Metagame: A Few Bits From the Notebooks.

        The Common Era Date for the Founding of the Grand Empire of Man and the Stars was 2719. It was in this year that Rufus Volcker, was proclaimed Emperor Rufus Cornealius Augustus over the domains of the Terran Federation and beyond. It was this year that Terra surrendered to the siege that had lasted forty or so years. 

The first Imperial Year, Year Zero of the new Imperial Calendar was the year 2720 CE. It is the end date for the Transitional War that brought the first interstellar government of Terra its end. In truth the end was not so cleanly divided and in some places it took decades for the Imperial rule to extended to the former members of the Terran Federation. 

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Colors. Imperial colors, Institute colors, National colors, Company colors, unit colors. So many colors. So for those who are asking "Colors? WTF?", the answer it those flags you see in parades across TL-8 Earth, yeah, the military or band or whatever group of humans, are carrying flags well, the military calls them "colors". So does that mean that in the Permatic Imperium and those that preceded it still running in to battle waving flags like a bunch of morons? Yes, and the Imperial Armed Forces would like you to know that hardly being morons, those who bear the colors are some of the bravest and most honorable being to serve the Imperiums, thank you. Beings will fight and die carrying flags and such into battle because those colors are a symbol of some ideal that they feel is worth fighting and dying for. Which is after all, not as the entertainment media would tell you, all cool and glorious and fun. It is in fact extremely dangerous, brutal, uncaring chaos with death or worse lurking in every shadow. When people find that out, they have to have some reason to go back and keep doing it. The colors stand for that reason and they are still cherished items of battle gear among the fighting units of the Imperium. 

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All Spacer Careers of one Term or more receive Seafarer-1. This Skill comes from the portion of the first Term in the Imperial or Royal Navy spend on a water world learning to sail. That means those low TL worlds like say TL-2 to TL-5. And I bet you were wondering why there are still low tech worlds. Well, in the Permatic Imperium they serve as training worlds for the Imperial and Royal Navy where according to Navy lore:

"They earn the anchors before they earn the stars. Thus is was in the old days and thus it is today. For the Navy has been the service of the stars since the days of ancient and lost Terra were the issue was decided by a foot print. It was a Navy foot that first touched Luna and thus the Navy claimed space for its service. And so, those who wear the Navies' anchor insignia have been on the surface of a world facing real seas."

Another tidbit of Imperial Navy lore is that to this day those wearing Smallcraft Wings are Aviators, not Pilots for thus it was in the days of old. 

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AI Owner. There are times when a Personality is assigned to a vessel of the Imperial or Royal Navy or perhaps a vehicle of the Imperial Army and Royal Marines. Most of the time, they will be loaded into a sophontoid form. However, in some rare cases they stay with their instal issue warfighting forms throughout their Career in the service. In even more rare cases they have been separated from the service in that same form. Usually this only done for flag officers and those Personalities that have earned high level decorations, in all cases the Personality is a Citizen and some case a member of the Peerage. 

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Imprints. These are the copies of living person for contract work, such as being laid on to a cloned brain for starship computers. They are an odd legal case as they do under Imperial High Law quality as Citizens, but by contract they are not. They are Subjects of the Imperium and may go on to becoming Citizens, but when they are granted Citizenship they must choose a new name, the original maintaining their name. Imprints may have autonomous budget authority in some positions, such as a starship or vehicle brains. They are generally granted a personal budget out main funds that are used for upkeep and repair. Most often Imprints are legally entitled to pay and their budget is funded out of that with the remaining funds being placed in a trust. 

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The Xmail System: Some versions of the Xmail System use Neutral Output Applets. A message to a specific person is inserted into the Applet and thousands of copies are sent into the xmail system, carried by ships to hundreds of worlds. When the recipient arrives on one of those worlds and checks an xmail terminal, his specific message pops up on the display console. 

After the message has been received it will generate a output to Censor and Cleaner Applets to kill any copies found. This process can take some time to clean out all the redundant copies and sometimes individuals or groups may be looking for a copy of the Xmail message. It then becomes a race to see who finds a remaining copies, the output kill order or the seeker of a copy. 

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The Imperium encourages some imperfection in all levels of manufacturing. They do this for a reason. They have to, for at TL-C or so start getting materials that can be perfected to damned near the molecular level. The rule for this is based not out of the Ministry of Trade and Commerce, but that of Justice they just let MoTC enforce it for the most part. These tool marks are for use by law enforcement agencies to attach specific items to their point of origin and follow them through the chain to their possession by a criminal and use in a crime.