With the exception of "Space Trucks" this is almost a point for point rewrite of the discussion of space commerce in the old Star Wars West End games source book. Nothing wrong with that though, the cosmic era is about folding in things from other genres and the convergent evolution of speculative fiction.
But lets get down to the juicy details. How much space traffic do you want there to be in the cosmic era? I thought that humanity had not yet left the solar system in the cosmic era and the alien invasion had not happened yet. Yet you mention stuff "Most of the container ships are involved in terraforming operations". How many terraforming operations are going on in the solar system? How many people live an extraterrestrial lifestyle? Are they self sustaining yet?
But also might space hauling be more like log flows. Let us say you have harvested and lumped together using some sort of ionic net 400,000 tons of carbon floating about 10 million miles from the rings of Saturn and you want to get that stuff to the Solar powered molecular fabrication plant (takes carbon and then builds super strong material from the atom up) sitting behind Mercury. How much energy do you need to get that 400,000 tons of carbon there. With a geeky dose of planning and one good push, couldn't that chunk just move that way without a lot of course correction? How much energy and time do you need to invest in order to ensure that there are course corrections? How long will it take?
Why didn't you like what I wrote, and I why is what you wrote you superior to my ideas? You should have critiqued it then. You should not have claimed in another thread that you have written something superior. What could I do to make something more suited to your preferences.....be specific. I tried to live up to the possibility of the flirting dress or at least expand on the idea, and I feel concerned that custos found it uncool. Please elaborate on cool. It is also BS that you didn't read the original flirting dress post and only my flirting dress derivative post, because the flirting dress and its abilities were not described at all in the post you reference.
Sci-fi spell jammers in the deep. I love it. I think we discussed this before in chat: but i like the idea of these beings, and I think it adds different dimension of the setting. By writing from the perspective of one these beings you could use more hard science in you descriptions of life forms and structures. For example you could discuss things in terms of wavelength and ionic attractions ( stuff a being from a crashed spaceship could be aware of), and just having these in the setting expands the setting immensely.
The write up is a little terse. Almost like bullet points. What happened the Valadaar of six or eight years ago that opened up his posts with little in-world first person vignettes?
Check out the Vorrkush sub
It is another mystical deep dwelling arthropod of Decathros with a Lovecraft vibe.
I was looking for something to read on the fly and so I clicked on this thing. This has everything I have ever wanted to see on the Citadel. It is written with a consistent perspective, and it builds its world subtlety around characters. This might be the best thing I have ever read on the Citadel. It certainly has a lot of the qualities I have aspired to and experimented with, I truly admire this piece. Forget those banal self-important distinctions of whether or not this is “useful” or the content ascribes to my biases or preferences regarding genre; I love what this represents in as much as it has the ambition to be a completely immersive piece. The bar at the Citadel keeps getting raised (which may shrink and change depending on the community), and I believe that you have raised the bar. I would say this is transcendent: You have character driven world building and story-telling in a speculative fiction genre (with a big bit of wish fulfillment thrown in). This is well-realized character and world, and you have communicated a great deal here with a single narrative. Thank you.
As for the content, I just want to note that I respect every choice you made in writing this.
The author/narrator clearly has a lot of respect and almost adoration for his subject. Only when noting that she may not have resented being so positively featured in the documentary does he ever dig into his subject or question her at level beyond face value. It would be an interesting experiment and very telling of the conflicts in your world to hear about the events alluded to and described from the opposition's perspective. Could you paint a sympathetic picture of one your villains or antagonistic characters?
Another thing I found jarring (another word would be notable), but not in a bad way per se, was your take on superheros here. The Silver Age fantasy of the superhero is some mild mannered or over looked person who can suddenly burst out and do something fantastic. The super powers become allegory for the overlooked potential, emotional turmoil, super-ego or inner life of the nerd or the put upon individual. Here your characters (including Silver’s) are Grammy winning artists, best selling authors and beautiful young people living hipster lives in NYC. In many many ways they are departures from the lifestyles of people who plan than their lives around live chatting RPGs on a Saturday night. Are you really writing what you know?
Finally there is one thing I just don’t buy. I don’t believe that this Juilliard educated woman in her 30s who is thoughtful and considerate of meaningful communication, AND born in 1988 or 1989 could reference Rocky III with esoteric precession and complete assurance that her reference would be caught and understood. Even if she was some how a fan of early 80s pulp cinema, it was incredulous that this New York Times author and his editor were both on the same page and felt no need to explain this reference to his audience. In that moment I saw the aging fanboy behind the text. (But I completely loved it.) This is not believable...unless your alternate history promotes Rocky III to the ranks of Pooh Bear, Shakespeare, and Star Wars in terms of Western pop culture allusions. If Rocky III is a universal classic in your world... then well done sir.
Items (Transports) (Campaign Defining)