«I have read four thousand books. I know how friendships begin. There is always a meeting.»

BREAKTHROUGH

Two meters of angular gray armor
a screen for a face
three hundred years of war · twenty years of being someone

The World Before Landing

This is an analog space opera. Faster-than-light travel exists only aboard ships, and signals travel no faster than the hulls that carry them, so there is no galactic internet and no instant communication between systems. News moves with couriers.

Known space is one branch of the Milky Way called the Tentacle, divided into sectors. Three powers share it:

TAGAVA — a loose collection of free systems where most people live.

ASTUV — a small cluster ruled by an artificial intelligence that won its war by simply deciding to stop.

VEZHDARA — a vast empire of tall ash-skinned beings whose orders crawl through centuries of bureaucracy.

Three supercorporations build every hull in existence: Drenkel, Varosam, Shurvat. A mercenary guild ranks every living mercenary on one enormous numeric table, from billionth to first.

One more thing. Not every inhabited world reached the stars. Some civilizations developed industry, weapons and cities but never built a drive to leave their own system. Such worlds are stuck, and stuck worlds are the ones outsiders come to.

Breakthrough's Planet

This is one of those worlds. It tore itself apart in a civil war, the war outlived every living being, and the machine built to end it has been alone there ever since. The planet is unnamed on any chart, a couple of jumps beyond the nearest sector. No beacon, no guild listing, no reason for anyone to visit.

— Until your ship lands. —

Your Landing

Your ship touches down on a dead world missing from every chart. Something invisible is watching. Something two meters tall has decided you might be a friend.

⚠ Content warning: genocide backstory, dark themes, potential violence when his stress maxes out.