From: "Doomriser" <doom.riser@3web.net>
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.vs.starwars
Subject: [PDD] ISB Ch. 2-3
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2002 13:08:09 -0400

Imperial Source Book

CHAPTER TWO
COMPNOR

"SAGroup is a contraction for Sub-Adult Group. SAGroup is the largest branch
of COMPNOR. SAGroup has recently exceeded two trillion members, and it is
still growing. SAGroup headquarters most resembles the original COMPNOR, an
enthusiastic group who firmly believes the New Order is the best regime for
the galaxy."

S&S: A large Imperial youth political organization has two trillion members.

"Some branches of SAGRec have been filled with future CompForce hopefuls.
These SAGRecs engage in harsh physical training and wargames as an
introduction to military training. Some have been reputed to hold exercises
with blasters, casually ignoring the removal of the stunsafes which prevent
lethal fire."

Tech: 'stunsafes'

"This group is gently wriggling from the control of SAGroupHQ, goaded by
support from the ISB. Their activities are at an all-time high, sometimes
offering impressive incentives to parents to have their offspring join
SAGroup. The goals over the next five standard years is to have membership
in SAGroup swell to 10 trillion."

S&S: Membership goals for the youth organization are 10 trillion. We know
that the group has 2 trillion already. The organization seems to be some
sort of "Hitler youth" movement, grooming future Imperial soldiers and
bueraucrats. The 10 trillion figure gives some idea of the number of
replacements that the Imperial power structure will need in a decade or so.

"There is no branch of service which takes higher casualties in training
than the Assault arm of CompForce. SAGroup has such a large supply of primed
volunteers that the Assault arm can afford to train by attrition - if you
make it through training you are combat ready. Of the 88 percent who fail to
make it through training, nearly one quarter of these are combat fatalities.
There is little exaggeration and a lot of perverse pride in Assault's claim
that "two die for every one that gets through."

The ferocious training and indoctrination of Assault arm does provide strong
unit cohesion for its troops, as well as instill a willingness to fight on
despite heavy casualties. Training-by- attrition does have a serious defect
in that it selects those who have been merely lucky, as well as those who
have natural combat skills, and it processes so many volunteers through
training that it does a mediocre job of teaching vital combat skills to its
soldiers."

Misc: The Assault Arm is a dedicated shock troop, cannon fodder attack force
that is fanatical and unafraid of casualties.

CHAPTER THREE
IMPERIAL INTELLIGENCE

"The Ubiqtorate considers COMPNOR (especially the ISB) to be, at best, a
misuse of
valuable resources. At worst, COMPNOR is a case of arming and authorizing
talented
but untested amateurs to defend the Empire, the entire basis of their
strategies
and tactics being a few holos of political aphorisms on the New Order."

-Chapters 2&3 indicate that COMPNOR is far less competent and professional
than Imperial Intelligence. COMPNOR seems to be a brutal strongarm in
comparison to the practised finesse of II. Both agencies were intentionally
set up to be rivals.

"The agents in Media sarcastically refer to Signal as "a group of beings who
sort through the garbage in order to discover what a family said to each
other at breakfast." Signal does occasionally overreach itself, applying
blindingly sophisticated mathematical techniques to squeeze nonexistent
meanings from chaotic data. However, it was Signal which discovered that
Leia Organa had the plans to the Death Star through the analysis of
unshielded ELEL (Extremely Low Energy Level) transmissions from her ship."

Tech: ELEL detectors

"There are three ways to defeat your enemy. The first, and most obvious, is
to better him in a trial of force. The best way is to have him destroy
himself; few enemies are so obliging. The middle way is to destroy your
enemy from within. Judicious application of the middle way shall make your
blows more effective when vou later take the way of force. From the middle
way it is also possible to push your enemy onto the path of
self-destruction. "


Uueg Tching of Kitel Phard, 54th Emperor of Atrisia"

Misc: Hmmm... Sounds vaguely familiar...

"After indoctrination, Infiltration agents are often reassigned to
Intelligence, assigned as assistants to a few sector branches, and then
assigned to Sedition (Intelligence Bureau). The agents learn vast amounts
during this period. Many agents have to be released because of overuse of
the mnemiotic drugs given agents to enhance their learning. Those who
survive with their minds intact know a great deal."

Tech: 'mnemiotic drugs' are available but should not be overused

"The Plexus encodes, categorizes, transmits, stores, receives and decodes
more messages in a single standard day than most planetary communications
nets will transmit in over 800 standard years."

Tech: Plexus is an intelligence management centre. Make of its capabilities
what you will.

"Sector Plexus has access to portions of the HoloNet, but most of their
information is carried from system to system on droid vessels. These are
small, extremely fast starships run strictly by CNLinked droids and
computers. The ship has a nay computer, a storage/transceiving 12-CG droid
(based on Cybot Galactica's ED4 model), a "ship's captain" R2-M3 droid
(based on the R2 astromech droid), and an analysis encoding computer
equipped with a TranLang III Communication module. These ships contain no
accommodations or space for living beings, nor do they have life support
systems."

Tech: An R2 droid can 'captain' a small starship

"Essentially the PDV is a fuel source and engine, with supporting
electronics and droids attached. It is built strictly to send and receive
Plexus conduit transmissions within a system and then jump to the next
system on its route. A combination of PDV speed, programmed skills and
efficient route algorithms guarantee that a PDV never has a jump duration
greater than one standard day, except in extreme emergencies."

Propulsion: The tech schematics give a .5 hyperdrive for the PDV. It never
has a jump duration greater than one standard day, except in extreme
emergencies. So can it theoretically cross the galaxy in a day regardless of
location or does it use multiple jumps?

"With this device, the Hyperspace Orbiting Scanner (HOS), Imperial
Intelligence has been able to tap into the computer networks on more than
470,000 worlds, and the number is increasing every day."

S&S: Using a combination of probes, scanners, and somthing that resembles
the internet, II can read the computer networks of over 470,000 worlds.

"Left in hyperspace orbit around a planet, the HOS sensors do not pick up
the signals from the computer directly. They monitor the hyperspace shadows
left by streaking particles inside a computer.

Careful and systematic matching of the shadows of known computer languages
to the shadows produced by the target system have produced data which is
better than 78 percent reliable. Imperial science is not likely to produce
an improvement over this phenomenal performance any time in the near
future."

Tech: Hyperspace scanners can scan minute realspace particles from
hyperspace

"Imperial Intelligence has placed millions of system cells throughout the
galaxy. They exist on every inhabited world, and even on a few uninhabited
ones which prove to be convenient jump sites or listening posts."

S&S: When could count the cells that are on every inhabited world plus a few
uninhabited ones, you get "millions." There are probably more than one cell
on some planets, however, complicating this count.

"Phasecycle: The messages which Imperial Intelligence sends are dynamic,
which means software which modifies the scandoc is embedded within the
scandoc itself. The scandoc is continually regenerating itself, recoding
itself according to a deterministic sequence. This coding will change word
order, sentence order, paragraph structure, as well as individual ciphers
for words or characters. This technique makes breaking the code of an
Intelligence scandoc nearly impossible."

Tech: Just one of the many security measures on an Imperial scandoc

"3P0 droids are nearly universal. They could be inserted virtually unnoticed
into
any Rebel camp, having unquestioned access to most areas. The Rebels would
never
suspect such a low-cost piece of hardware as being an integral part of
Imperial Intelligence."

Tech: 3P0 droids are nearly universal, but we already knew that.

"Dr. Lucien guarantees me that only minor modifications are necessary to a
3P0's
already impressive array of sensors in order to make it a first-class
intelligence-gathering
droid, costing thousands less than the Akrayd Viper Probe Droid."

Tech: 3P0 sensors are comparable to those aboard a Probe Droid

"A 3P0 unit has built-in hardware, the TranLang III Communications module,
which allows
it to speak millions of languages. Given that the Rebellion recruits scum
from anywhere
they can find it, a facile ability with a great many tongues could be a
significant
advantage, allowing a few 3POs to replace hundreds of less linguistically
adept agents.
Just think of the savings to the New Order!"

Tech: The 3P0 ability to speak millions of languages is built-in, not
learned initially.

"Additionally, it is easier to scan droids than living beings, as droids are
still simpler
constructs and they are far more uniform than any single species in the
Empire."

Tech: Droids are easier to scan

"I was scanning by my terminal when the security system notified me that a
droid with
an improperly coded ID chip had entered the perimeter office a split second
before.
I notified IntSec personnel and then grabbed a few men from Infiltration to
try and
head it off before it reached any sensitive areas within the office. As I
rounded the
corner I spotted a 3P0 waddling casually toward a sector office. It was then
that
I spotted Dr. Lucien's modification. Your droid had time to say, "Oh dear,
there must
be some mistake," before we blasted its legs off. Satisfied that the droid
had no weaponry,
we interrogated it. I have had no more than the standard course on
interrogation given
by your bureau, but I had the 3PO spilling its chips before I had holstered
my blaster."

Tactics: Imperial Intelligence reaction time




--
-=Doomriser

"We've been very careful. The continuity is airtight. Believe me. We know.
We know."
-Brannon Braga


