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Part Six: "How about you living in my 23rd century?.."
(Alphaville, slighty modified)
How does the world of Tigres Volants look like, you ask? Follow the guide...
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General notes:
- Flying Tigers' world is cruel, cynical, somewhat caricatural and
violent, a bit less dark than usual but nonetheless dangerous.
Big cities, large, agricultural planets, and mostly a huge civilizational
background that stays quite obscure for Earthlings: there have
been 10,000 years of high-tech history before they reached the
stars. A huge empire has grown and eventually fell, but three
milleniae after that fall, the culture remains, nearly untouched.
- It's a world of contrasts. High-tech worlds and almost savage
ones, where people live as in medieval times. Science and unexplained
events, where the former tries to explain the latter. Did you
know that no known race has a satisfactory, scientifical explanation
for the beginning of Life? Did you know that the stories told
in the books of some obscure English litterature teacher of the
20th century are true? Well, somewhat true... heavily romanced,
but true in the ground. And had happened on Earth 20,000 years
ago? Now you know it, but I haven't told you anything, have I?
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Guns:
- There are some parts of the Sphere where the bearing of arms is
allowed. There are even some places where having a gun is not
only a good idea, it's the law... There are few of them, hopefully.
Ukraine and most of far southeastern Europe are very dangerous places, so personnal weaponry is mandatory.
In some other parts of Europe and in most of the NAUS, personnal and vehicular weapons are allowed, under various regulations
that changes between the states. The bearing of arms in Israel
is considered as a social mark, even if nobody use them.
- In most of other countries, personal weapons are allowed, under
certain limits as to military stuff and real powerful guns. The Highlander Federation and the Eyldarin Republic are the most repressive states in that regard, heavily restricting
guns to non-lethal ones (that may be the only common point they
share, though...). Close combat weapons, like swords and the like,
are only allowed in Eyldarin Republic to Eyldarin citizens. The Karlan High-Command allows only military types to have weapons. Since everybody,
but the Hjandri, are soldiers, this is not much of a problem, exept with the
aforementioned Hjandri. As for the Borderline, if there are any gun limitations, nobody ever gives a damn about
them, and thus the place remain a weapon-lover's haven.
- Gun technology in itself has quite improved over the centuries.
While kinetic guns remain favorites, the apparition of lasers
and various energy weapons has eclipsed their might as military
arms. Most of 1992 weapons still exist in 2290, in a somewhat
changed form.
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Money:
- The old sci-fi myth of an unique currency is just that: a myth.
Oh, there aren't thousands of currencies, yet one can count as
many as six big ones. The "official" one is the famous "Credit"
(what sci-fi game hasn't a currency called the "credit"?..). But
most of the people prefer to use either the American dollar (for
illegal transactions) or the Eyldarin "Mallen", a gold currency
worth 100 creds...
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Languages:
- There again, there is an official "universal language" called (again, very original)
Galactic, but most people prefer to use English, their native
languages, or slang...
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Technology:
- In some ways, there are not that much big modifications. Better
computers, better vehicles, better guns, space travel and antigravity.
Yet there are some differences.
- Vehicles, for example, now run on electrical power plants. Some
have hydroxyde engines, while military vehicles use mini-fusion
plants. The gas engine is a thing only known on Earth and has
been abandonned in the mid-2000s because of oil shortage; some
backwater planets with large oil supplies still use it, though.
Most of the planes use propellers; jet interceptors are rare,
mostly because they are not as useful as they were in the various
world wars. Space travel is a bit slow: the fastest starships
travel at the rate of 3 light years a day...
- The big difference is in communications. Computer terminals are
everywhere, mail is usually sent the electronic way, there are
even "public terminals" in the streets. The main problem is that
it's very nice at a planetary scale, but when it comes to interplanetary
communications, one has to use big, heavy and very expensive hyperspace
communicators units...
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Clothing:
- Forget the usual "ridiculous justaucorps with a silver sign on
the chest" trip. People usually wear far more convenient clothes.
I'm not talking there about those who follow the fashion (or try
to), constantly trying to be up-to-date and usually end up poor
and ridiculous. More than before, I mean...
- Cautious people wear light, supple armor, like bulletproof vests,
but usually not detectable (fashioned as casual clothes). Very
cautious strap rigid platings on them, while paranoid people wear
rigid armor (not like Appelseed's landmates, much like assault
armor; landmates don't exist -- yet). Magnetic and energy personal
screens also exists. Expensive, but life-saving...
- Many people, Eyldar, for example, given the choice, would prefer not wearing anything
at all...
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Cities:
- Once again, the situation depends mostly where the city is. There
are big differences between, say, the Los Angeles Metroplex and
Tor-En-Eythelyan (capital of the Eyldarin Republic). The former is a huge city, expanding over 300 km. along the
coast, where 120 independent districts are sometimes ruled by
ethnic minorities, street gangs, when it's not Mob families...
The latter is a city much more by lack of a more appropriate name.
Small, cosy buildings carefully dropped on a green landscape;
about 5000 square kilometers and less than one million inhabitants...
- In few words, let me characterize the various city types:
 | American: ugly, dirty, not very pleasant to live in, unless you're
born here and/or psycho (yeah, I know, I'm going to make myself
a lot of friends that way... But I've been in New York, and I
know what it looks like in the 1990s).
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| European: conservative; many efforts to preserve old places, or
to rebuild them. Most European cities have been heavily damaged,
if not nuked, during WWIII.
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| East European: same as above, just fewer in number, and often
surrounded by massive walls and defenses...
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| Highlander: clean, symmetrical, glass and steel and parks. Not
too big an ambiance. Lots of cops.
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| Atlani: somewhere between Luke Skywalker's home village and, for
bigger cities, Olympus in "Applesed".
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| Eyldarin: buildings in the middle of a giant parc. Not many cities,
in fact: the population lives mostly in small, decentred communities.
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| Siyansk: half into water (Siyani, if not amphibous, are reptilian and like water...), the rest
vaguely reminding an Arabian souk: tents, stands and the like.
Ever heard of the Bazaar on Deva?..
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Music:
The Sphere rocks! Despite a strong cultural resistance from Eyldar and Atlani (Siyani's music is much louder than the loudest thrash metal band... even louder than
Manowar...), Rock and Roll, and all its derivatives, are maybe
the most succesful Earth import, not counting general entropy...
Corps:
Big corporations rule the world. Well, that's not true everywhere,
but they sure try to... In some places, like the Siyansk Merchant Guild, they even OWN it... There have been some regulations, trying
to stop corporations to have some private armies. Yet, they managed
to turn around them and keep them anyway.
Text: St�phane "Alias" Gallay ([email protected])
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