These trivia bits are generated randomly.
Raharrs are warm-blooded creatures and are accustomed to temperature range a bit warmer than Earth's.
"Dawn" class mothership and "Lake" class tankers are the only spacecraft in the Exploration fleet that can create artificial gravity while not under acceleration.
If a space ship accelerates at the same rate as it would in a free-fall under Earth's gravity (Otherwise known as "1G acceleration"), it can reach Jupiter from Earth in just under 6 days. It would need to flip in the middle of the travel, to start decelerating and enter the planet's orbit.
Insectoids in a lot of ways are the weird ones among the Alliance members. Besides having a completely unpronounceable name of the species, they have dextero amino acid biochemistry, which makes their food and biosphere to be inedible by the rest of the Alliance, and vice versa.
The names of every species of the Alliance (besides Insectoids) are words taken directly from their respective native languages that they use to refer to themselves. They all have same translation:
"a human".
Azinarsi relationship to death is different from the rest of the civilizations of the Alliance: they do not care about it. Death would mean loss of information and experience gathered by that instance of a person's mind, though, and these two things are about the only valuables for an Uploaded mind, so Azinarsi try to avoid it when possible.
A lot of backgrounds and other elements in the comic are actually 3d models. It helps reduce the time each page takes to make.
Raharrs descended from the evolutionary branch that can be described as "apelike cats" by their evolutionary niche. Although initially carnivorous and solitary, they were forced to become omnivorous and form persistent packs during the latest of the rare ice ages of their homeworld, approximately 30 million years ago.
It takes more than a year to cross the Alliance space even with the fastest FTL drive.
Prior to becoming a webcomic, Leaving The Cradle was initially developed as a modification for Source engine, back in 2007. It was vastly different back then, much closer to the usual space opera look and feel, and the plot had nothing in common with the webcomic version, sharing only exactly two characters and nothing else.
Many homeworlds of the respective species are still divided into countries, but freshly established colonies on other planets are almost always monolithic and basically independent, since they sprawled from a single initial outpost, and time lag involved due to interstellar distances making remote management of the colony from a homeworld to be ineffective and frustrating at best.
There's no way to communicate faster than light. If you want to send your message to another solar system, your best bet is to use a courier spaceship. It can take even a month for it to finally reach the destination, but it still beats sending it as a transmission and expecting it to arrive decades or thousands of years later.
So far there hasn't been a single instance of a massive interstellar war. Due to the vastness of space, there's no territorial or economic gain from it. The presence of armed spaceships is still warranted for keeping space travel safe and for peacekeeping or policing missions since unexpected events or rogue states can still happen and might require force as a solution.
The Alliance space stretches for an impressive 16 thousand light years along the longest axis, and contains approximately twelve billion star systems. Despite that, 99.99% of those star systems weren't explored even by an automatic mapping drone yet, and the borders of the Alliance space are defined mostly by the reach of spaceships from the nearest colony or space station.
Comments (8)
Has Agent Iskra not been informed about Zane's call in 162? I was under the impression that the agency "took over" the base? Or at least tried to?
Perhaps she should read the Major's reports.
"Uhm, my job? I'm making sure we don't end up getting bombed beyond the stone age."
Ohhh. Sneaky.
So Nea's recording for the fleet and communication with the fleet was done by U.S. without consulting other national leaders.
Iskra is part of the "International" organisation thats supposed to be dealing with this, so I doubt it would be outside her jurisdiction to know
The crash site is definitely not in the U.S. The author has intentionally kept the setting vague to prevent us from treating it as any particular country, but I think we can place it somewhere central-ish Eurasia.
You are correct, central europeanish Darth said.
Whatever the case, the government of the day appears to have initiated communication without consulting the other nations. This goes back to the dictation on how to contact them back. If they have provided exact locations for laser comms and a strong encryption key then they keep interactions to themselves.
However... If the other nations have figured it out they might attempt their own communications, either as a group... or independently. The thought of Zane suddenly being flooded by 50+ messages from different world leaders is entertaining.
... it hadn't occured to me that Iskra may be a representative of the UN or a similar international body, rather than of Protagonistan's assorted intelligence agencies, but yes, it seems possible at least ... I note the lack of a language barrier between them and the major, though, burst of slam-the-door-ese notwithstanding ...
... still, I have a hard time to believe that the national authorities would present the case to the UN and then decide to go behind their collective backs and start bilateral cahoots with someone so obviously uninterested in nation-vs.-nation shenanigans as Zane / the Raharrs. It screams "double-cross me right back!" IMHO.
Stealing "Protagonistan".
Iskra being part of a newly formed international agency is noted in the Cast page, so not necessarily in story canon yet.
Iskra noted that she's a guest on the base and the base remains under the Major's control but all contact with Nea is supposed to be under the international agency's jurisdiction. I'm willing to bet that the jurisdiction on communication is supposed to extend to general contact with the aliens. However, at the very least, taking Nea away to record her message to the fleet should be within the agency's jurisdiction to know about.
Iskra was there for the meeting when the Major arranged Nea's outing to find Gharr in exchange for a way to contact the fleet so I imagine she can easily work out that "Protagistan" is making contact on its own.