Notes.

  1. Three Funerals:

  DOC LINK.

  SRC LINK.

  1. Rant - An Admiral of ancient words:

  DOC LINK.

  SRC LINK.

  Warfare in space is cold calculations trading values on all those present, hidden and on display.

  — Masters At Arms Anonymous

  Notes

  The polity of Nassav.

  The Nassav Polity is one of the oldest in existence, a consociational state with ancient origins from far before both Fall and Exodus it alternates between an organisation as a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy depending on conditional circumstances of collective interests. Nassavi economics, politics and governance are characterised by a continuous effort to achieve broad consensus on important issues, within and throughout all aspects of society as a whole.

  A long tradition of political and economic independence backed by a remarkably consistent economical prowess in times of peace and war - marked by intrinsic integration of economics as foundation for political, societal and cultural continuity - has proven to be a rewarding modus operandi for what essentially is a polity without traditional territories or even a capital world.

  The history of Nassavi foreign policy has been characterised by its neutrality and continuous efforts in securing peaceful relations through cultural and economical exchange. It maintains a military element as a society not by means of a dedicated military but by integration of training, duty tours and weaponisation throughout society - connected to a deeply ingrained collective awareness on the necessity of investing in and safeguarding collective interests. There are few confirmed cases of Nassavi ships or interests challenged known.

  The Nassav polity has a developed economy and has consistently played a set of special roles in economic developments among and between the human polities since even before the Polity Accord. Research & development, shipping, trade, banking and planetary engineering have been leading sectors of the Nassavi economy. It develops and maintains relations with external parties through the use of Envoys stationed on polity capital worlds and free roaming mandated agents for territories beyond those. The Nassavi control the most widespread network of strategic financial and technological partnerships throughout the human polities.

  There is no known seat of governance, political representatives are rarely seen in public. They operate extensive fleets for shipping and trade, providing close to 80% of total shipping capacity among polities. As a people they live where they work and work where they live. It is only because of their economic footprint and continuous efforts towards peace and prosperity - responsible for their positive image among polities and territories - that the Nassavi are formally recognised as a polity of man as one of the Nine.

  As a people the Nassavi are known for their tolerance of cultures and beliefs and their relentless aptitude at establishing mutually beneficial solutions to problems encountered. Nassavi youth generally spend a ten standard year equivalent of a Wanderjahr working for themselves as registered independents or as journeymen in the service of a wide range of the largest enterprises among the human polities. Education is a constant in Nassavi society, an investment largely responsible for the widespread demand for Nassavi trained workers and technologists.

  The Nassavi are most notable for their expertise in planetary engineering - the application of technology for the purpose of influencing the global properties of a planetary object for establishing habitability or facilitation of resource management. Only very few worlds of the polities have not been subject to projects of geoengineering by the Nassavi, and most polities benefit consistently from Nassavi efforts in facilitating resource harvesting for industrial purposes of non habitable worlds and other planetary objects.

  One of the most known Nassavi accomplishments has been the Caern Project, commissioned by the Realm polity, bringing an entire world to life by means of ecopoiesis - introducing an engineered ecology to a lifeless environment. A success which even today stands as one of the grandest accomplishments of the human species. One of the more common construction projects the Nassavi are commissioned for is the construction of Orbital Links, providing cost effective transportation and communication from and to a planetary surface.

  It is rumoured that Nassavi efforts have also explored applications of megascale development, a form of exploratory engineering focused on the construction of structures beyond the megameter scale.

  Marlann Memory Open Library.

  Warfare in space is a game of numbers, nothing human on the board, right?

  — Masters At Arms Anonymous

  Notes

  1st Republic Assembly speech (excerpt).

  We here today, are not victors. While we have won a war, it is our actions today that will define our first steps towards winning a peace. One not for ourselves, but a peace required for our children's future.

  We who stand here as having gained must realise that unless we take those steps they will find themselves losing even more than those who are not present here today.

  The war we fought, with ourselves and with other polities, it has cost us much. Polities fearful of a people not bowing their heads to humanity's collective traumas of a distant past. If we do not want to include our souls in the price paid, we can ill afford to rest now and leave history to its own devices.

  We here all know, that the war we fought was a repeat of those very historic traumas that have shaped humanity's path for so long. Make no mistake, while many argue that the scale of events is hardly comparable and while others argue that the mere violations of unwritten principles are sufficient to damn us all, we are here today because we realise that growth requires a pain that must be accepted if worse pains are to be avoided.

  If we are to be parents in our own right, we must pay the cost forward for our children.

  The war we fought, has shown us - no matter how many out there wish to simply believe in the maturity of man through the lessons of history's trials of our own making - that we are still the barbarians that clawed themselves out of the mud. The veneer of civilisation is but veneer, it is a thin painting of wishes, hopes and dreams. All too easily shattered by the reality of humanity's own nature.

  We as a species grew up in a galaxy of turmoil, great storms shattering stars and systems alike, the temper of nature itself sterilising vast regions of space and many a dream of budding life. While we had the fortune of creation in a rare eye of relative quiet among those storms, we cannot deny that our hearts were formed by that very nature, in those very days.

  Today humanity is alone. We who as a species once killed fallen angels and gods alike, we who once killed the very cradle of our existence, we who once sent our children away and burned the bridge behind them. We who killed the only brothers we found among the stars.

  Today, we stand a species divided. Those who wish to embrace the quiet, those who wish to live. Those who seek a uniform pastorality of human life, those who seek to decide for themselves. Those who turn away from each other, and those who stand with each other. Those who seek comfort in a seasoned nature, and those who accept the likelihood of storms.

  This war we have fought, makes clear to us all that while nature seems to have seasoned towards a more stable state of growth and creation, we ourselves - as a species - have not been able to do the same. 10.000 years of burning delusions and destruction, 10.000 years of peace and quiet convictions of maturity shattered by a single conflagration that nearly destroyed us all. Again.

  Witnessing the death of worlds, who can possibly argue the maturity of man. We can't. Nor should we.

  We often tell ourselves that history has taught us harsh lessons. We forget that we have shaped and formed that history. We should not deny that as a species we make our own lessons. We should not deny the necessity of learning nor shun away from teaching. No matter how costly, ultimately any such price is less than the final cost of not learning that which we teach ourselves.

  Nature, which abhors a vacuum, may be resting its breath - but the human heart persists in its beating turmoil.

  Today we stand here, as one. Yet still one among many. We accept the individuality contained within humanity. We accept the right of all to choose between the ebb of life and the withering of storms. We as a people have made our decision.

  - Admiral van White

  1st Republic Assembly speech, excerpt

  Warfare in space is where you meet Murphy. Everybody does at some point.

  — Masters At Arms Anonymous

  Notes

  Introduction to the crew at the Deus launch ceremony.

  You all know of me, you do not know me. Survival, victory or death, we will come to know each other.

  I'm sure everyone's parents at one point or the other told you to be careful of what you wish for, because you may get it. One of those things people signing up with the fleet tend to wish for, is to be a hero. If that is why you signed up, I can assure you that we will find out, we will cure you of it or kill you trying.

  Heroes are only sometimes those remembered. Dead or alive. They are those whose actions shape the stories told long after the battle is over, and sometimes before the next battle begins. They themselves are shaped by purposeful memory first, events second and actions last. Heroes are symbols, not people, you should contemplate the difference. Symbols created not by us in the service, but by those we serve.

  This is why we are here, to serve and to shield. Many of you will die without ever becoming heroes. A lot of people have done a lot more and gotten a lot less, and a lot of people have done a lot less and gotten a lot more. That is fine. We are not here for glory or honour. Together we are a sacrifice required for us all. Together our actions determine the course of history for us all. For our enemies we never forget, we never forgive. For our own, we always remember.

  I encourage you all to think about these matters, because you are not here for yourself. If you think you are, we have a problem. Those we serve then have a problem. Nobody likes problems.

  Now heed these words.

  Great Ares and Athena gave me valor and man-breaking power, whenever I made choice of men-at-arms to set a trap with me for my enemies.

  Never, as I am human, did I fear Death ahead, but went in foremost in the charge, putting a spear through any man whose legs were not as fast as mine.

  That was my element, war and battle. Farming I never cared for, nor life at home, nor fathering fair children.

  I reveled in long ships with oars; I loved polished lances, arrows in the skirmish, the shapes of doom that others shake to see.

  Carnage suited me; heaven put those things in me somehow.

  I welcome you to the Deus. The name of this ship has meaning to us all. This is a shining heaven, it brings the light of day, or unleashes it. We harbour both Ares and Athena. We rule the sky, we rule the battle. This ship is the first of its class, and it will always be the first among equals through our own accomplishments. We will earn our trust, with hard work and by example.

  Dismissed.

  - Admiral van White

  Introduction to the crew at the Deus launch ceremony.

  Warfare in space is always giving new meaning to the same old ranting – hurry, wait – shut up.

  — Masters At Arms Anonymous

  Notes

  Three Funerals.

  In a scarlet, blue and green procession sovereigns of polities walked in rows of three the central avenue of Calmoral, splendid capital of the human polity of the Realm, in full ceremonial armour donned with crimson sashes, gold and jewelled orders flashing in the sun. Behind them, at suitable distance, came some sixty more royal masters of men, their queens, heirs apparent, a band of special ambassadors from uncrowned territories and envoys of Houses in exile. A view that in its passing left vast crowds attending unable to keep back gasps of admiration. A spectacle presenting all nine polities, some 70 nations and established territories in an assemblage and display of ranks of royalty and great houses in what would turn out to be the grandest - though the last - gathering of such in one place. The time was early in a morning, with the sun coming up over the central avenue casting shadows of grandeur ahead of this assembly of lineage on their quietly contained way towards the noble cemeteries, symbolic of the history that was to follow.

  In the centre of the front row walked the new sovereign of the realm, a girl not yet of age stubborn in her persistence and sorrow, flanked on the left by the late king's sole surviving sister, Duchess of Caern, and on her right by a man who by lineage at least - of all those present and noble - was closest to this pained family, the only person with his armour's visor closed, sovereign king of the Premis polity now the de facto strongest hand in affairs of the chaotic and often uncivilised territories. A man referred to by bloggers that day as "the most prominent of mourners" but also as "the sovereign freed by the passing of the king", both statements equally grave and true.

  The night before the grand funeral, quartered in the apartments once belonging to his mother in Calmoral Keep, he wrote in a dispatch to his wife "Pride I have, as a part of this royal family, with my uncle's departure freedom I now receive, a freedom deserving of my vision, and not his". While his stride was grave and firm this king had come to bury his scorned uncle, the man who in his dominance among polities he had proven unable to either bully or impress. His mother's brother, perpetually casting shadows over his vision and domain. A king now seemingly free to impose his will on others, who twenty years before his uncle's passing had changed his sigil to display the words "we bide our time".

  While countless others that very day found their own resting place throughout the polities and territories of man, two other funerals, none receiving much or any attention beyond those present, would turn out to be of equal significance in time. The first a secluded burial on a dark and captured comet soon to be released from its hold towards the darkness of the void, attended solely by a handful of brothers and sisters of the Order with thoughts overshadowed by concerns of choice of succession. The second less than a burial, with family and friends in hiding taking their own moment of mourning to celebrate a beggar of carefully hidden lineage. A man who in his life of pain had stirred the beginnings of a sentiment only strengthened by his burning execution, an event turning sentiment towards message of conviction. It would be years and years later that a next generation born from ash and dust would look back at this day to remember lines of ancient poetry, so ancient the story itself forgotten.

  When beggars die there are no comets seen;

  The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.

  Catari Accounts, Three Funerals chapter.

  Warfare in space is killing other painters on the collective canvas of our universe.

  — Masters At Arms Anonymous

  Notes

  Rant - An Admiral of ancient words.

  That was some briefing. If I didn't have trust in the Admiral before it, I'd have it now. We're going to get our hands full with simulations, reorganisations, and a hell of a lot of shuffling around on rosters and cohort compositions. Going to be worth it though. Kinda proud also. There's a lot we're not being told yet, but right now I'm really curious how the heck she managed to put all of this together, keep it under wraps, fund it and get it done. I haven't got the foggiest, nobody here has. But everyone is stunned, impressed.

  To keep it simple, let me paint the picture. We're a CBG. How's that for military terminology? A Carrier Battle Group. It's heart is the Deus, first of a class of dedicated multiple-role warships, otherwise known as a CSL (which stands for Command, Strike, Logistics). My ship. Well, I'm on it. Starting to feel like mine though.

  Primary task of a CSL is to operate as a cross-services mobile operational base. It's the heart of the Carrier Battle Group, responsible for strategic deployments and overall command planning.

  That means it's a mobile Fleet HQ, a mobile marine Forward Operating Base, a training centre, medical centre, a warehouse and even a seriously impressive manufactory. Best of all, we've got a bunch of bars. And yeah, the Deus is also home to several wings of specialised launches. Eyes and ears, busses for tactical deployments, decoy operations and a bunch of other jobs that will make your head spin. We've also got two wings of ISI's, a new type of launch with the job of interception, shielding and inspection. These little boats are absolutely amazing.

  Its secondary job (basically when we get in the thick of things) is to create, control and command a dedicated battle space, an area where it dictates detecting, tracking, engaging and destroying threats before they become a danger. Because of the available types of launches delivered by the CSL we can expand that battle space to a volume of several AU's (with a little patience to dozens of AU's) and equate the volume of it with the practical bubbles of information and weapons warfare. I'm unsure of how practical that claim really is. I would imagine communications over such distances presenting their own challenges, but I keep reminding myself that we still have not been told everything. There is a lot still classified, and in light of all the new tech, gadgets and tactics we can expect to be surprised further.

  As a CSL the Deus is one of two main classes present in the group, as the Admiral says. It's the largest class of ship ever designed. In many ways it is a city, a small colony of our people able to move anywhere in order to preserve and protect our interests. Most of the rest of the Battle Group consists of CSS (Combined Strike Services) warships, also a new class of ships. Their job is to bring the fire in the power of the Battle Group. At this point we're not being told about most of the other classes or types of ships present. Need to know, at this point not.

 

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