Life as an Expeditionary can be as short as it is dangerous. But for those who can withstand the extreme isolation of deep space, the unrelenting dangers of uncharted worlds, and the constant threat of attack from criminals and pirates, Expeditionary work is arguably the most lucrative contract work that there is.

With 10 years experience as an Expeditionary and security contractor, Riot McMann has established himself as an authority in both fields. His deep knowledge of interstellar frontiers is matched only by an expertise in a multitude of combat disciplines, developed and refined over a decade of surveying unknown regions of space with ravenous criminals haranguing him along the way. He is a tier one Expeditionary, a brutally efficient warrior, elite amongst the elite. Yet all that may not be enough, as lurking along the edges of civilized space, unknown to humanity at large, a starved and voracious nightmare looms with its eyes set squarely on the Elytrian Ecliptic and each of the 150 billion people who live within it.

  • THE ADVENTURES OF WINSTON & SWEETIE

    BUY NOW

  • SHOP

    SHOP

UNIVERSE & LORE

Riot McMann

Owner of McMann Expeditionary & Security Consultants, Riot has built a reputation as one of the most brutally efficient and dangerous Expeditionaries across the Elytrian Ecliptic, a man who finds his zen in places where few others dare to go. With a decade’s worth of experience operating in inhospitable places surrounded by the most notorious criminals and  mercenaries, McMann’s experience and unconventional tactics have made him one of the most sought after security experts in the industry.

SIR WINSTON

Originally heir to the throne of Terrieria, Sir Winston abdicated in order to accompany his sister, Sweetie when she decided to leave the planet to pursue far grander goals than a pampered royal lifestyle would allow. Having been trained in a variety of combat disciplines from youth with many years of active military service, Winston is as dangerous as he is loyal. With patience and wisdom well beyond his years, Winston is precisely the counterbalance Sweetie needs to keep herself level headed.

SWEETIE

Though her life had been spent in pampered luxury, Sweetie had always felt more at home in the armory workshops of Castle Wyclef  than she had in a ball gown. Where her brothers and sisters preferred operas and dinner parties, Sweetie preferred piloting her battle mech, a gift from an emissary that hoped- and failed- to sign Terrieria as a member planet of the Grand Coalition.

Stubborn, impetuous, and hot headed, Sweetie never fit in with her family and the royal lifestyle. After a fiery and violent first outing on the orbital city of Vharrok, Sweetie and Winston set off to explore the Elytrian Ecliptic, expand her hotel business, and step into her new role as the newly established leader of the mech faction, Cobalt Horizon.

t

THE ELYTRIAN ECLIPTIC

THE REGION OF INTERSTELLAR SPACE IN WHICH ALL OF HUMANITY RESIDES

The Elytrian Ecliptic is a spherical region of space located within a distant corner of the Milky Way. It is 204 lightyears in diameter with the red giant star Elytrius located at its exact center. Curving outwards from the center of the Ecliptic, feeding into Elytrius, is a cloud of gas and dust that scientists believe is the remnant of a star that had gone supernova hundreds of millions of years prior.

At the time that Riot McMann set down on the surface of Fjioria, the year was 3411 AGC. Though it had been more than 4500 years since humanity first migrated to that part of the milky way, precise estimates are impossible due to the simple fact that historical records were all but wiped from existence during the Year Zero event that signaled the birth of the modern epoch, the Age of the Grand Coalition.

A top-down perspective of the Elytrian Ecliptic

Elytrius is the center of the Elytrian Ecliptic. Though individual planets across the Ecliptic make frequent use of fusion power (with more primitive energy sources such as fossil fuels still being utilized on occasion), more advanced technologies such as those responsible for Gated and Centralized Rifting require the enormous amount of energy collected by Elytrius’s solar output. This energy infrastructure, known as the Nova Array, transmits the power it collects across open space through transformers and substations in order to supply that power. While it provides power to member planets of the Grand Coalition, its most important role is the fueling of industry and Rift technologies.

Following the Year Zero event, caused by a massive solar burst from Elytrius that nearly sent humanity back to the stone age, a massive effort was launched to build a network of large projectors that would sustain an artificial magnetosphere, protecting Elytria in the event of another catastrophic solar flare.

The Rift Network is what connects the planets of the Elytrian Ecliptic together into a single society of interdependent planets. While planets exist that are not part of the Grand Coalition, they are primitive and anarchic by comparison to those that are. Access to the Rift Network is imperative for a world’s participation in the interstellar society. Due to the incredible power demand inherent to Rift technology as well as the unique way with which it draws power from a source, a ship-based Rift Splitter must be powered by a massive amount of stored energy, storage that is itself limited. As a result, most ships are capable of storing only enough power to operate a Rift splitter for no more than 6 lightyears (or 3 lightyears in each direction for a round trip) while certain specialized vessels can max out at 10. Due to the impact that additional power cells have on the amount of energy required to establish and sustain a centralized Rift, ships actually reduce the overall distance that a single charge can take them by transporting additional power cells. In short, carrying additional power cells may give you more power but the amount of energy required for a centralized rift increases as well.

Nestled within the habitable zone of Elytrius is Elytria which serves as the seat of the Grand Coalition and there are more than 150 known civilized worlds throughout the Elytrian Ecliptic. Though the Rift Network has lanes that span the Ecliptic in all directions, a Rift-capable ship can venture only so far without the aid of a Rift Nexus. As a result, nearly 95% of the Elytrian Ecliptic is unexplored while more than 99% of the Ecliptic is unreachable by most Rift-capable vessels (99.542% to be exact). Of the nearly 25,000 stars located within the Ecliptic boundaries, approximately 400 of them can be accessed by conventional ships using both Gated and Centralized Rifting.

More than 24,000 stars in the Elytrian Ecliptic have no record of humanity ever entering their orbit. Within those orbits, untouched and unknown, are hundreds of thousands of planets, moons, planetoids and asteroids all waiting to be explored. 

Pictured: The CESC-Farfitnugan, An ecf-B:R manawar capable of both gated and centralized rifting. Though its two-cockpit design was considered redundant, later iterations of the Manawar would lack the simple and streamlined systems that made the manawar popular amongst expeditionaries.

The Rift Network

The Rift Network is an interstellar system of gateways that enables faster-than-light travel and communication across the Elytrian Ecliptic.

  • The Rift Network is a series of compressed spacetime corridors, known as Rift Lanes, that form the backbone of the Elytrian Ecliptic’s interstellar society. Suspended between two large ring-shaped installations, Rift Lanes can traverse distances up to 12 lightyears and branch outwards from the center of the Ecliptic like spokes on a wheel: eight spokes laterally, eight spokes angled upward, and eight angled downward. With the massive amounts of energy to establish and maintain hundreds of Rift Lanes, the Rift Network draws its power from a solar capture array known as the Nova Array. Rift Lanes are the conduits through which power is transmitted to subsequent Rift Nexuses. Each time power passes along a Rift Lane, part of it is lost along the length of the Rift Lane. Eventually, after passing through enough Rift Lanes, the energy gathered from the Nova Array can no longer sustain a Rift Nexus. It is at this point that the boundaries of the Elytrian Ecliptic are drawn: the Grand Coalition cannot feasibly maintain dominance past that point.

  •  Though there is variation in the overall length of a Rift Lane, the amount of spacetime compression that takes place between two Rift Nexuses- or “Sister Nexuses”- varies in order to establish a precise 3-Day transit time for ships traveling at the strictly regulated speed of 400,000 kilometers per hour. In certain situations, the Grand Coalition military may redirect power along certain Rift Lanes to maximize compression and dramatically reduce transit times. This, of course, increases travel time everywhere else and is an action that is taken only in existential emergencies.

  •              The Rift Network is vital to the Elytrian Ecliptic’s economic and geopolitical stability as well as its overall cohesion. Whether enabling rapid travel across vast interstellar distances, instantaneous digital communication, or adjusting and interpolating local data streams and astrometrical data points to account for relativity, the Rift Network is vital to the success and stability of the Elytrian Ecliptic.  

PICTURED: A STANDARD RIFT NEXUS. RIFT NEXUS OPERATIONS (R.N.O) IS LOCATED IN THE STRUCTURES ON THE LEFT SIDE OF THE RING WITH VARIOUS UTILITY STRUCTURES LOCATED ALONG ITS PERIMETER. RED GUIDE LIGHTS INDICATE THE LANE OF TRAVEL THAT LEADS TO THE MIDPOINT BETWEEN THE TOP OF THE RIFT LANE ENTRANCE AND THE MAINTENANCE PAD.
LEARN MORE