Caper Smallover

b. 539 –

Common Names: Caper Smallover
Born: Eight 2, 539 N.E.
Mardi Moun, Gagoku Na
Died: living
Titles: Director of Grey Studies
at Cyclopedia Of Worlds,
PHR, HimCur Grey
Studies UinKK, Medic2
Employer: Cyclopedia of Worlds,
onloan from Blue Agency
Sex: male
Spouses/Legal Partners: none
Children: none

CAPER ALI SMALLOVER is the Director of Grey Studies for the Cyclopedia Of Worlds.

Prior to his recruitment for the Cyclopedia, Caper was the key advisor to the Blue Agency “Reckoner For Reticulan Legacies” whose job it was to collate and mine all the historical data on the old Reticulan presence.

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Hanako Starsha

b.99 – d.202
Common Names:

Hanako Starsha

Born:

Nine 12, 99 N.E.
Planet Dakka

Died:

Nine 30, 202 N.E.
Blue Mori-mori II (vessel),
en route to Lantil Mybea

Titles:

not in catalog

Employer:

not in catalog

Sex:

female

Partners:

none known

Children:

Jokichi Starsha (son)


HANAKO STARSHA was a picture maker, born on planet Dakka, who captured some of the most famous early images of extra-solar worlds in the Late Expansion Years.

Much of her early work was done in the employ of Blue Agency financiers seeking to promote further expansion. Her images are often praised for their balance of aesthetic appeal and useful scientific information. Her son, Jokichi Starsha, was also an artist – specializing in microbiological still lifes.

Though she has been dead for four centuries, Hanako Starsha has been a key contributor to the Cyclopedia Of Worlds. Her images appear throughout the Cyclopedia. Her pictures, as dazzling today as they were 400 years ago, have inspired generations of landscape artists to this day.

Some of her images are still used as the standard pictorial representations of some worlds.


Shuttleworth

Image of planet Shuttleworth by H. Starsha, commissioned
near the end of her life by the world’s development board

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Maura Esterby

b. 170 – d. 198


Maura Esterby


Maura Esterby, age 24, from a family portrait.

Common Names:

Maura Esterby

Born:

Jackwind, Aphrophine

Twelve 1, 170 N.E.

Died:

Crown, Aphrophine
Four 27, 198 N.E.
(executed by furnace)

Titles:

none

Employer:

Your Agency

Sex:

female

Spouses/Partners:

not in catalog

Children:

3

MAURA HANNER ESTERBY (170 – 198 N.E.) was an Expansion Period ployee rights activist. She was executed for the assassination by electric pistol of Aphrophine Controller, Mart Cumin, and his brother Mikel.

Maura Esterby was born the fourth of nine daughters, to machine servers, in Jackwind, Aphrophine. Jackwind was one of the several dozen settlements that bloomed at the edge of the Riftig region of Aphrophine – a landscape left barren and scarred by the two Aphrophine Wars (115 – 118 & 151 – 153 N.E.).

Much of the Aphrophine’s post-war economic boom was built by exploiting the massive, cheap workforce in settlements like Jackwind. The largest of these was Towny Covermeans, a tent city of over 2 million individuals, most of them immigrants from the Solar spheres.

Maura was engaged in ployee rights work from an early age. Her father was a member of the outlawed Ployee’s Voice Union, whose members came to Aphrophine from Mars not long after Your Agency claimed the planet (111 N.E.).

As power and wealth on Aphrophine became increasingly concentrated in the hands of the Cumin family, discourse on alternative methods of planetary management became more tightly controlled. Arrest and punishment of problem ployees was a regular feature of working life. The ferocity of the ployee rights movement on Aphophine grew, matching blow for blow the attempts to suppress it.

Eventually, the Cumins began to ship problem ployees off Aphrophine to be used as labor on other worlds and to import cheap slave labor from Coral Agency and from Your Agency slave states. Essentially this amounted to a trading of nuisance populations between worlds. The imports were used as disposable labor – primarily for high-hazard or systems testing work – and were not subject to the legal or logistical concerns that accompanied Aphrophine-born labor. One Aphrophine executive described the attitude as: “We’ll give you our criminals, you give us yours. And we’ll both agree not to ever ask what happened to them.”

The Cumins thought that by fragmenting the existing ployee rights movement, that it would lose energy. The truth was that for every ployee that was was arrested and shipped away a dozen friends or relatives – previously sitting on the fence – became committed to the ployee rights cause. And often they had the help of newly arrived disposable labor who had faced the same oppressive situation on their own worlds.

In one of Maura Esterby’s few recorded speeches, she observed: “The fatal flaw of the executive strategy is that it seeks to acquire power and influence for the purpose of not having to do difficult labor. And in the continuing practice of seeking the way of ease, the executive plots became shallow and short-sighted, and – over the long term – doomed to failure.”

Maura Esterby, in a plan carefully orchestrated over several years, and assisted by high level Aphrophine executives operating anonymously, was employed as a toiletgirl for Mikel Cumin.

Maura Esterby was executed for the assassinations amid a hasty and unfair trial. It’s not know whether the plan had been from the outset to assassinate both brothers. This was asserted in Maura’s trial, but the lack of due process crippled any opportunity to explore the facts in depth. Maura herself never told – in fact was never permitted to tell – her version of the events during her trial. Though there is little doubt that she was guilty, she was denied legal counsel and was allowed to her own trial on several carefully chosen days on the grounds of her being “a grave threat to the security of the worlds of Your Agency”. Though such hyperbole seems laughable now, it was characterisic of the hysteria with which the Agency viewed challenges to its human resources methods at the end of the 2nd century N.E.

Maura had three children, two daughters, Marie and Coca, and a son Appra. Folklore has it that Mart Cumin was Appra’s father, and even that Appra was conceived on the night Maura killed him. Though Appra’s paternity has never been determined, the likelihood of Mikel allowing any of his toiletgirls to become pregnant seems very remote.

In her last known statement, a letter to her daughter, Marie, she mused stoically on the assassination:

I don’t know if the death of the tarbellies (meaning the Cumin brothers) will accomplish anything truly lasting. I suppose it won’t. It’s bound to give us an opportunity in the short run. Maybe we’ll get some of the respect a human being needs to stay alive and well. but in the long, long run? I had to become the toilet slave of a tyrant in order to get close enough to him to kill him. And that is a story that’s been told for 10,000 years. And I can’t help but think it’ll still be told another 10,000 years from now.

The Cumin executive junta and its lackeys came unraveled after the assassination, and authority was seized by the rival forces of Swenson Graham who saw an opportunity in winning Aphophine’s ployee support – and who, it is surmised, played some hand in plotting the assassination itself. It is Graham’s doctrine of “Ployee Respect” that helped to lead Aphrophine to its market preeminence.

Today Maura Esterby’s birthday is a global holiday on Aphrophine, and is also observed by workers across many worlds in Your Agency.


Aphrophine


Your Agency Core World, Aphrophine

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Rocky Strone

b.567 –

Rocky Strone at the

Rocky Strone at the “Strone Falls” Camp, Scanodon.
Common Names: Rocky Strone,
“Jabberwock” Strone
Born: Eleven 12, 567 N.E.
Texas Grid, Lantil Mybea
Died: living
Titles: several academic degrees
Employer: Your Agency
Sex: male
Spouses: Per Walker
Children: Peter Strone (son)
Contact: rstrone@cyclopediaofworlds.com

http://twitter.com/rstrone

ROCKY IANUS STRONE is a celebrity naturalist and adventurer.

Children and adults in a hundred star systems have enjoyed his thrilling and fact-filled educational programs. His exploits include travelling to undeveloped worlds and encountering native fauna – especially predatory fauna – at close range.

Orthodox planetologists have dismissed Rocky Strone’s behavior as irresponsible. His fans argue that he raises awareness of the need for preservation of indigenous lifeforms on undeveloped planets.

Rocky Strone was born far from unexplored wilderness, in one of the crowded civic grids on Lantil Mybea. His parents were sporadically employed by the various support services for Lantil Mybea’s shipyards, docks, and spaceports. When Rocky was born, his father was in the middle of a forty-day shift aboard one of Lantil Mybea’s orbital packing engines. In a piloting accident, another company’s packing engine got jammed in a main supply dock, and Rocky’s father and crew were unable to disembark for weeks. Rocky was almost three months old when his father finally laid eyes on him.

Lantil Mybea flyover



Rocky Strone first became interested in exotic animal life when he was a boy growing up in a busy port city:

“‘Twas a man who liv’n up the Grid from us who work’n for the Livestock Shipping Authority. An’ sometimes the animals wouln’t be pick’n up, or the shipment wouln be cancel’n. Or because of’n War. So he use’n'bring some of these animals home. Oft with knowing what the hell’ney wa. An’ I’n go ov’all the time and see ‘em. Spen’ all’nay with ‘em. Looking back now, I realize he han some filly neanly (fairly deadly) species in ‘neh. But he was lucky. He neva once han an acci’nent. An’ I think he pass’nat luck on to me.”

Rocky Strone tends to adopt the public persona of a rough-n-ready adventurer, an image accentuated by his thick Soutros accent. Strone however attended the Davis University at Dakka on a full academic scholarship. He graduated with honors and a Level Five in Aquatic Biology and a Level Two in Ecological Dynamics.

He is also a competent dragonflier pilot and shares ownership of a massive Traver Cuss class dragonflier with the Davis University at Dakka. The aircraft is used as a research vessel and has appeared in several of Strone’s widely watched documentary adventures.

Rocky Strone regulary ended his documentary programs with a “Top 10 List”. They featured such lurid titles as: ”Rocky Strone’s 10 Deadliest Creatures In The Galaxy”, ”Rocky Strone’s 10 Biggest Beasts Ever”, and ”Rocky Strone’s Top 10 Sea Serpents”.

He withdrew from public life for two years in the wake of the much-publicized scandal around his king shan addiction.

Rocky Strone wrote an autobiography called ”Chasing Monsters”. It details his formative influences and his dramatic inner and outer conflicts. Its combination of straight-forward autobiographical confession and heart-stopping accounts of his encounters with deadly life-forms have made Rocky Strone’s book a top-seller. Excerpts of the book can be read in the Cyclopedia’s Library.

Rocky Strone is on the Natural History Advisory Committee of the Cyclopedia of Worlds.

Scanodon Expedition

In 595 N.E., Rocky Strone was made a household name by his documentary series “Face To Face With Planet Scanodon”, starring and produced by naturalist-adventurer Rocky Strone. Strone visited 10 locations on the planet, over the course of the planet’s year, encountering a different ”dangerous” lifeform at each location. Despite criticism by Strone’s detractors, the documentary was the first – and remains one of the best – records of Scanodon’s environment.

Of his experience there, Strone said (in his trademark Lantil Mybea accent):

“Most nangerous (dangerous) part of n’whole experience was the three years of innoculations before han’. An’ all the anti-microbial treatments we were taking mor’noon an’ night. Kept us alive. That’s about all though. I still get sick. Never fully recover’n from that trip. We oughta worn suits. Naffy buggers. Cracking nice material we got though.”

The 10 episodes of Rocky Strone’s ”Face To Face With Planet Scanodon”, indicating the lifeforms featured:

  • “World of Rage” (spatoptera rex)
  • “A Monster In Every Lake” (doruemic pinnipex)
  • “Nightmares!” (horust & night poletake)
  • “Skincrawlers” (torueme worm)
  • “Death From On High!” (Scanodon bat)
  • “The Blind Eating The Blind” (blind man)
  • “Shabaah! Shabast!” (lehl shabast)
  • “Watch Your Step” (trundle bed & other trapdoor predators)
  • “Still Waters Run Deadly” (horria auss)
  • “Escape From Scanodon” (megager acrix & cressi acrix)

Scanodon polar swamp

Scanodon – the wild planet and Rocky Strone made each other famous

Palul-Lar Don Expedition

Palul-Lar DonEarlier this Common Calendar year, celebrity naturalist Rocky Strone embarked upon a high profile expedition to Palul-Lar Don.

Strone’s mission, funded by grants from The Cyclopedia Of Worlds and the Davis University at Dakka, is intended to be the most complete in-flesh survey of the planet ever.

Strone, in cooperation with Cyclopedia Of Worlds and the Newstring information service, established a live data signal which allows Strone and his team to transmit live updates of their expedition to the whole of the Newstring service. The live stream is said to be the first of its kind to be used for mass civilian information transmission since the middle of the War Period.

A number of eminent paleobiologists and exobiologists have accompanied Strone on the Palul-Lar Don mission, including Dr. Mason Hauki.

Expedition Team

  • Rocky Strone
  • Dr. Mason Hauki
  • Weddy Beluzzi, Atmospherics Head AUS-DS
  • Ruddy Koi-sin, Lead Behaviorist
  • Pola Nicomai, Biosystems Statistician
  • Trondheim Karu, Deputy Seismologist
  • Shulia Sunny, Deep Controller
  • Yonah Wellington, 2nd Ear & Eye Tech
  • Mandy Ben Witt, 1st Ear & Eye Tech
  • Reckner Amparo
  • Petra Neely
  • Shaki Ywsef, Microbiologies Systematician
  • Keyes Augusta Navarro, Microbiologies Tech
  • Caper Smallover, Grey Studies Expert
  • John-Charles Cojo, Team Physic

Follow updates from the Strone Palul-Lar Don Expedition at @rstrone

QUOTATIONS:

“I think this scio-beast is like my mother. Oh, yes. The scio-beast, she is my mother, yeah.”

- an intoxicated Strone during an encounter with a lifeform of planet Shuttleworth, moments before falling unconscious

“If you come wi’in 300 meters of a spathuala, ‘ere’s one thing you can absolutely count on – you will be eaten.”

- on planet Conus’s apex predator, the spathuala

”Most nangerous (dangerous) part of n’whole experience was the three years of innoculations before han’. An’ all the anti-microbial treatments we were taking mor’noon an’ night. Kept us alive. That’s about all though. I still get sick. Never fully recover’n from that trip. We oughta worn suits. Naffy buggers. Cracking nice material we got though.”

- on the difficult production of his documentary series on the planet Scanodon

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