orichalk

The Galactic Ocean

Suno filed out of the room to the hangar along with all the other members of the squad. He spent most of the time in transit staring idly out the window, wondering what exactly he was about to be dealing with. Gazing upon the craft, he noted that his guesses were right: the kitty did have claws. He was about to crew what may have been a state of the art warship. After hooking his communications implant up to the ship's network, Suno pulled a schematic into his vision and gave himself a little tour. He wandered briefly through the bridge, looked over the escape pods and labs, saw what was being stored in the armory, and inspected his quarters and his personal craft, which was awaiting use in the hangar. Everything was top-notch. Suno returned to his quarters and considered what to do with the rest of his free time. According to the information he got from the ship's computer, there would be a good two hours in hyperspace. That seemed like the perfect time to take a nap, especially because there was no maintenance that would otherwise occupy the downtime. This thought was occurring to him as he repacked and stowed his belongings -- taking care to look over them for any damage -- in secure lockers and drawers. He finished just as the engines fired, and, though he rather liked feeling the roar of engines again, he lay on his bed to absorb the vibrations. Of course, he wanted to sleep too. The second jolt wasn't anything he expected. He stood up immediately and grabbed a wall fixture in case of another. A quick scan of alerts on the computer showed no losses of pressure on the ship. Lex's order over the loudspeaker stopped Suno while he listened. It was probably not an especially bad incident if the captain was only calling them to a meeting. Or so he thought, securing his boots and heading upstairs, until a glance at an outside camera showed him what had happened. He hurried to the conference room and took a seat by the door.

The Galactic Ocean

I'm not sure it's really necessary for me to post, so I think I'll just wait until Heat adds something more. A tour of the hangar might facilitate a conversation with Suno's likely coworker and/or frenemy. Or whatever. I can improvise.

The Galactic Ocean

So, Rose wouldn't be the pilot. That worried Suno a little bit, but at the end of the day he'd gone into this hoping for freedom but expecting death. He just wasn't sure this was a situation where he enjoyed being right. Then the "Star of Death" started talking, and Suno could do nothing to wipe the astounded look on his face. He looked around to see if anyone was taking it seriously, just hoping, hoping, that he would never, ever have to rely on this creature, who despite seeming human appeared to be deluded and insane. Or maybe she was telling the truth -- but did it even matter? None of what she said had any connection to their mission. Amelia took the job. Suno figured they could do worse, but the way she looked at Lex creeped him out. Hopefully, on most missions, he'd be in his own credit independent of the Vigilance, where he didn't have to worry too much about Amelia doing something murderous. Then again, shipboard weapons... Suno wondered whether the bracelets were hooked up to the Vigilance itself. A mutiny or whatnot might mean a clean escape.a fun thought, but surely just a thought. If some of them were about to become amateur jewelers, he'd let others take a shot before he ever did. And far away. Drew snapped him out of his bit of plotting. Truth be told, he was getting a lit bored. Or was he anxious? Maye he just wanted not to hear anything more that made him fear for his life. A nap and some time to process everything he'd just seen would be great. There was probably about to be a tour of the ship or some other irritating formalities, though. A map and a nap. That would be fine. Anyway, Suno nodded in agreement.

The Galactic Ocean

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The Galactic Ocean

Suno stared at each of the speakers while they wrapped up their introductions. He wasn't sure what to make of the Mesocretian -- he seemed physically pained to be here. Suno would have liked to be sympathetic about such a condition, but in this case he was just worried about what it meant for him. That Rose guy was a similar case: Suno thought he was capable but corky. He wasn't really sure he could rely on any of these people. That was the issue. It would take a lot for him to feel safe with any of these people watching his back. He wasn't looking forward to relying on them. The ship certainly looked good. In his old days, he would've been pretty careful around such a craft. Of course a lot depended on specifications and what-not, but as far as he could tell they were going to be operating out of a top-of-the-line craft. That was reassuring enough. And then came the matter of steering the ship. That frightened him a bit, because he hadn't gotten a great impression from either candidate. Rose was definitely a but stuck-up, possibly enough to get them killed. That being said, Amelia seemed more likely to intentionally kill them. He made his decision based on that, not really paying attention to the android. He waited for a chance to speak. "I vote for Rose," he said.

The Galactic Ocean

Suno watched with a good deal of curiosity as Lex was shoved into the room. He’d figured the last seat was for someone important, but, now that he got a look at the guy, he couldn’t help but laugh a little to himself and wonder who made a captain out of him. There had to be some reason, even if it was just some military planner looking at a list and rolling some dice. Actually, that was probably it. He decided to stop zoning out and listened to the military guy give his little talk. He couldn’t really see him, though, because his head was hardly above the level of the table. Also among the group were quite a few femmes fatales, which held no sway over Suno, although he was looking forward to seeing what they might effect among the other members of their species. Speaking of which, they were about the Captain’s age and should be in their prime. Nope, he thought to himself, following the hulking military type’s gaze. That one’s definitely not human. And what has she been thinking about this whole time? Better not to be counting on someone who does that much daydreaming. He’d all but forgotten the anklets. That brought him back to the fact that his feet didn’t touch the floor, which was sort of annoying him. Oftentimes, he’d just stand or kneel in chairs, but the guards seemed a little too gruff to warrant asking if that was alright, let alone just doing it. The mission really wasn’t that important to him, just as it wasn’t to the man who described it. He’d already concluded that the only kinds of missions they were going to be on were ones too risky for any normal unit. Really, it was kind of tame. They could’ve just been told to “invade a star” or something just as blatantly suicidal. And now everyone was going around introducing themselves. Suno tried to make a note of each name, but he didn’t expect much of himself. The captain was Lex, who seemed like a pretty nice guy, though absolutely not what he was expecting. Drew seemed likeable and maybe even someone worth depending on. The military-type prick who, by the looks of him, had something small and worth hiding in his pants, turned out to be called Jorman. Suno decided “Mr. Overcompensation” fit him better, though. The introductions kept moving around the table. Suno only caught the end of what he said, but that Thomas guy was a certified looney; he must have had some serious skills to get him on here. Either way, Suno wasn’t letting the guy near him. Then the second femme fatale was up, who definitely wasn’t mentally normal. Definitely some sort of empathic disorder, probably at least three homicides. He hadn’t even realized the woman sitting next to him wasn’t, technically speaking, a human. Or at all. He thought she’d just been quiet, not a science project gone wrong. She was kind of endearing, though. The humans probably would be creeped out by how uncanny she was, but he didn’t have the same issue. He was up. He nodded at the android, and looked around the group. “Suno Lisuli.” He said simply and slowly. He smiled and turned to Lex while the introductions continued.

The Galactic Ocean

Character name: Suno Lisuli Criminal?: yes Convicted for: Attempted hijacking, piracy Species: Oko Gender: N/A Sexual orientation: N/A Age: 44, perhaps 15 years younger by human standards Appearance: See species description below. Suno keeps his fur/feathers/plumage short and well-trimmed; in a few spots, it has stopped growing due to scars and injuries. He (I’ll just use the technical grammatical default, especially considering that, as a male, I’ll probably subconsciously add my own outlook) tends to cover all of that up in his clothing. He walks around — he prefers bipedalism to show off what little height he has — with a certain air of confidence and optimism that perhaps isn’t deserved in someone who has been handed a near-certain death sentence. Even if there’s no way he could, he seems to understand whatever situation he finds himself in and always be thinking about something just a little removed. To some he looks, based on appearance alone, a little pompous. Height: 126 cm (50 in) Weight: 34 kg (75 lb) Apparel: Outside of missions, Suno tends to wear one of a few sets of grey and black undergarments and rotates three very plain one-piece jumpsuits which only differ in color: one charcoal, one navy, and one khaki. They all have a simple strip along where buttons would be which somehow fastens the two flaps on the front of the jacket together. The neckline is a mandarin collar, though Suno usually folds the edge down on the overlapping lapel down. Combined with the small tears and places which have been mended, this makes him appear casually but professionally dressed. The fabric is very well-tailored, but the freedom of movement he enjoys leads one to think there is some sort of elasticity in the joints, if not elsewhere. To accessorize, he wears a black belt in almost all circumstances on which he mounts his knife sheath, ammunition cartridges, and some rudimentary first aid supplies. He wears a silver banded necklace flush with his neck which is a communications relay from his eye to his surroundings. He has gloves for all of his hands made from a tough black material somewhere between animal hide and plastic in texture. They fit his hands just as perfectly as his jumpsuits fit his body. On missions, he wears a lightly-armored and air-tight flight suit capable, with an accompanying backpack unit, of keeping Suno alive in a vacuum for about five days. It can take some light-arms fire but nothing more and nothing sustained. In lieu of a visor, the helmet has four small cameras (two at mouth level and two at eye-level, for redundancy) which feed directly to his cybernetic eye. They are sensitive to a wide range of wavelengths, from mid-infrared to low ultraviolet. Most of the suit’s surfaces are matte black to for camouflage in open space. Weapons: Although Suno attempts to keep out of hand-to-hand combat, he still stays prepared for it, and carries a small (though in proportion average-sized) laser pistol with 15-shot replaceable energy cells. He keeps a few spares on his belt and the holster on his left side under his arm (in civilian clothing, under his jacket). He also carries a 13 cm (5”) knife on his left hip. As his primary combat experience being boarding and he’s not anything more than a pretty good shot, he relies largely on grenades for combat. Fragmentation grenades would be too dangerous in space, so he carries three grenades of smoke (capable of blocking out visible and high-frequency infrared light), hallucinogenic (strictly depressants, though), and aerosol anaesthetic (fentanyl for humans; for other species he has to do some research) varieties. Normally he has one of each. The latter two are potentially lethal, so he carries antidotes in syringes just in case. Equipment: Suno’s left eye is cybernetic, a remnant of his glory days, which uses standard 2^2^6 bit encryption channels to connect to standard equipment such as weapons and ships. It gives him a heads-up display of fuel, ammunition, and such. His right ear also has a communications implant. Both of which communicate with his necklace, which has a much longer range and faster connection with his surroundings. Personal starfighter: (I’ll think of a name later):

Bottom left

The craft is one chosen with Suno’s purposes in mind: all he really ever had to do was pose a valid threat and outmaneuver static defenses, so the ship sacrifices armor for speed and maneuverability. Its weight is kept in check by only having enough armor to stop a small ship-mounted laser weapon; anything else could punch a hole right through. Its defenses hinge upon its AI being able to detect attacks and turn so a more favorable surface (or none at all) takes the blow. To facilitate this, small jets are mounted on various surfaces of the craft and can be activated by the pilot or onboard computer precisely and quickly. The main thrusters have some oomph, too. The craft has one forward-mounted laser cannon on the nose and a twin energy rifle turret mounted below that. Skills: He is a reasonably good pilot and shot with his pistol; however, he is by no means an expert. Weaknesses: His size and lack of any real training make him pretty hopeless in open close combat. Powers: None Personality: Suno is someone who knows there’s a good side and a bad side to everyone and everything. Despite that, he manages to be pretty optimistic, some of may be due to a bit of self-involvement. He’s pretty good with others: once he sees an initial sign of friendliness, he’s more than willing to start a conversation. Actual trust requires more work with him. Biography: Suno should have had a better shot at the kind of life most of his species enjoys. Anu-V, where he was born, was the remnant of what could have been a thriving colony, had the parastatal that first built it not ceded the system to an aggressor for a bit of wealth and spare time. The aggressor hadn’t done much with it, either. They pulled a few megatonnes of water and minerals out of the system and moved their fleet on to threaten other systems. And so all that was left was a barren colony on a half-terraformed planet scarred by resource extraction, a few hundred thousand inhabitants, and a handful of ships capable of interstellar flight. Oko ships would pass through every few years on their way to markets worth stopping at. They were built of sculpted metal, polymers, and diaphanous carbon crystals: reminders of the wealth of their race and how easily they’d been sold away for peace of mind. Suno grew up surrounded by that resentment. He knew he was wronged and he knew what he deserved. He grew up without ever missing the chance to see one of those Oko merchant ships, always dreaming of being one of those aboard. He longed for wealth, education, long life, escape — all that he thought he should have had. The only was he saw to get it was certainly extralegal, but that was the path he chose. If someone wronged him, why couldn’t he wrong others? Within twenty years, he was near the top of a piracy organization that had made itself known in four systems: they would jump in, find a target, subdue what were normally entirely insufficient security systems and personnel, hijack ships, sell off stolen materials, and ransom the crews from the relative safety of their base in the Anu system. He was wealthy enough to get all that he had been wanting: he had good doctors, equipment better than he had ever seen as a child, leisure time to read and become the kind of snob he’d always claimed to hate but secretly envied. Life life worked like clockwork until, one day, it didn’t, and Suno and his compatriots ended up in a cell on an E.S.A. cruiser. When a man in a suit with a strange proposal came along, freedom sounded like a pretty good option.

The Galactic Ocean

Suno Lisuli

Character name: Suno Lisuli Criminal?: yes Convicted for: Attempted hijacking, piracy Species: Oko Gender: N/A Sexual orientation: N/A Age: 44, perhaps 15 years younger by human standards Appearance: See species description below. Suno keeps his fur/feathers/plumage short and well-trimmed; in a few spots, it has stopped growing due to scars and injuries. He (I’ll just use the technical grammatical default, especially considering that, as a male, I’ll probably subconsciously add my own outlook) tends to cover all of that up in his clothing. He walks around — he prefers bipedalism to show off what little height he has — with a certain air of confidence and optimism that perhaps isn’t deserved in someone who has been handed a near-certain death sentence. Even if there’s no way he could, he seems to understand whatever situation he finds himself in and always be thinking about something just a little removed. To some he looks, based on appearance alone, a little pompous. Height: 126 cm (50 in) Weight: 34 kg (75 lb) Apparel: Outside of missions, Suno tends to wear one of a few sets of grey and black undergarments and rotates three very plain one-piece jumpsuits which only differ in color: one charcoal, one navy, and one khaki. They all have a simple strip along where buttons would be which somehow fastens the two flaps on the front of the jacket together. The neckline is a mandarin collar, though Suno usually folds the edge down on the overlapping lapel down. Combined with the small tears and places which have been mended, this makes him appear casually but professionally dressed. The fabric is very well-tailored, but the freedom of movement he enjoys leads one to think there is some sort of elasticity in the joints, if not elsewhere. To accessorize, he wears a black belt in almost all circumstances on which he mounts his knife sheath, ammunition cartridges, and some rudimentary first aid supplies. He wears a silver banded necklace flush with his neck which is a communications relay from his eye to his surroundings. He has gloves for all of his hands made from a tough black material somewhere between animal hide and plastic in texture. They fit his hands just as perfectly as his jumpsuits fit his body. On missions, he wears a lightly-armored and air-tight flight suit capable, with an accompanying backpack unit, of keeping Suno alive in a vacuum for about five days. It can take some light-arms fire but nothing more and nothing sustained. In lieu of a visor, the helmet has four small cameras (two at mouth level and two at eye-level, for redundancy) which feed directly to his cybernetic eye. They are sensitive to a wide range of wavelengths, from mid-infrared to low ultraviolet. Most of the suit’s surfaces are matte black to for camouflage in open space. Weapons: Although Suno attempts to keep out of hand-to-hand combat, he still stays prepared for it, and carries a small (though in proportion average-sized) laser pistol with 15-shot replaceable energy cells. He keeps a few spares on his belt and the holster on his left side under his arm (in civilian clothing, under his jacket). He also carries a 13 cm (5”) knife on his left hip. As his primary combat experience being boarding and he’s not anything more than a pretty good shot, he relies largely on grenades for combat. Fragmentation grenades would be too dangerous in space, so he carries three grenades of smoke (capable of blocking out visible and high-frequency infrared light), hallucinogenic (strictly depressants, though), and aerosol anaesthetic (fentanyl for humans; for other species he has to do some research) varieties. Normally he has one of each. The latter two are potentially lethal, so he carries antidotes in syringes just in case. Equipment: Suno’s left eye is cybernetic, a remnant of his glory days, which uses standard 2^2^6 bit encryption channels to connect to standard equipment such as weapons and ships. It gives him a heads-up display of fuel, ammunition, and such. His right ear also has a communications implant. Both of which communicate with his necklace, which has a much longer range and faster connection with his surroundings. Personal starfighter: (I’ll think of a name later):

Bottom left

The craft is one chosen with Suno’s purposes in mind: all he really ever had to do was pose a valid threat and outmaneuver static defenses, so the ship sacrifices armor for speed and maneuverability. Its weight is kept in check by only having enough armor to stop a small ship-mounted laser weapon; anything else could punch a hole right through. Its defenses hinge upon its AI being able to detect attacks and turn so a more favorable surface (or none at all) takes the blow. To facilitate this, small jets are mounted on various surfaces of the craft and can be activated by the pilot or onboard computer precisely and quickly. The main thrusters have some oomph, too. The craft has one forward-mounted laser cannon on the nose and a twin energy rifle turret mounted below that. Skills: He is a reasonably good pilot and shot with his pistol; however, he is by no means an expert. Weaknesses: His size and lack of any real training make him pretty hopeless in open close combat. Powers: None Personality: Suno is someone who knows there’s a good side and a bad side to everyone and everything. Despite that, he manages to be pretty optimistic, some of may be due to a bit of self-involvement. He’s pretty good with others: once he sees an initial sign of friendliness, he’s more than willing to start a conversation. Actual trust requires more work with him. Biography: Suno should have had a better shot at the kind of life most of his species enjoys. Anu-V, where he was born, was the remnant of what could have been a thriving colony, had the parastatal that first built it not ceded the system to an aggressor for a bit of wealth and spare time. The aggressor hadn’t done much with it, either. They pulled a few megatonnes of water and minerals out of the system and moved their fleet on to threaten other systems. And so all that was left was a barren colony on a half-terraformed planet scarred by resource extraction, a few hundred thousand inhabitants, and a handful of ships capable of interstellar flight. Oko ships would pass through every few years on their way to markets worth stopping at. They were built of sculpted metal, polymers, and diaphanous carbon crystals: reminders of the wealth of their race and how easily they’d been sold away for peace of mind. Suno grew up surrounded by that resentment. He knew he was wronged and he knew what he deserved. He grew up without ever missing the chance to see one of those Oko merchant ships, always dreaming of being one of those aboard. He longed for wealth, education, long life, escape — all that he thought he should have had. The only was he saw to get it was certainly extralegal, but that was the path he chose. If someone wronged him, why couldn’t he wrong others? Within twenty years, he was near the top of a piracy organization that had made itself known in four systems: they would jump in, find a target, subdue what were normally entirely insufficient security systems and personnel, hijack ships, sell off stolen materials, and ransom the crews from the relative safety of their base in the Anu system. He was wealthy enough to get all that he had been wanting: he had good doctors, equipment better than he had ever seen as a child, leisure time to read and become the kind of snob he’d always claimed to hate but secretly envied. Life life worked like clockwork until, one day, it didn’t, and Suno and his compatriots ended up in a cell on an E.S.A. cruiser. When a man in a suit with a strange proposal came along, freedom sounded like a pretty good option.

Sorry that took so long. I wasn't able to get anything done yesterday.

The Galactic Ocean

I'm going to bed now. I'm not sure how much work I'll be able to get done on my character tomorrow, but either way I think it's best if you take a look at this before I get too far into that task. So anyway, here's the species description I wrote out tonight. It's not especially inhuman, but I'm not sure I want to deal with the complications of that right off the bat. Tell me what you think.

Species: Oko

Species name: Oko Appearance: In the early days, there was quite a bit of experimentation with the Oko genome and a great amount of variety has mostly died out since stability returned. Though exceptions remain, individual variety is not larger than, as a point of reference, humans, and traits have been selected for utility in space travel. They are slender and small (normally between 100 and 130 centimeters in height and rarely exceeding 40 kilograms in mass) four-limbed sophonts, functionally either bipedal or quadrupedal. A human would compare them to a very strangely-proportioned monkey or variant of marsupial. [I’m going to use convergent evolution here as an excuse for not wanting to deal with a very non-human character having to interact with human ones.] The Oko have rust-red to burnt-orange, feathered (though in somewhat hairy, in that Oko kind of way), slender, and vaguely humanoid builds, atop of which are relatively large heads, set with aural canals on either side, two eyes facing forward, and a large mouth. Their ears are capable of hearing slightly higher than humans (their speech is also higher and has but a few very distinct consonants); their slitted eyes have but one color, which is usually a shade of blue; and their mouths a row of square teeth and sensory receptors for both taste and smell. Perhaps owing to similar initial conditions as those of Earth’s, Oko have many traits that are similar to humans: they respire, they have a skeletal system supported by muscles not too different conceptually from ours, they maintain very precise homeostasis, they have highly advanced and adaptable immune systems (though they have mostly fallen out of practice), they have four four-fingered hands/feet (two of which are more like thumbs), and they have a tough and greyish layer of skin. They really aren’t too interesting for a human xenobiologist, but they do have olfactory receptors elsewhere in their skin, so they can “smell/taste” objects with their arms or hands. They are hermaphroditic. Owing to the enhancements back in the more hectic old days, their skeletons are made from much tougher mineral structures than those of a human. Their bodies are much better at repairing the damage done by radiation, mostly rendering it hardly a problem. They can alter their homeostatic state to decrease their requirements of food and water. They are very good at thinking in three dimensions. They can take twice as much instantaneous acceleration as a human. That being said, they are still small and physically weak, so they are pretty easy to beat in a fistfight. They’re aware of that, though. Powers: They can take a lot of gees Strengths: They are relatively intelligent and optimized for space travel. As a species, they tend to be pragmatic, but this has been known to lessen with age. Weaknesses: Size, strength Age scale: With rudimentary medical techniques, Oko can easily live with their advancements to 200 years, of which youth is considered to be about 30 and old age past 150. In the highly-developed core worlds, individuals have been known to live to 600 years, but past 400 the brain has checked out. Culture: Most of the extreme elements of Oko culture died out a long time ago. bloodthirsty factions tended to die out in the long-run, and the religions that remain have given up on any violence, instead trying for converts by being appealing. For the most part, the Oko begin any interactions with other species in a friendly manner and attempt to keep them that way. Return customers are the best customers, and the combination of a certain understanding that the galaxy is a dangerous place and their desire to have as many allies as possible tends to make them fear ripping others off even when they easily could. That being said, they’re not ones for charity. Though some of the technology they possess may be vastly superior to anything a human has even laid eyes on, they don’t give away those things for free, or even for anything humans could possibly offer them. Their pragmatism and skill in economics leads them to always match product to customer: highly developed civilizations get the expensive offerings while the new species, such as humans, are offered the technology of the Oko’s dark ages. But everybody gets something better out of it, and that’s enough justification for the Oko. They’re a species aware of their mortality, playing to stay around as long as they can. Homeworld: Oka Rarity: Common, about 30 billion, but spread relatively thin over a considerably large volume of space. Government type: This varies somewhat, though the most long-lasting and powerful independent states are democratic. Strength: They are no military superpower. They keep themselves armed enough to deter attackers and no more, preferring instead to buy their way out of conflicts or turn enemies into trading partners. They think they’ve learned from some of the older civilizations around that warmongering is a pretty bad strategy to outlast the competition. Backstory - The Oko have been a space-faring civilization (depending on the definition) for about 1200 years. The first few hundred were rather tumultuous: hasty expansion, wars, and environmental disasters brought the species to fewer than a billion living on a handful of distant worlds. Eventually, a collection of peaceful factions restored stability and put the pieces of their civilization back together. The discovery of other intelligent life forms sped the recovery and spurred the path of their development into a species predominantly dependent on trade. As they have matured and developed as a species, the Oko have developed a set of peaceful and relatively democratic institutions focused mainly on trade. They continue to expand, with timing determined by the best guesses of sophisticated artificial intelligences so as to minimize risk. They have outposts extending in tendrils hundreds (sometimes thousands, along the best trade routes) of light-years from their core dozen-or-so home worlds (which are in a sphere about 50 LY in diameter). The trade networks ferry goods from their sources to the optimal markets, which are generally determined by AI. Anything that will turn a profit and not endanger the Oko themselves — raw materials, hardware, software, technical knowledge, artwork (which they produce a fair share of themselves), passengers, often even weapons, etc. — is fair game for the Oko merchants. For the most part, they have been able to avoid conflict simply by doing their best to provide whatever other species want. Sometimes, of course, their goals are territorial expansion. In that case, there’s not much choice but to fight, and the Oko have proven able though not especially apt. When they succeed, it is not through force but through clever use of whichever advantages (be they better AI, weapons technology, or resources) to subdue the aggressors. When they fail, they normally attempt to trade territory for security, which has been a successful strategy thus far. The core worlds of the Oko are highly developed, relatively egalitarian, crowded, and wealthy; however, these qualities all begin to fluctuate more and more outside of this region, and often are highly dependant on the status of surrounding civilizations: the wealthier they are, the wealthier and better-run the Oko colonies near them tend to be. Some of the colonies along major trade routes may even be wealthier than many core worlds, though others are not so lucky. The tendril of colonies which overlaps with Human space (for all intents and purposes a very young, if potentially promising race), for example, are generally considered to be a backwater of crime, poor automation, perpetual poverty, a relative lack of enhancements, and wretched medical technology. [That’s where I intend my character to start out, as an “in” for this human-based venture.]

The Galactic Ocean

A lot of human characters, was expecting some alien ones...

@Heat

I'm writing up an alien character right now. The trouble is that I live in Europe and I tend to sleep between 6 pm and 2 am East Coast USA time, though I have plenty of spare time otherwise to be active. Is that something that could be worked around?