officer of Comprehensive Transport himself.

Industrial Safety personnel were issued Soviet-manufactured space suits constructed from hardier materials than mission-standard since it was believed that their normal course of duty might occasion short space walks and encounters with fire or corrosives. The machinery seen on Etsiddy's torso includes a camera (right top lens), Geiger counter (left top lens), and chemistry analyzer (bottom port).

Etsiddy oversaw loading operations at the Lunar Cradle and had first-hand knowledge of Unity's structural weaknesses. From this perspective, she provided some of the most impactful information used by Executive Officer Francisco d'Almeida to make immediate decisions about where to dispatch damage control teams.

She was sought after unsuccessfully by ARC "intervention teams," who shot several of her subordinates in their pursuit before losing her in the vast cargo bays amidships, where she hid in one of the redundant spaces she had identified prior to launch. Etsiddy eventually cast her lot with Shoichiro Nagao, becoming a leader of his road crews.

Sources:
First image is "space Lazareth#04" by illbein on DeviantArt. Created using AI tools. The name of the device is also inspired by the title of the work.

Second image is "Naval officer" by Abbylikestopaint on DeviantArt.

Third image is "a beautiful female  astronaut inside an cyclopean horrifying alien spacecraft in the style of Vermeer," by Ian Clarke on Playgroundai.com.

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ARA Almarante Brown, Argentine dispatch frigate, in High Earth Orbit, c. 2060. Typical of spaceframes commanded by a Flank Captain.

Flank Captain was the junior-most flag rank in some Old Earth water and space navies in the middle and late twentieth century. It was first introduced in 2032 by the Omaran Circle Protection Force in the Indian Ocean Exclusion Zone to recognize conventional navy officers commanding escort vessels tasked as missile decoys, a particularly hazardous duty thought to demand exceptional courage and judgement. By the 2050s, this substantive rank or courtesy title was used by more than two dozen mostly smaller military forces, again to distinguish leaders of high-hazard commands.

The rank was given considerable cultural mystique in the 2040s by the blockbuster Nollywood science fiction duology, "Highest Hour," which described the tragedy of a Nigerian officer killed by Red Chinese forces during a fruitless search for Planet Nine. The films fixed the two significant traits with which the rank would be associated in the popular mind: bourgeoise striving and heedlessness in the face of mortal danger. In short, hubris.

Notable adoptees of the flank captain rank included the French Armée de l'air et de l'espace and the Comprehensive House space navy, but the rank was most common among the navies of small polities and non-governmental organizations, where it was offered to attract veterans of great power water and space navies frustrated by a lack of promotion in their native services.

Three Flank Captains were assigned to the Unity Mission. Izdubar Drosselmeyer, a Namibian, served for thirty-one years with Comprehensive Transport's neutrality patrols before accepting appointment as an armorer with responsibility for the ship's meteorite point-defense systems. Drosselmeyer entered cold sleep before the necessity of his position was reconsidered, which resulted in his reclassification to the bland title of "supernumerary officer, no portfolio." His service history made him a sought-after prize of the early Unity Crisis, when he was taken captive by Spartans. On Planet, Drosselmeyer was briefly made leader of a helot work party after refusing to swear the Spartan Oath. With other prisoners, he organized a successful escape during an early skirmish between Spartan pickets and Kellerite foragers, only to be shot dead by the latter.

Sources:
Image found on ToughSF on article "Space Warship Design: A Process," dated Sunday, 31 July 2016. Artist is William Black. See also: Point of Divergence on DeviantArt by William-Black.

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The Fall of the Five Cherubim, when Ascendancy legionnaires put the torch to Miriam Godwinson's Cities of Pearl.

Their nomadic way of life made it practically impossible to do otherwise, but Hunter foraging parties, like the dismounting pair seen here, earned themselves a black reputation on Planet for being the first to most disasters, where they usually made off with the choicest goods before friendly relief could arrive. Most Lodge Oaths compelled the scavengers to do what they could for the wounded, but bullets offered in mercy could rarely be distinguished from those offered in hostility.

The Five Cherubim were all hard cases. Chironian warfare prioritized the taking of prisoners and loot--especially nutrients and data--but the Ascendancy Kill Teams took nothing, apparently confirming the Digital Oracle's suspicions that Pahlavi's brutal attack was purely a reaction to the Conclavist's demands for planetwide restrictions on human genetic engineering.

As wealthy pilgrimage sites, they stored an inordinate share of the Conclave's moveable wealth--contributions to which the original donors still felt entitled--along with large galleries of Old Earth artifacts ranging from the faith devices of a thousand belief systems to deactivated robots and watch-vid series banned by Conclave judges. A huge quantity of this combined treasure later found its way into the hands of Morganite dealers, Shaper memory vaults, and the special collections of the Tomorrow Initiative--a river of wealth that could have flowed only with the assistance of Hunter "intermediaries."

Sources:
First image is "Primeval Reign 48," by x-lluesma on DeviantArt. Created using AI tools.

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Neo-Spartan engineers prepare to de-ice hab-dome panels and exterior machinery following overnight snowfall at Zud 12. Zud is Mongolian for "deadly winter," but its own garrison softened the base's reputation by embracing another name more indicative of their purpose: Santiago's Little Workshop.

Because of its location in far northeastern Shamash, Zud 12 was an objective assigned to Gaian forces during the MY50-MY54 War of Retribution--a controversial decision because of University Security's far greater experience with cold-weather warfare. The Gaian Rangers stood no reasonable chance of pushing so far above the equator, and indeed lost a quarter of their own territory just in fending off the nearer Pilgrim threat, but Skye did attempt to get at Zud 12 using unconventional means. In MY53, working through a Conclavist intermediary, the Gaians paid the governor of Lebombo Stick, a Tomorrow Initiative science station, to send a pair of armed hovercraft against the Spartans. 

The results were less than spectacular. After two hours of "lackadaisical" bombardment, most of it very inaccurate, the attackers were discouraged from approaching any closer by small arms fire from a seaward pillbox. Four cycles later, a Spartan section of just sixteen warriors "yomped" their way east-northeast to Lebombo Stick where they used incendiaries to destroy most of the outbuildings. When a few Netrunner militia began to muster, the Spartans were prepared: five defenders fell in a hot cross-fire, while seventeen more were taken prisoner, none of whom survived the forced march back to Zud.

A vanity photo of a Soviet Su-49 Kretchet above the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, c. 2062.

The Soviet Su-49 Kretchet fighter aircraft, with its distinctive swept-wing design, entered general production in 1999 based on the success of the Su-47 Berkut test bed and earned an enviable reputation in early twenty-first century conflicts.

The Kretchet was a favorite aircraft for export, especially to less-stable clients, and the phrase "Scramble the Kretchets" entered the American lexicon as a reference to Soviet gamesmanship no less popular than "Crazy Ivan."

Kretchets scored noteworthy aerial victories against the F-16 in Pakistani hands over Kashmir in 2032 and 2033, and for the Bolivians against Spanish Eurofighter Typhoons in 2045. In both cases, the U.S. Congress responded by canceling planned expansions to the NASA budget for support to UN orbital initiatives. In the 2060s, as the United States emerged from a long period of civil war, Soviet premier Rytov used gifts of older Su-49 airframes to the Ethiopians and Zairians, routed through Morganite fronts, to sour the American public on international aid.

Sources:
First image is "After the Thawing 4" by fleetofgypsies on DeviantArt. Created using AI tools.

Second image is "SU-47 Berkut #3" by SirOnslaught77 on DeviantArt.