Deirdre Skye is born on this day, the 28th of May 2025.
Deirdre is the leader one of the more popular factions, and with good reason. Gaia’s Stepdaughters are fun to play, sympathetic (bad enough that Chiron is already Planet B for humanity, they don’t want yet another planet trashed, but they also care about people), and, from the flavour text, the closest the game has to a protagonist faction.
I’ve posted a drabble to commemorate this occasion.
However, the best way to celebrate is of course to work on protecting our own planet, Earth.
The Monsoon Jungle stretched over thousands of square kilometres. Planetsea cast endless rains upon it, and all life, whether Earthborne or Planetborne, thrived there and filled the forest-still air with breathable atmosphere. Rare moments of sunshine occasionally penetrated the thick cover. The Peacekeeper scouts of +80 Sols revelled as, for brief moments, their lungs were filled with fragrant spray-rich air and the scents of alien flowers. Sunlight warmed faces that ached from overshelter. Some would succumb to Planetpox, but, for the lucky remainder, the Monsoon Jungle assumed prestine sacridity - and enticed them to believe Humankind may, tentatively, abide the garden of Planet.
Playing Alpha Centauri as the Gaians is great. It's just like a Horse Girl Movie. Only the horse is a nightmarish writhing swarm of parasitoid alien worms.
Dear Game Developers, I don’t want to be a rapacious colonizing blight on the world.
I like a pretty wide variety of games, but one general thing I’ve always been particularly keen on is the sort of game where I start off just kinda naked in the wilderness with nothing and have to build up a bunch of infrastructure to accomplish something. So you know, RTSes, Civ clones, survival games, sandbox-y Minecraft stuff, Dwarf Fortress and similar things, but these all have this really annoying habit of making my character the biggest existential threat to the entire world, and I would really like them to stop doing that all the time.
National Novel Writing Month is upon us, so I thought I’d make an Alpha Centauri themed wordcrawl. Probably quite a difficult wordcrawl, but I haven’t actually tested it. Tasks are to be done in order.
Disaster: A reactor malfunction damages the Unity! Do a five minute word sprint trying to get your bearings and reach one of the landing pods.
Factions: Now comes the time to join a faction. Which one should it be?
Cult of Planet: Technically not around yet, but you've had a premonition about Cha Dawn. Guess a number between one and 10, then generate a random number in that range. Write for a number of minutes equal to the absolute value of difference.
Cybernetic Consciousness: Binary is best! Write for 10 minutes.
Data Angels: How many characters does the password you use most have? Write for 16 – that number minutes, and you can skip this task if your password has at least 16 characters.
Free Drones: There’s work to be done. Write to the nearest thousand words.
Gaia's Stepdaughters: A year on Chiron is about 389 Earth days long, so write that many words.
Human Hive: Do as your told and write 300 words.
Lord's Believers: In most Christian traditions, the New Testament consists of 27 books, so write 270 words.
Morgan Industries: Look up the wealth of the richest person in the world. Sum the digits of their net worth until you reach a number you can handle, then write for that many minutes.
Nautilus Pirates: How many taps do you have in your home? Write for that many minutes.
Peacekeeping Forces: Find a partner and both write for 5 minutes.
Spartan Federation: Word war for 5 minutes.
University of Planet: Open a random wikipedia article. How many letters does the title have? Sum the digits until you reach a reasonable number, then write for that many minutes.
Your Own: Don't like the sound of any of these? Well you can start your own faction with whatever agenda you like, but that's harder than joining an existing one: Write 1000 words.
Alien Skies: Go outside and get a look at the sky, then write 100 words.
Research Priority: How do we want to prioritise our research?
Build: Build a solid foundation of 500 words.
Conquer: Do a 5 minute word war. 100 words or more to win, repeat until you succeed.
Explore: Get up and walk around, then write 200 words.
Discover: What are the first three digits of your wordcount? Write that many words.
First Facility: What should our first facility be?
Network Node: Don’t go online until you have written 200 words.
Recreation Commons: What is your favourite type of recreational activity? Count that word’s letters and write for that many minutes.
Recycling Tanks: What is the last digit of your wordcount? Write for that many minutes. (10 minutes if it’s 0.)
Fungus: The fungus is difficult to travel through, but you'll get there eventually. Write to the nearest 500 words.
New Base: Time to expand. Write the next paragraph.
Secret Project: Which secret project should we concentrate on? Write at least one to progress.
Command Nexus: Know thy enemy, but do not forget to know thyself. How many words do you think you can write in 10 minutes? Then write that many words.
Human Genome Project: Humans typically have 46 chromosomes, so write 460 words.
Weather Paradigm: What's the temperature where you are? Write for as many minutes as the absolute value of the local temperature.
Virtual World: No browsing the internet until you have written 300 words.
Indigenous Life Forms: Your scouts encounter a writhing mass of worms. What should they do?
Study: Hang back and carefully study the mind worms and compose an encounter report. Write 300 words.
Attack: Speed is your ally. Write for 5 minutes. If you write more than 200 words the mind worm boil is vanquished. Otherwise, write another 200 words as another expedition tries to piece together what happened.
Befriend: Careful does it. Write for 10 minutes.
Social Engineering: Now it's time to decide on the political system of our new society.
Frontier: A frontier society has no time for complex political structures. Simply write 100 words.
Democratic: If you are in the Data Angels or Peacekeeping Forces, you must choose this. Write to the nearest 1000 words.
Police State: If you are in the Human Hive, you must choose this. Do as you are told and write 500 words.
Fundamentalist: If you are in the Lord's Believers, you must choose this. If you are in the Cybernetic Consciousness or the University of Planet, you may not choose this. Write for ten minutes.
Planet Dreams: The planetary consciousness seems to be contacting you while you are asleep. How many hours did you sleep last night? Write for that many minutes.
Alien Discovery: It’s clear you aren’t the first sentient beings to live on this planet.
Monolith: The monolith provides a boost to morale. Write for 5 minutes.
Alien Artefact: The alien artefact unlocks a new technology. Write the next paragraph.
Vendetta: Find someone to do a 5 minute word war with. If you write fewer words than them, write another 100 words as you lick your wounds.
Brood Trainer: Your most promising young talent has the potential to command mind worms. But that is a terribly dangerous endeavour. What do you do?
You forbid an attempted contact. She has a long and distinguished career in something totally different, but your faction never gains access to Planet’s indigenous life as weapons of war. Skip this task.
You order the attempted contact. Write for 10 minutes. Her fate depends on the number of words you write.
Less than 200: She dies horribly during the attempted bonding process.Â
200-500: The contact with the mind worms is successful, but she later falls in battle. Fuelled by desire for revenge, if you lose a vendetta, you have to write 100 words fewer to rebuild.
More than 500: The contact with the mind worm boil is successful and your faction has gained a powerful handler for Planet’s wildlife. During indigenous life forms tasks, you either have to write 250 words or 10 minutes fewer.
Social Engineering: Now it's time to pick our economic system.
Simple: Every complex economic system has its disadvantages. Simply write 100 words.
Free Market: If you are in Morgan Industries, you must choose this option. Look up how many billions the world’s wealthiest company is worth, then write that many words.
Green: If you are in Gaia's Stepdaughters or the Cult of Planet, you must choose this. If you are in the Free Drones, you may not choose this. A year on Chiron is 532 local days long, so write that many words.
Planned: Fulfil your quota and write to the nearest 1000 words.
Indigenous Lifeforms: A wave of mind worms is attacking! To battle them off write
250 words if you picked Green economics.
750 words if you picked Free Market economics.
500 words if you picked Simple or Planned.
Social Engineering: Now it's time to pick our fundamental values.
Survival: You're to busy trying to survive to write treatises. Simply write 100 words.
Knowledge: If you are in the University of Planet, you must choose this. If you are in the Lord's Believers, you may not choose this. How many years of schooling have you done? Write for that many minutes.
Power: If you are in the Spartan Federation or the Nautilus Pirates, you must choose this. If you are in the Data Angels you may not choose this. Choose one type of exercise like sit ups, push ups, or squats. How many can you do in five minutes? Write that many words times 50.
Wealth: If you are in the Cult of Planet, you may not choose this option. Time is money, so write for 10 minutes.
Vendetta: As humanity expands on Planet, the vendettas are getting more vicious. Find someone to word war with for 15 minutes. If you lose, you have to write another 250 words to rebuild.
Planetary Council: Everyone gets to be heard and compromises made. Ask three people for a number and sum their digits up until you have reasonable number. Write for that many minutes.
Secret Project: Complete at least one of these to contine.
Empath Guild: Ask someone to think of a number between one and twenty. Guess that number, and write for as many minutes as the absolute value of the difference between your guess and their choice.
Planetary Datalinks: Do not go online until you have written 450 words.
The Supercollider: God might not play dice, but you do. Throw three six-sided dice, add the results and write for that many minutes.
Air Power: Air Power rests at the apex of the first triad of victory, for it combines Mobility, Flexibility, and Initiative. Get 5 minutes of exercise, then write for another five.
Centauri Preserve: No need to write anything for this one, but if you're here, you've already put quite some effort into this. So make sure that your work is sufficiently backed up, if you haven't already!
Planet Dreams: Planet is growing steadily more aware and sophisticated. It is even composing poetry. Find a poem you like: How many stanzas does it have? Write for that many minutes.
Vendetta: The War to End All Wars! For Real This Time! Find someone to word war with for half an hour. If you lose, you have to write another 500 words to survive the devastation.
Indigenous Life Forms: Compared to what is happening with Planet, the threat from the other factions doesn’t seem so important. Write more words than you did during the last vendetta.
Social Engineering: Now it is time to choose the ultimate direction of our future society:
None: It might be the future now, or soon at any rate, but you don't have time for this. Skip this section.
Cybernetic: If you are in the Cybernetic Consciousness, you must choose this. Round numbers are good, write to the nearest 1024 words.
Eudaimonic: If you are in the Free Drones, you must choose this. An excellent life requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement. Write for 15 minutes.
Thought Control: Do as you are told and write 800 words.
Secret Project:
Bulk Matter Transmitter: Matter comes in, matter comes out. Write 750 words.
Clinical Immortality: How old are you in years? Write for that many minutes.
The Nano Factory: Nanomachines are small and convert existing matter. Look at your wordcount, what are the last three digits? Write that many words.
Indigenous Life Forms: Swarms of Locus of Chiron darken the skies, demon boils pour forth from the fungus and vast Islands of the Deep erupt from the waves. Write for an hour as you try to survive.
Voice of Planet: Thousands of years of civilization compressed into a single searing burst of revelation, but it will suffice to write 1000 words.
Ascent to Transcendence: Finish the chapter you are working on.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Cha Dawn
Additional Tags: Cult of Planet, Escape, War, Psychic Abilities
Summary:
With his faction pursued by Hive soldiers and the ocean in front of him, Cha Dawn needs Planet’s aid. Oneshot.
“Of course we’ll bundle our MorganNet software with the new network nodes; our customers expect no less of us. We have never sought to become a monopoly. Our products are simply so good that no one feels the need to compete with us.”
— CEO Nwabudike Morgan, Morgan Data Systems press release
The little animation at the end where Morgan is doing a backflip confuses me. What is he trying to prove? That using the MorganNet OS and network nodes will make you happy, young, and healthy? Or that he, CEO Nwabudike Morgan, is still young, strong, and healthy, unlike your aging putzes of a faction leader? It’s one of those aspects of advertising that’s so transparently obvious, yet you have to have them because otherwise you’re not going to have that idea unconsciously lodged in your target demographic’s mind, especially when your competitors (should they actually exist) are doing it. You would need some very subtle and clever work done to get around that, but that always runs the risk of not making your message clear to everyone, because not everyone thinks like your clever marketing artist.
On another note, I have to imagine that if the other factions make extensive use of Morgan Data Systems hardware and software because they are, in fact, the best networking equipment you can find on Planet, there’s a lot of consternation over the fact that Morgan likely has all sorts of backdoors installed for his own ends, just in case he needs to use them. The College of Cyber Security at the University of Planet are constantly busy patching all of those vulnerabilities without destroying the features that they are integrally part of. Gaian researchers in the xenobiology labs are trying to make a workable network substitute using xenofungus, but the functionality is not quite there yet. Data Angels both love and hate these things: they love them because they are so easy to hack and everyone uses them, but no self-respecting Data Angel would use a rig made from such components, not without extensive modifications, anyway. And Sister Miriam Godwinson makes it a point to scowl while using MorganNet Video In Chat Service (known as VICeS among the Believers) because she knows that Morgan’s watching somehow.
Did a crash course in python and picked Alpha Centauri’s quotes as the base text for a wordcloud. Used stopwords to strip out common English words and also got rid of “will”, “us” and “one”. I included the lines where it says where the quote is from.
Looking only at the technology quotes, the wordcloud is:
Looking only at the secret project quotes, the wordcloud is:
Looking only at the facility quotes, the wordcloud is:
I’ve posted an Alpha Centauri one shot on fanfiction.net.
My Flesh and Blood (Link)
Summary: Santiago’s son fails to live up to Spartan expectations.
Genre: Family/Angst
Rating: T
This story is very loosely inspired by Centauri Dawn, but it doesn’t fit with that book’s plot, nor is any knowledge of the book required for understanding.
