Naith and Caleb

Naith is a tall enby with pastel pink hair cut into a fluffy mohawk with a long trailing braid that reaches down to their mid-back. Tan skin, crooked nose and smile, and a big scar on the right side of their face that extends down to the wound that stretches from their shoulder down to their crotch, everything beyond that line is an artificial prostetic that they designed and maintain themself. They have a single barrel coilgun hidden in their right forearm.

• 6’1″
• 30 years old

Enewa 

• Naith grew up on New Helion, a large independent moon in the distant reaches of the network.
  • They lived in Azura, the third largest city on the moon
• They were part of a family of five, and the middle child of two siblings, an older brother and younger sister
• The family was rather poor, but got by well enough

• When Naith was 13, the president and parliament of New Helion signed over the rights to the moon for a fat check and a cut of all profits
• The military of New Helion decided that wasn’t going to happen, and launched a civil war to combat the change
• Arman, Naith’s older brother, joined the New Helion Navy and fought back against the invaders 
• Naith was so inspired by Arman and wanted to join him so bad, but their parents held them back
• Most of the fighting took place in the outer system and around the gates to the moon, but after about a year they realized that so long as the navy could dig themself into New Helion as a foothold, they wouldn’t win. So they began to strategically bomb the moon
• Naith lived for a few years in a city bombed from above
• Then when Naith was 17, they took a school trip to the nearby mountain formations. While they were away, the entire city of Azura was leveled when a battleship crashed out of orbit and detonated when it hit the surface. They watched from the mountains as the ship descended from the sky like a whale fall, then hit the surface of the moon and exploded on impact, leveling half the city with its blast, and bathing the rest in radiation. Their mom, dad, and younger sister died in accident
• Afterwards, they joined the Navy to find their brother, only to learn that he’d been captured as a POW. And after a month of no word, Naith decided that he was almost certainly dead. With really nothing to live for, powered by a rage hot enough to melt the hull of a ship, they joined the coffin fighters
• Coffin Fighters are a slag term for a class of fast attack ships, called such due to their shape resembling a coffin. And the fact that most fighters don’t come back
• Coffin Fighters are very small ships, with two seats for pilots. The ships are designed to take very high Gs, so the seats are actually two large flat sheets of moldable gel that press the body in place. Air is delivered through a depression in the gel above the mouth. Special rental implants are used as displays.
• The ships, due to their nature of high G maneuvers, are designed to be telepathically controlled through an implant at the back of the brain, and a port just at the top of the spine. This allows the pilot and gunner to communicate without words, and control the ship without movement. This procedure is non reversible, and continues outside the fighters because pairing two brains is often disorienting and painful. 
• You have to be a special type of fucked up to be a coffin fighter
• Naith was an excellent gunner, having the highest number of kills out of the entire squad. They also had the highest number of dead pilots to their name, three of which were killed in action, one via stroke, and another was rendered incapable of flying after slipping into a coma. That’s when they were assigned Enewa.
• Naith had a hot rage that made them like a laser, whereas Enewa was cold and distant, unfeeling. They two managed to balance each other out perfectly, and they worked as a team unlike the others
• The two grew really close during this part of their lives. Something closer than siblings, friends, or even lovers (though they did try fucking once). 
• The war raged on, and it looked less and less optimistic for the navy. INCO has virtually unlimited supplies and reinforcements, whereas New Helion had been badly damaged and depleted over the years. They realized there was nothing they could do, but fought anyway. 
• It was briefly considered that they should just destroy the gates and cut themselves off, but that plan was overruled QUICK
• In the last year of the war, Naith and Enewa were hit badly. Enewa suffered minor injuries, but nearly half of Naith’s body was torn off, including their right arm, leg, and much of their intestines, the bottom of their diaphragm, a kidney, and part of a lung. The only reason they didn’t die was due to the fact that the high G gel was designed to expand when exposed to the vacuum to seal off breaches. This kept Naith from bleeding out
• They returned and Naith was treated as best they could, having much of their right side replaced with cybernetic parts. They were afforded such luxury for the good they brought to the doomed fleet. Once recovered enough, their CO sent them and Enewa to the moon to hide, then the navy surrendered to INCO
• Naith was so, so angry and helpless during this time
• They two lived low in the main port of New Helion for a year. And one day, Naith ran into an INCO officer they recognised. It was Arman, their brother. And when they said as much, he laughed and said that he didn’t have a sibling. That he had grown up with one sister and his parents in Azura. He’d been experimented on during his time as a POW, and they had managed to erase all memory of Naith, whom they knew was a resistance fighter.
• This broke everything that was left in Naith, and the two decided to leave New Helion that night. Forever.

• After the war, Enewa and Naith turned to crime and piracy. They were wanted by every government that INCO was involved in, and had little choice but to live life outside the law.
• Enewa has the idea of getting their own ship. She wants to buy it, but naith decides it would just be easier to steal it. They both nearly die stealing the Charon, but made it off-world with the ship, and in one piece. It was a pirate ship before they got it, so it wasn’t like they had the cops to worry about. Just a few thousand mafia members. But they had a gun ship.
• The Charon is an old ship, and was in pretty poor shape when they got it. The ship was equipped with twin full spectrum rapid fire rail guns in unfortunate condition, a swarm launcher with no autonomous drones, and a semi functional EMP that only works at close range.
• After limping on a broken ship for a few months, Naith decided that they needed a mechanic. Ariadne was the first one they found who was looking for work, and she never left. 
• Over a few years, the Charon began to pick up one crew member after another. Their arsenal grew and grew, and they soon became one of the most feared and formidable pirates in general space. Many factions tried to get the charon to join their ranks, but they stayed fiercely independent. People came and went over the years, but the crew always stayed in touch with former ship mates. Little family. 
• The charon exclusively targeted corporate or government ships, stealing and stripping what they could when they could, then running. Naith often laundered any excess goods through a local charity, sending them to people that needed it. Robin hood vibes, though more out of guilt and shame that they lost the war and couldn’t help more. 
• Then Asha went missing, and left a trail of clues

Asha is a tall muscular woman with bright red hair down to her shoulders and shaved on both sides. She had blue eyes and a sharp face with a curved nose. 

• 6’0″
• 31 years old

Calliope was a tall and thin woman with soft dirty blond hair cut around her chin, light blue eyes, a soft face, and a straight nose. After her “death”, she had much of her face altered to avoid detection. The only thing she kept were her eyes.  

• Callie grew up as an only child until she was five, when claeb was born. she remembers this very vaguely, and remembers the family being… happy? Asena being soft and kinder, Calrice being a loving mother. She write this off
  • When she’s 21, she gets Asena drunk (the only time she ever manages to do this), and pries the truth out of her. Turns out Asena was content with one child, and when Clarice asked for another, she said no. But Clarice decided she wanted one anyway, and went behind Asena’s back and and created Caleb with their remaining eggs on ice.

• Calliope found out when she was 25 that INCO was doing human based experiments in connection to the eigenstate project. when she confronted her mother, Asena just said
  “Some things are necessary.”
  “You mean hurting people?”
  “Everything is justifiable if the stakes are high enough. Human life is valuable until it’s not.”

• This stuck with Callie, and after digging deeper into it, she decided there was no way should be part of this company. Being associated even by name was too much. So she staged her shuttle with the leaders of the Eigenstate who oversaw said human experimentation to overfill with O2. All it took was a spark, and the entire shuttle became an inferno. She wasn’t on board, and instead was replaced with a vat grown hunk of meat in human form made from her own DNA. All the bodies were burned enough that there was no suspicion.
  • She immediately underwent facial surgery, identity replacement, and became Asha, and Callie died.
  • Asha felt some guilt leaving Caleb, but not enough to ruin her cover.
  •  Asena knew, and about a year after the accident she reached out to Asha, essentially letting her know that she could keep up this game, as long as she stayed well and truly clear of INCO.
•  Asha immediately became a pirate, robbing INCO owned transports.
  • This is when she signed on with the Charon as a junior electrical engineer (which she sucked at) but turned out to be an excellent leader and tactical planner.
    • Fucking devious wench
•  About a year before the events of the first book, Asha watched the Cassiopeia debacle go down on live TV, and began to look into it in her free time. She didn’t get very far, and after coming to the conclusion that INCO was fucking with things on a quantum level, she overstepped her boundary. Asha sent out a kidnap order and she was just gone one day, about a month before the first book.
  • Asha: Footage is found of Asha being taken to an isolation cell on a INCO owned science ship and debriefed. When she refused to give anything up, they called Asena in. The footage for about three weeks after this is just gone. About a week after the beginning of the book, asha shows back up in the footage physically unharmed, but in bad shape. She is taken out to a shift area, and the footage shows her going through stages of shift sickness, until finally she begins to tell everyone that something is coming. That they are all doomed. Mid scream she cuts off and falls to the floor of the cell, dead. The shift that took her was a reality where she had died previously.
  • Naith: After three days, Enewa brings Asha’s absence up to Naith and the two go looking. After not finding her, they go through her stuff and find a paper journal. Most of it is written in some sort of code, but sections are legible. Naith is unable to get much from them, and only managed to infer this from what parts are legible.
    Something happened in Cassiopeia, INCO is involved, and they are almost certainly who took her. Caleb’s name is repeatedly mentioned, and naith infers that he is the one responsible for taking her.

     

    • After about a month of searching, deciphering, and planning, they decide that they are just going to kidnap Caleb and force him to tell them where Asha is.
•  The notebook
  • The notebook contains a bunch of information about the Shift. What it is (at a very high level), how it looks, and Asha’s inference that INCO is trying to harness the power of the shift for massive power, and its killing people. It also contains a lot of private notes from Asha (it was never meant to be read). She wanderers a lot about Caleb and what his level of involvement is
  • The last page contains a message written in english to Enewa
    • “Eze,
      I’m sorry if you’re reading this. You know how you told me if I stuck my nose in a woodchipper, I would lose it? Well I probably lost it. I can’t help my nature. Just know I love you more than anything. And that I’m so sorry. But how much is that really worth?
      -Asha”
  •   The notebook is written in a code language that Caleb and Callie invented as kids to keep people from reading it. Caleb can read it (more or less), and ends up translating it onto paper for the others to read.
    • He keeps some of it out, stuff that he knew she wouldn’t want shared, though he reads it to Enewa, who agrees that he should hold off on translating it

• Caused by transit through the gates. Often seen in veterans of shipping and transport, though it can happen to any traveler regardless of first/thousandth transfer
• It can affect as little as one person, or as many as an entire shift
• Happens randomly, though it is more common near systems with a quantum tear
• Symptoms of TPD
• Confusion, memory loss or false memories, incorrect knowledge of current events, nausea, dissociation, sudden and unexplained health issues or changes, difficulty communicating
• An individual shift happens when memories, thoughts, or even bodies are merged/switched with a reality shadow.
• Non-noticeable: this shift can happen with a shadow that lives a life nearly identical to the person, so they don’t notice any difference. Most common, and often untraceable
• Partial: The person will real thing falsely, not recognise things they should, or have a strange sense of disconnection with their surroundings. Sometimes a mind will return to normal, recognising the foreign thoughts and purging them. Other times, not so much.
• Full: rarely, a shift will switch a person’s entire mind/body with their shadow. This is less common, but people will show up at former lover’s houses, not know their family, and won’t know why, or find themself in a foreign reality. This can occasionally result in mental impairment or death, if the shadow in opposing reality is dead or severely injured. 
• Individual shifts have been happening as long as people have been using the network, but the more shifts that happen, the more likely a tear is to form.
• This effect was observed by the developers on Callisto, and was ignored when it was implemented

• A quantum tear happens when a number of individual shifts occur with strong enough presentation that the walls of reality begin to rip
• Quantum tears are far more likely to happen in high traffic zones, but larger populations prevent it from taking hold due to the observer effect. Far easier to see in smaller, less populated systems (ex: Cassiopia and Kotol)
  • It takes time for an entire population to be swallowed into a tear, and only once a majority of the observing population is ingested can a shift happen
  • The shifts are compounded by the number of observers inside a tear. The more people, the more rapid the shifts.
  • Small scale tears can enter phase one quickly, but take years to enter phase two
  • Large scale tears take far longer to occur, but once it enters stage one, it progresses far quicker than smaller systems.
•  What are the effects of a tear?
  • Stage one: First signs of shift. Very minor deviations, usually an abnormally high presenation of TPD.
    • INCO solution: monitoring, travel restrictions
  • Stage two: Shared memory/perception shifts with a shadow reality. This can appear in a community forgetting people, minor history changes, or elected officials changing based on shadow. Unstable travel in nearby gate with increased risk of TPD. Shadow realities are often very similar to prime reality.
    • INCO solution: Relocation, partial travel ban, and certain mass memory editing if necessary
  • Stage three: Large scale hallucinations that include major historical/general knowledge deviations from main system, random person disappearances, and evidence of multiple shifts. Shadow reality deviations grow and become progressively unpredictable.
    • INCO solution: Mass relocation with large-scale memory editing and full travel bans
  • Stage four: large scale physical shifts. This can include people, buildings, and even planets changing drastically, or even vanishing. This stage is highly unpredictable and dangerous. Shadow realities can be wild deviations from prime reality.
    • INCO: Full relocation if possible. Partial or full population sterilization if not.
  • Stage five: Critical mass. Merely existing in the area of a stage four tear will almost certianly kill/take you. Do not enter system under any circumstances. System containing rift is entirely unrecogniseable.
    • INCO: Kill everyone and everything and cut all contact with system forever.
    • Eldrich horrors..?
• Tears can affect a population as small as a town or as large as an entire system. 

• Creation
  • The eigenstate project was created about 50 years before the beginning of this book. It initially was formed as an exploration to the observer effect and to investigate the uptick in TPD cases after the invention of the neur0.
    Began
•  Definition of eigenstate
  • In quantum mechanics, an eigenstate is a state of a quantum system where a particular observable (like position, momentum, or energy) has a definite, fixed value. When a quantum mechanical operator corresponding to an observable acts on an eigenstate, the result is simply the original state multiplied by a constant, called the eigenvalue.
• Current Project
  • In the fifteen years prevoius to the beginning of the book, the project has shifted greatly. From being a small scale research project, conduction the occational test during a gate transit, to being the largest project in the Ursa Foundry.
  • Objective: to find a way to understand, minimize, contain, and ultimately stop the shift and save the galaxy.
  • The project is ran diretcly under the Ursa Foundry name, but for all intents and purposes, is it’s own company. This is where all the time, effort, and money of the Foundry is going, and has been going since the shift was noticed.
  • Who knows about it?
    • Pretty much all of the upper leadership, hense the sense of nihilistic euphoria of the upper echilons. They believe they are all going to die, and they are probably right. Caleb was going to eventually be informed about the true nature of the project, but was never given the chance.
  • How does the project operate?
    • Strictly martial law. What needs to be done will be done, no hesitation or morals. Someone needs to dies? Done. Human experimentation? Fine. There is no line to be crossed. Hell waits for no one.
• Methods
  • Phase one: Travel Ban
  • Phase two: Memory isolation and destruction en masse
  • Phase three: Relocation and memory wipe
  • Phase four: Nukes

• Large rotation wheel station that orbits the barycenter between Abzu and Tiamat
  • Two concentric rings
    • There are six transit points between the rings that hold four vertical transport stations each, like a vertical subway, as well as two pod tubes per.
  • The inner ring has a more pronounced coriolis effect, where the working class of Niasba live. This is the oldest part of the station, and holds the primary docks.
  • The outer ring is newer and far nicer, with a less dramatic curve and less nauseating coriolis effect. While bigger, it has less than a quarter the population of the inner ring. It even boasts transparent flooring in places to allow a view of the planets below
• The first station that we begin at, meeting both main characters
• The headquarters of the largest corporations operate out of Nisaba, including INCO

• Massive hycean planet
• The planet would have thick bands of deep green blue clouds, with the deep indigo ocean peeking through its thick cloud layer.
  • Whatever side is closest to Tiamat at the time, the ocean and clouds grow more volatile and strange as thin clouds of flash frozen magma descend into the upper atmosphere, raining metal rich particles in thick veins of vivid yellow, orange, purple, and white.
• Rich in hydrogen, methane, and phosphine
• Is able to maintain its liquid ocean through the tidal heating of Tiamat’s orbit

• Large, tidally locked volcanic moon that orbits Abzu
• Molten salt flats would be a shimmering bone white-blue color, with hints of violet and lavender form the high levels of potassium salts
• Silicate crusts would be dark ashy grey
• Lava would glow a stunning cyan aquamarine color as it broke through the crust
• The eruptions would be turquoise and fade to a shimmering indigo as they drifted through the exosphere, and eventually drifted down into Abzu’s swirling clouds
• Rich in sodium, potassium, chlorine, and sulfur
• Highly volatile subsurface magma ocean that occasionally cracks the thin crust, bursting out in massive, incredibly violent volcanic eruptions that spew sodium rich magma out of its thin atmosphere
• The auroras created by the eruptions descending into Abzu’s atmosphere draw people from all over the network to see its spectacle
• Goddess of saltwater oceans

• High orbit ice moon, within the Primordial’s large magnetosphere
• This is mostly corproate fatories and scinece labs

• Cassiopeia was a smaller system that was relatively close to the earth constellation sharing the same name. It was established only a few decades ago when the probe finally arrived and established a sphere. Soon after establishment a small Ursa Foundry owned mining colony had been set up at one of its outer asteroid belts.
• About a year before the first book, the colony was shut off due to a stage two tear that quickly escalted to a stage four. INCO was forced to sterilize the system
  • This turned into an absolute PR disaster and they only just barely managed to bury the issue
  • “About a year ago, the system’s transport gate that connected it to the rest of the galaxy was shut down by INCO, leaving the colony stranded in deep space. Riots had broken out, and INCO had said something about gate repair issues, and finally after three months the gate had reopened. The first ship to re-enter Cassiopeia had found the entire colony dead of strange causes. Then, the system had been shut down entirely and for good. It had been quite the media piece for a while, despite efforts by INCO to get it removed.” – chapter three book 1

• Large rotation wheel station that orbits the barycenter between Abzu and Tiamat
  • Two concentric rings
    • There are six transit points between the rings that hold four vertical transport stations each, like a vertical subway, as well as two pod tubes per.
  • The inner ring has a more pronounced coriolis effect, where the working class of Niasba live. This is the oldest part of the station, and holds the primary docks.
  • The outer ring is newer and far nicer, with a less dramatic curve and less nauseating coriolis effect. While bigger, it has less than a quarter the population of the inner ring. It even boasts transparent flooring in places to allow a view of the planets below
• The first station that we begin at, meeting both main characters
• The headquarters of the largest corporations operate out of Nisaba, including INCO

• Rich in natural resources and hospitable
• Large red star, makes everything look red and warm
• Was once independent, but the rights to the moon were signed over to INCO. A seven year civil war followed, with INCO being the final victor over the locals

• Large, tidally locked volcanic moon that orbits Abzu
• Molten salt flats would be a shimmering bone white-blue color, with hints of violet and lavender form the high levels of potassium salts
• Silicate crusts would be dark ashy grey
• Lava would glow a stunning cyan aquamarine color as it broke through the crust
• The eruptions would be turquoise and fade to a shimmering indigo as they drifted through the exosphere, and eventually drifted down into Abzu’s swirling clouds
• Rich in sodium, potassium, chlorine, and sulfur
• Highly volatile subsurface magma ocean that occasionally cracks the thin crust, bursting out in massive, incredibly violent volcanic eruptions that spew sodium rich magma out of its thin atmosphere
• The auroras created by the eruptions descending into Abzu’s atmosphere draw people from all over the network to see its spectacle
• Goddess of saltwater oceans

• Large rotation wheel station that orbits the barycenter between Abzu and Tiamat
  • Two concentric rings
    • There are six transit points between the rings that hold four vertical transport stations each, like a vertical subway, as well as two pod tubes per.
  • The inner ring has a more pronounced coriolis effect, where the working class of Niasba live. This is the oldest part of the station, and holds the primary docks.
  • The outer ring is newer and far nicer, with a less dramatic curve and less nauseating coriolis effect. While bigger, it has less than a quarter the population of the inner ring. It even boasts transparent flooring in places to allow a view of the planets below
• The first station that we begin at, meeting both main characters
• The headquarters of the largest corporations operate out of Nisaba, including INCO

• Massive hycean planet
• The planet would have thick bands of deep green blue clouds, with the deep indigo ocean peeking through its thick cloud layer.
  • Whatever side is closest to Tiamat at the time, the ocean and clouds grow more volatile and strange as thin clouds of flash frozen magma descend into the upper atmosphere, raining metal rich particles in thick veins of vivid yellow, orange, purple, and white.
• Rich in hydrogen, methane, and phosphine
• Is able to maintain its liquid ocean through the tidal heating of Tiamat’s orbit

• Large, tidally locked volcanic moon that orbits Abzu
• Molten salt flats would be a shimmering bone white-blue color, with hints of violet and lavender form the high levels of potassium salts
• Silicate crusts would be dark ashy grey
• Lava would glow a stunning cyan aquamarine color as it broke through the crust
• The eruptions would be turquoise and fade to a shimmering indigo as they drifted through the exosphere, and eventually drifted down into Abzu’s swirling clouds
• Rich in sodium, potassium, chlorine, and sulfur
• Highly volatile subsurface magma ocean that occasionally cracks the thin crust, bursting out in massive, incredibly violent volcanic eruptions that spew sodium rich magma out of its thin atmosphere
• The auroras created by the eruptions descending into Abzu’s atmosphere draw people from all over the network to see its spectacle
• Goddess of saltwater oceans

• Large rotation wheel station that orbits the barycenter between Abzu and Tiamat
  • Two concentric rings
    • There are six transit points between the rings that hold four vertical transport stations each, like a vertical subway, as well as two pod tubes per.
  • The inner ring has a more pronounced coriolis effect, where the working class of Niasba live. This is the oldest part of the station, and holds the primary docks.
  • The outer ring is newer and far nicer, with a less dramatic curve and less nauseating coriolis effect. While bigger, it has less than a quarter the population of the inner ring. It even boasts transparent flooring in places to allow a view of the planets below
• The first station that we begin at, meeting both main characters
• The headquarters of the largest corporations operate out of Nisaba, including INCO

• Massive hycean planet
• The planet would have thick bands of deep green blue clouds, with the deep indigo ocean peeking through its thick cloud layer.
  • Whatever side is closest to Tiamat at the time, the ocean and clouds grow more volatile and strange as thin clouds of flash frozen magma descend into the upper atmosphere, raining metal rich particles in thick veins of vivid yellow, orange, purple, and white.
• Rich in hydrogen, methane, and phosphine
• Is able to maintain its liquid ocean through the tidal heating of Tiamat’s orbit