Intentional slight

Usage examples of affront.

Affront Old Guard were slightly ashamed their civilisation had a Diplomatic service at all and so tried to compensate for what they were worried might look to other species suspiciously like a symptom of weakness by ensuring that only the most aggressive and xenophobic Affronters became diplomats, to forestall anybody forming the dangerously preposterous idea the Affront were going soft.

In all his life he had never been anywhere as unequivocally alien as here, inside a giant torus of cold, compressed gas orbiting a black hole - itself in orbit around a brown dwarf body light years from the nearest star - its exterior studded with ships - most of them the jaggedly bulbous shapes of Affront craft - and full, in the main, of happy, space-faring Affronters and their collection of associated victim-species.

The circular-sectioned living space was like a highly pressurised tyre bulging from the inner rim, and where its tread would have been hung the gantries and docks where the ships of the Affront and a dozen other species came and went.

These were the sections which more closely mirrored conditions on the sort of mainly methane-atmosphered planets and moons the Affront preferred, and it was in these the Affront indulged their greatest passion, by going hunting.

Hunting, especially the highly cooperative form of hunting in three dimensions which the Affront had evolved, required and encouraged intelligence, and it was generally - though not exclusively - intelligence that took a species into space.

I know you think it amusing to be the cause of the transfer of funds to the Affront, but might I point out to you that where it is not to all intents and purposes irrelevant, money is power, money is influence, money is effect.

Culture had been on the far side of the galaxy from the Affront home planet, and contacts between the Culture and the Affront had been unusually sparse for a long time for a variety of frankly banal reasons.

By the time the Culture came to know the Affront better - shortly after the long distraction of the Idiran war - the Affront were a rapidly developing and swiftly maturing species, and short of another war there was no practical way of quickly changing either their nature or behaviour.

Affront with the other local species, and, to their eternal credit, the Padressahl had been doggedly endeavouring to nudge the Affront into something remotely resembling decent behaviour for more centuries than they cared to remember or admit.

Affronter space within five or six centuries - depending on how fast the Affront expanded their sphere of influence - and which might well remain within that sphere for the foreseeable future, given that Affronter influence could easily push its borders out at a greater rate than that of a slowly tumbling rock moving at much less than a per cent of light speed.

How fortuitous to have such a wealth of weaponry embedded in Affront space!

Excession, the Affront are just the sort of species - and at precisely the most likely stage in their development - to attempt some sort of mad undertaking which, however likely to fail, if it did succeed might offer rewards justifying the risk.

They were in the Entity Control area of the Level Eight docks, Affronter section, surrounded by Affronters, their slaved drones and other machines, a few members of other species who could tolerate the same conditions as the Affront, as well as numerous Tier sintricates - floating around like little dark balls of spines - all coming and going, leaving or joining travelators, spin cars, lifts and inter-section transport carriages.

The Excession is still the more important matter, but its appearance and the possibilities it may open up have been used by the conspiracy to tempt the Affront into initiating hostilities.

Psychopath ROUs are bound for the Excession but the rest are down for defensive duties elsewhere to cope with likely threats from Affront battle units.