Lave (0:7)
Massively Locked wrote: ↑Wed Nov 30, 2022 1:38 am
I just added your random text snippets.
Initial musings - to be added to!
Who is in the orbital station?
*Old classmate from Lave Academy now in the ship's chandlery who can give a 5% discount! Proper ships chandlery to come in LitF v.2.0
*Occasional members of the felinoid species from the 4th continent beneath
*GalCop hoity-toity types (
galactic offices as a GalCop "capital"), foreign system diplomats, corporate big-wheels, GalCop police commissoners
*Lots of people being run into the hospital after landing at the hangers (due to piracy)
*Sightings of infamous pirates wandering the corridors!
*With Lave Academy installed - Lots of Lave Academy students (on exeat from the Academy station). Living it up! Occasional teachers.
*With GalNavyOXP or HIMSN - high-up officers visiting (placating?) the Empress, making their way out-system/downplanet/over to the moon (Basta)
Other stuff
*Warnings in the bars about the piracy - don't come back here!
*Announcements of arriving escape pods
Statues: In specific large hallways or the central points where they meet
•The current Empress of Lave, Queen Isabell
•The current Tyrant
•Previous examples of either (Prince Eduard Campbell; Harvic Mellir & Nameen Orkand)
Church - there are three.
1) Church of St Giles
2) Church of the Cosmic Wanderer
3) Randomius Factoria
Other places of interest
1) Offices of the Secret Society of Ishnaan - containing a collection of their silver samovars and a publicity office.
2) Offices of Littlebear's Legal Services
3) Cowell & MgRath Shipyards salesroom (near the Hangers) and separately, offices.
4) Lave Fried Trumble takeaways (many of them)
5) Lavian Lottery kiosks (several of them)
Viceregal Palace (Govt offices - in Lave this is on the top floor besides the GalCop precinct)
<Walk towards the Viceroy's Palace>
As you approach you see several uniformed curaissers in Lavean green and silver standing guard outside the doorway.
<Leave>
<Walk to the door>
The curaissers ignore you as you walk by them. The doorway is emblazoned with the Imperial Coat of Arms.
<Leave>
<Walk through the doorway>
You enter a hallway, lit by crystal chandeliers. There is a large door to your left with "museum" written above it. The door to the right is marked with "bureau". The staircase in front has curaissers blocking the entry.
<Leave>
<Enter the museum>
In front is a long line of Emperors and Empresses of Lave, stretching from left to right. In the middle is the current Empress: Queen Isabell. Behind is a holostim of the current Tyrant.
To the left is a large interactive map of Lave with images of the important places on each of the four continents (such as the Cowell & MgRath Shipyards).
To the right is a table with an attendant. The table is full of samples of food and drink. The attendant tells you that these are examples of traditional Laveian cuisine (Fried Trumbles, Tree Grubs,
etc.). On the walls are holostims advertising various Lavian curiosities - the Cirque du Soleesti (mighty Lavian Lobsters), the Secret Society of Ishnaan, Littlebear's Legal Services, the Lave Roover (for jungle trekking), the Lavian Lottery
etc.
<Try some of the food>
various responses from disgust to razzle-dazzlement
Lore
Lave features reasonably prominently in
Imprint, the novel which came with some of the later versions of Classic Elite. Set circa 20 years before Oolite.
As the indicator in the Translocator settled on the requested level and the slight pressure of deceleration set itself against his body, Hood stood up from the smooth grey seat and felt a three joint click. Aware of his body again he caught the tension gripping his back, the taut curve from his neck to his shoulders. A conscious effort to relax left a ghastly ache in his muscles, now malleable in a lingering mould of stiffness that had set as he had made his way towards GalCop licensing.
The complex was in the anterior of Station 3 orbiting Lave. Each Lavean Station had a perpetual stream of would-be pilots and, currently, a waiting-list for appointments. He was renting a small resunit and, apart from a brief visit to Ashoria, Lave's primary colonial city, on the shuttle, he had been on the Station for two weeks; ten whole days, passing the time. The wait had been made all the worse by the knowledge that he had a Mark III Cobra berthed in the Station, waiting for him whilst he awaited his licence.
The doors opened and he gazed out across jade floor tiles to the cleon foyer doors. Aligned vertically at their centre, and spreading up and across the access in a sweep of majesty, was the Golden GalCop symbol; RA the Robotic Avian, fixing him with a benign and impregnable stare from holocast eyes. Above its feathered helm, across the lintel, was the complex title; 'GalCop Space Licensing Authority'.
Hood stepped out, amongst the green pools under soft pillars of light falling from the ceiling, light- headed from the adrenaline coursing in response to the furious pounding of his heart. He could feel this moment, a turning point in his life as sure as the Station pivoted in geostationary above the green world below. Today was the culmination of his life thus far, the effort he had put in at an Anlama ground Station, 15 light years and a life-style away.
In the foyer beyond he could see numbers of people; their only common bond the Space and Interstellar Pilot Exam, waiting for the doors to the Issuing Hall to open for Licence Registration. As Hood approached, the foyer doors responded in silence. RA parted, a shimmering shedding of skin, for the image was replicated, emblazoned behind the reception desk, just beyond. There was no accounting for the ingenuity of the GalCop Design Section when it came down to their perceived integrity of the GalCop mantle, corporate wholeness unblemished.
"Card"; demanded the figure behind the desk. Paying more attention to his surroundings than the officer, Hood held out his GCID card and waited whilst his appointment was confirmed. "Wait in the foyer until you are called please". It seemed something of a understatement, but whilst Rif Hood felt a pang of annoyance that his moment of achievement was a passing occupational chore to the figure before him, who was already turning back to a comm screen, it could not deflate his anticipation.
"Thanks", he retorted as he began to head in the direction of the foyer...
Some attempt had been made to arrange the seating into small, sociable, areas. Soft uplighters glowed from behind lush Lavean planting, with Station comma-units to hand. No connection made, the screen that Hood sat next to operated a free-space run of adverts between general Station announcements. 'Celebrate as a licensee at the Balcony Complex' was followed by 'The Lave Orbit Space Authority: Trading Profile Seminar. Call on C43-97T28 for your competitive advantage'. Hood watched for a while, unwilling to make eye contact and possibly have to engage in conversation with the eight people in his seating enclave. (Chapter 2)
The Station docks ran in levels behind the free-space at station-core. Beyond and below the Station egress gaped planetwards, powerful shields operating a safety vortex both for, and against, traffic in the tubes. In a honeycomb of wedges behind the dockside were the cargo warehouses where a specialised transport network supported the auto-trading system. Autoscam modules plied their intermediary trade along these routes. The life-cycle of the Station was a peculiar one. The docks never grew still and the Station authorities were active even when sections of the Station with something approaching a diurnal routine fell quiet as they moved darkside...
There were a number of available security checks which the pilot could use in the activation process. Hood had a basic palm scan and code-entry at present, which quickly brought the array of instrumentation alive. He brought up the Orbital Space Authority Data Link on the Comms Console and left the latest flight and docking information running on the local view screen. A matrix showed Hood's Cobra in perspective of the docked complement at Dock 4 where standard information would show berthed time, whether loading or unloading, ship to ship contact data and various local statistics. Watching the data flow, Hood felt insecurity gnawing at his thoughts again, fear of trying and finding mediocrity, the burden of insignificance, he looked at the small code for his berth, tangled in the midst of 400 berths on Dock 4 (Chapter 3).
Lave's rich and fertile plains were a renowned source of protein extract (Chapter 4).
... they had met up in another bar of the Sans Serif complex next to a pool, separated by a screen of cleon that curved up and partly over the seating area so that a variety of Lavean fish swam in front of, and above them... They had laughed, drank and watched some of Lave's more peculiar forms of aquatic life scuttle around the tank. (Chapter 9).
The Navy wanted to make the registration as Elite into a special presentation. As one of the Arazaen Senators, OSA, GalCop and Naval authorities gathered for the presentation, ... away from the purple uniforms to a corner near the RA symbol in the main Naval Briefing room... "I've still got to go to Lave if I want to register officially. Can you believe it?'... (Chapter 13).
How many orbital stations at Lave?
Selezen suggested 6, which strikes me as a reasonable number, unless it would look bad in-game. Say 3 Corioli, the Academy, a Cowell Mgrath shipyard of some sort (SIRF?) and say an Octahedron or a Tetrahedron?
The other systems would have fewer. So why so many? The status of Lave as a GalCop capital of some sort? Lots of embassies & corporate offices (also duplicated downworld). But then what about the higher incidence of piracy? With all this diplomatic types, one would expect that the area would be kept safe from them. But then, when I visited Addis Ababa some years back (one of the 3 international capitals in Africa and with an impressive selection of international restaurants), the crime-rate was high and there had been a recent civil war! So who knows?
Mr Gimlet, Dockmaster, Lave Coriolis 1
