'Mutabilis' Drew Wagar.pdf

Mutabilis

A novella based on the space trading game Oolite and sequel to Status Quo

Drew Wagar.

http://www.wagar.org.uk

Thanks to:

My wife Anita and my two boys Mark and Joshua, for letting me have time to write this.

David Braben and Ian Bell for the original Elite game. Robert Holdstock for his original novella

‘The Dark Wheel’.

All the readers of Status Quo, particularly those who took the time to email back and tell me how

much they enjoyed the story.

To Neil Badman, who won the coverpage competition.

To all those who provided an entry for the coverpage competition – you can find all the other entries

in the appendix, they are worth a look!

To Bob Lavellee, who did a fantastic professional job in editing the text and provided some useful

feedback into the bargain

In particular I’d like to thank Captain Hesperus, Star Gazer, Cmdr Maegil, DaddyHoggy, Rxke,

Magamo, Jack_H, TGHC, Cos, Cat and Littlebear for their most excellent feedback, and their typo

obliteration service.

To Disembodied, for his excellent ‘Rough Guide’ to planets in the Elite universe and amazing proof

reading skills.

To Ahruman, for keeping Oolite going after a change of leader. High praise indeed. The sheer scale

of work has to be seen to be believed. Oolite has changed enormously since I wrote Status Quo.

Dave Hughes (Selezen), for his invaluable assistance all matters to do with Raxxla, timelines,

inconsistencies and the various factions in the Elite universe. I hope you enjoy having your own

crisis!

To Dr. Nil, for advertising Status Quo within the game itself, with his excellent ‘Your Ad Here’

OXP add on.

To Commander McLane, for improving my Tianve Pulsar OXP add on and generally being a good

egg. Thanks for the encouragement!

To P.A. Groove, for creating the ‘Famous Planets’ OXP add on and providing some of the scenery

referred to in ‘Status Quo’ to players of ‘Oolite’.

To Killer Wolf, for the loan of a ‘Vampire Mk1’, a fearsome new ship for Oolite players.

To Roberto, for his excellent 'Justice for Mrs. Combs' stories. Find them in the bulletin board, and

enjoy!

To the open source community: for Oolite itself, the Openoffice suite used to write this novella and

the Ubuntu operating system that runs my PC. This story was written on second hand 8 year old

Dell X200 Laptop.