worldbuild.

[components]

premise.

SPACE OPERA MEETS REBEL ORIGIN STORY MEETS FIREFLY SMUGGLERS. When humanity flung itself out into the stars, markets scrambled to follow. Rather than banks, and stocks, and lobbyist groups, terraforming industries became the number one financial giant across the galaxy. These days, in 2133 AE (After Expansion), Hathor Industries holds all the cards, a supergiant that has shares in surveillance, population control, military warfare and, primarily, terraforming. The practice does come with (alleged) risks, but the reward of creating life, being able to foster new colonies, are seen as worth it. And when it's not — when the latest in a series of planetary accidents give way to the destruction of a whole belt of planets (including Zoan, a site of holy pilgrimage) — you just blame someone else. The crew of the smuggling ship Nostra are the type to ignore most politicking and planetary trouble, mostly because sometimes they're the ones responsible for it. A crew that operates efficiently, but with a fair amount of bickering, events have led to them harboring fugitives of a higher intensity than they're usually interested in. Chased by the Hathor-sanctioned crew of the Palmyra, it's about surviving on what you have, when you have it. It's about paranoia, and evading the authorities, and outrunning the guy with ten times the speed, manpower and guns that you do. Basically, this is the story of what happens when everybody in space is out to get you.

setting.

Buoyed on a lot of common science fiction elements, the marker of time in this verse is AE, After Expansion. The year is 2133. While most trade (and life) happens within a range of core planets, there exist those on the outside, and on the fringes. Technology there mimics more modern-day technology than science fiction, where life is a little more lawless and less heavily surveilled. Life in the core planets mimics that of, say, Blade Runner or Mass Effect; a lot of neon, a lot of skyrise buildings, a lot of sleek architecture. Some greenery to those that can afford it, but not much. There is also the existence of the Ultranet, another Hathor invention, that people can 'project' into with a datajack implant — basically the internet, but in 3D. Two things separate this verse from its genre template: the existence of eidolons and neurogenics. Nobody quite knows how neurogenics are made, but their existence is linked to the increase of terraforming technologies. Exposure to radiation, stardust, space minerals or some combination of all three have led to the rare 'birth defect', which primarily results in a limited telekinesis accompanied by crippling migraines and, in some, an oversensitivity in sensory processing. Most neurogenics are 'sponsored' by Hathor Industries as the result of a class-action lawsuit. Eidolons are rarer still, and not a lot of public knowledge is available; those visited by eidolons might not know what they have even has a name. An eidolon normally picks a vessel to inhabit, and is, in some sense at least, a young god (or spiritual force) that shares a mind. Those with eidolons have some degree of ability that is further and more specialized than a neurogenic, and depending on the stage of the growth cycle, this eidolon will have a name and be able to communicate with their host. Eidolons are parasitic in that a host may experience heightened pain receptors and increased appetite/metabolism, but do not actively have any harmful side effects. Cybernetics have their part to play, although fully mechanized limbs get clumsier and less aesthetically assembled the further you get from the core belt (primarily among agricultural or farmland planets). A lot of the human body has been overtaken by machines, for security measures or ease, though there is a growing enviroment of political and ideological backlash against these augments that have now only been fanned by the destruction of Zoan.