"I've been tethered to the side of a spaceship, nothing but a thin layer of carbon fabric between my nuts and the vacc, and I've looked up from the panel or whatever is broken and seen all those stars. It use to make me feel small, but not anymore. Cause after a few runs between those stars, it changes. It will change for you. You will realize that the closer you get to those stars the smaller everything gets. You know what I saying? Ain't that many goldilocks worlds, but there are tons of little rocks circling fainter stars. And almost every little rock has a little petty king scraping out a living and fighting with another little king."
- Buck Leftyork, FTO Mission Engineer
Interstellar warfare is logarithmic. The plan for the attack begins by considering questions of hundreds of billions of kilometers. How will we get people and equipment from all over the galaxy to orbit the star of the planet we intend to take? Those logistical threads can get tied into knots that are literally light years long. Then once we have our force in star system it becomes a question of millions of kilometers. How do we get to this planet safely and quietly? Then we have to make the landing, thousands of kilometers. Next there is a question of defending the LZ: hundred of kilometers. Once the air support is dealt with and the artillery is neutralized, we’ve got to reach the objective. Then finally there is the soldiers’ combat. That is when the scale collapses quickly. A fight we started light years away can end because we had to cross two meters of open field or because a piece of shrapnel was a millimeter too close.
-Awl-70000891, Captain, Dynastic Army
"I keep my sanity tied to my hip with very thin thread. Somedays when I am pushing through the throngs of people all staring at tiny screens in their heads or in their hands I start feel that thread slipping. On those days I know that my only salvation is docked at the spaceport. My savior is not some luxury liner or high speed transport filled with perfectly balanced environments and a history of 'punctuality'. This man's spaceport messiah is more often than not a century old craft whose airlock is caked with the mud of a hundred worlds, with a computer programed in a dead language and a captain that makes his living looking for the slimmest trade margins in the most distant stars. When I sign on to the crew of such a craft I feel my thread of sanity tighten. I know that when we break through that blue ceiling we will be passing the soul crushing civilized worlds and heading for the fainter stars."
-J. Mitchell Overnantuck, Unlicensed Jump Drive Navigator
A cruiser is a ship capable of extended operations, not requiring regular resupply. Non-Military cruisers are heavy ships operated by megacorps, nations, and other interests, but are not armed.
Pioneering new vistas in technology, the Kanmusu are sentient autonomous ships.
A mutation of Legionnaire's Disease, Space Sickness, or Space Lung, is a not uncommon malady of the Cosmic Era
Dr. Carter is a well known (at least in academic circles) as an Indiana Jones-esque scholar of the occult and professor of pre-human culture, a Mars born swashbuckler in her youth, now a tenured and crafty acquisitionist.
A variation of Man/Moment/Machine (NPC/Plot/Item)
Places to go in the Cosmic Era solar system
Observation and scanning technologies for the Cosmic Era
A Federation black budget research and development center, and one of the most advanced shipwrights in the Solar System
A survey of past and present space farers gives us a list of the 30 most common and or memorable small star ships encountered across the frontiers of human occupied space.
To all space explorers, rogue traders and Federation colonisation and expeditionary force officers!
Thirty new alien species have been discovered. You are well-advised to inform yourselves, as to engage these entities correctly, without risk of harm to yourself or to the interests of Terra.
Ten of the described species are human in origin, yet modified to such a degree that they no longer need to be considered human.
Another ten are civilisation-building aliens competing with Terra for available space.
The final ten entries are remarkable life forms that display sapience, without using it to create civilisations. Caution is advised.
Breakdown of large civilian craft in the Cosmic Era
The octahedral space stations designed and built by the Atlantic Federation
Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Me thinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me.”
The primary spaceport of the South African United Republics and the largest space port in Africa
One of the largest objects in Low Earth Orbit
When night falls, we find peace in the knowledge that daytime will return soon, and vice versa. But what if the world was split: daytime and night are two different, coexistent worlds, each with it's own laws and rules. At dawn and sunset, our soul switches to inhabit our other being, our 'twin'.
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"Maps are a human thing. They like to make simplified models in which things are labelled, placed on grids and details are glossed over. I assume it is because their minds are spatial and not mathematical. Things to the human mind are defined by there relation to other things. That is why they need two points to draw straight line, whatever that is. Sincerely, though I don't understand the utility of it, but I don't fight it. The Captain says go to grid space 10-K, and I can discern what he means."
-Lagrimal-0201020101, Chief Navigational Program for the FTO freighter Mtuzanizibar.