Status Quo

Introduction

This is a short story based on Oolite, written by Drew Wagar

It is set in 3138, prior to current Oolite time (Year 3142), but after the events of Elite (Year 3125). Dates for these events are given in Selezen's excellent hypothetical Elite/Oolite chronology and based on his interpretation of GalCop history.

The subject of the story is the how the Q bomb came to be invented.

This story was an attempt to provide a link between the back stories of Elite, Oolite and the later events of FE2/FFE, giving a newcomer to Oolite some background information on how things differ from Elite in a narrative context, reminiscent of the original Elite novella, 'The Dark Wheel' by Robert Holdstock.

Readers are welcome to submit feedback and comments to the author via his website.

There is a sequel, Mutabilis, currently being written.

Downloads

You can download the story in PDF format here. Please note the 'Creative Commons' license contained within.

NB: The filename refers to 'chapter four', this is due to historical reasons and can be safely ignored. The full story is contained within!

Status Quo is just over 200 pages long.

You can buy a hard copy of the story here, if you'd prefer a copy to hold in your hand. This is sold at 'cost' with the buyer only paying for the production costs at cafepress. The author makes no profit from the sales of the story. This is due to Oolite being a 'Creative Commons' production, and 'Status Quo' thus being a derivative work.

Notes

For readers familiar with Oolite, the story includes the Imperial Courier and SuperCobra OXP vessels. Whilst these ships are well known and relatively common vessels by the time of Oolite (Year 3142), the author has made the assumption that these vessels didn't become a common place sight in GalCop space lanes until after the events of this story. Thus their appearance provokes alarm and surprise to the characters portrayed. The justification is that these vessels did not appear in the original 8-bit Elite computer games with which the author was familiar.

Unfortunately this doesn't quite gel with Ewtkaticawata, which records the first Courier prototype coming into service (Year 2899). This author's view is that perhaps it was always engaged in Galcop/Empire skirmishes outside of GalCop planetary space, still being a Navy only vessel, and not available to the general public. Ewtkaticawata also marks the Courier being available on general release (Year 3250). For an explanation of why the Courier is seen in the Oolite timeframe, please see the entry on Seldar Shipyards.

In the absence of specific introduction dates given on the EliteWiki entry for the Q bomb, the author has presumed it appeared immediately after the events of the story (Year 3138), thus coming onto the market four years prior to Oolite itself (Year 3142). Thus it is a relatively new weapon, and people are still getting acclimated to its usage, resulting in a number of high profile accidents.

Since the Q-Bomb did not appear in the Frontier and First Encounter Games, the author has presumed that it was banned by treaty before the events of these two later games (Year 3199 onwards). The date of this event has been set, by the author, twenty years later as a result of the Aesbion Conflict (Year 3158), notably after the major Thargoid war (Year 3151). Thus the Q-Bomb may have been a key component in the Thargoids' demise.