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Void Dreaming Blog XIV - Art, Release, and Sustainability
Posted 7 months agoHey there! Fae back again with another massive Void Dreaming post! I’m doing my best not to let the recent cyclone stop me, but it’s sure screwed me over a fair bit!
Last time we automated our life with some more worldbuilding insights on simulant and AI technology, as well as their creators in Biomech Service Solutions. Today however we’re stepping well away from AI as we talk about and to the artists who are helping bring Void Dreaming to life! I’ll also talk about the release of the first public build, and how I’m going to handle your ability to support the project moving forward.
This is also the first blog entry to also release simultaneously with the Void Dreaming Itch.io page! You can find it at https://faorameridian.itch.io/void-dreaming !
And one last thing before we dive into the art of the visual novel. In case you missed it on the BlueSky account, the Void Dreaming Discord is now live! If you want to talk with others interested in the VN (or even with me, perchance?) and share your thoughts and whatnot, then come by and check it out!
Now, let’s dive right in!
Fuck Exposure
We’re going to start with the mercenary topic of money, because most artists don’t make enough of it. Void Dreaming is not being made by a team. It’s being made by me. Just me, all by myself, where possible. See, most FVNs tend to be the work of a group of people with mixed skills, all pulling together for the common cause. I don’t have that. I just have my madness and the drive to forge that madness into words. And programming. Hot damn do I hate programming.
Because I don’t have a team behind me and because I’m not an artist, this presents the obvious problem. I don’t draw. I can’t make music. I sure couldn’t animate something if my life depended on it. What, then, is a Fae to do? Well… I’ve got an answer for you, but I don’t like it.
The answer, as hinted above… is money.
Now, I say I don’t like it, but that’s a bald faced lie. Artists, as I have said and will continue to say, deserve to be paid a fair rate for their time and for their effort. I knew from the start that if I only offered artists a cut of whatever the VN was earning through Patreon or whatever, I couldn’t guarantee that they would be fairly compensated for their work. That was wrong. I couldn’t abide that. I wouldn’t abide that. Unfortunately, that left me in an awkward position. After all, a visual novel requires a lot of art… and quality work is expensive.
So I saved. And I saved, and I saved, and I saved, and then I saved some more because Australia’s currency is generally weak against the US dollar. I’ve poured so much money into this project, to ensure that not only is what you get to see up to the standard that I think this story deserves, but that the artists involved in it are paid what they believe they are worth. I did not negotiate. I did not haggle. I let my artists set their prices based on what they thought was fair, and then I paid them that money for their work. There’s no promise to fulfill here; everything you see in Void Dreaming has been paid for in advance, and I spared no expense in doing so. To do any less would have been unthinkable to me.
I’m also actually, painfully broke now. More on how you can help with that later; for now, let’s talk about the art and the artists themselves!
Sprightly Designs
We have to start with the spritework, of course. They’re the front-facing dynamic art of the VN medium, and I knew I needed to get someone who could produce vibrant characters, expressive bodies and faces, and… well, capture some of their naughtier aspects as well. This was actually a fair challenge (especially with a budget!), either because my feelers either went unnoticed or ignored, or were turned back because artists didn’t want to get tied down. Both are completely understandable! There weren’t that many feelers at first either, since a lot of FVNs focus on a very male, gay-centric cast of characters. Given the other options on the table with Void Dreaming, I needed to make absolutely certain that I was with a sprite artist who would be willing, and ideally enthusiastic, to work with all of the characters I’d envisioned.
That artist, as you’ve probably seen on posts for the Void Dreaming Bluesky account, is Vallhound! He’s got the look that I wanted, the quality I needed, the experience and skill I just had to have, and was very helpful, understanding, and reasonable throughout the whole process! I’ve got a couple questions I asked him just for this entry, so I’ll let those speak for themselves!
Faora: First, thanks for letting me ask some questions! Why don’t you start with telling everyone a bit about yourself?
Vallhound: Hi folks! I'm Vall, a freelance Illustrator out of the great white North (of America) that draws exclusively for the Furry fandom! It's been my full time job for over a decade, but I usually draw for individuals with personal requests rather than large projects used for games or publishing. In that way Void Dreaming is a new experience for me!
Faora: I’d like to first ask, what was it that made you interested to work on this project with me in the first place? Besides paying the bills, of course!
Vallhound: My bills aside, it was an important factor that the project was being treated seriously and fairly from start to finish in relation to funding the portions that couldn't be accomplished alone. Faora was not trying to get anything for less than it was worth, was willing to allow the artists a bit of creative freedom with his written creation, and emphasized fair treatment in having the appropriate amount of time and resources available to complete the work required. It also helped that the writing from what I could experience myself felt truly engaging, making for a good read/play experience.
(Fae’s Note: I swear I didn’t ask Vall to be this kind to me; he’s an absolute sweetheart and gives me far more credit than I deserve.)
Faora: What did you find was the most difficult part the spritework for you? Or was it all no challenge at all? It sure looked effortless to see you bringing the characters to life!
Vallhound: I tried to visualize why the sprites would be impactful to the story, a visualization of a wider range of emotions and reactions that were possible to accomplish with a limited amount of sprites, and lean in to those expressions with facial expression and body language while keeping each character's underlying personality present.
The other thing was their clothes! Some of the fashion choices, from the uniform design to the casual clothes are important to each individual so I had to figure all that out! I spent a fair bit of time finding reference material and simplifying designs to suit everyone!
Faora: Did you have a favourite character to work on? I know in your read of an early build of Void Dreaming that you were very fond of Bromm!
Vallhound: Actually it was Sam I think! Bromm and every other character fill the criteria of not being one dimensional and rewarding to interact with, but designing and drawing Sam was a character I paid a bit more attention to just due to the complex nature of their personality and motivations. Expressing someone that is more antisocial by avoiding direct eye contact is one example of that.
Faora: I have to ask it: what were the Origin choices you went with for your Rael when you had a look into the story the first time? If you can remember, that is!
Vallhound: I believe I chose that he grew up on a working planet, was a dreamer personality and that his mess up was a death related incident with navigation soft.
(Fae’s Note: for clarity, and if you’d like to try Vall’s version of Rael for yourself when you get your chance, this corresponds to the Colonist, Dreamer, and Innovator choices for his Origins!)
Faora: Do you think you’ll stay with that when the story finally gets released? Or are you interested in trying something a bit different next time?
Vallhound: I do like the choices that I made, being that Rael is a bit more optimistic than pessimistic, and more people pleasing than confrontational, from the choices I make in the game so far. I like to peel off all the barriers characters throw up without being too invasive. Not sure how, but there are those kinds of rewards in this game, which make it extra neat!
Faora: Thanks so much! I’m sure I won’t be asking you more questions soon.
Setting the Mood
That doesn’t mean that other artwork for a visual novel doesn’t matter. Sprites may be the expressive way the characters come to life on the screen, but background art is just as important if you want to set the scene and make sure that the reader is immersed in the world you’ve created for them. This actually took me longer to find than a sprite artist, mostly because it was hard to find an artist who had the look I needed and who would consent to being asked to do dozens upon dozens of backgrounds with nary a character in sight.
However, I eventually found Rico! He was excited to take on the job after I talked about what it would entail, and I can’t wait for you to see all of the environments of the galaxy he’s brought to life. I asked him a couple of questions in advance of this blog, too!
Faora: Thanks for taking the time, Rico; I know I’m working you pretty hard and you’re especially busy when I’m asking all of this! Would you care to introduce yourself to the readers?
Rico: Hi, I'm Rico, also known as beanworks (@beanworks.bsky.social / bean-interests on FA) !
How do I put this... I'm a freelance furry artist that makes story-driven character and environment scenes. If you want to explore your character's story, lore, personality... I'm your guy. I also do backgrounds for comics, and more recently, visual novels. Void Dreaming is actually my first ever freelance gig that isn't one-off commissions, and I'm thankful for the opportunity to be a part of this project!
Faora: So, what was it about Void Dreaming that appealed to you enough to take on my madness as your own? What about the project appealed to you?
Rico: The short answer: bills don't pay themselves!
The long answer: I usually get a lot of sci-fi themed commissions from my regulars, and I'm a fan of sci-fi stuff myself! I figured, why not? It's only fitting I'd go for a project like this. And working for a VN is new grounds for me, so I was also genuinely curious. One of the things that really grabbed my attention was the worldbuilding: Void Dreaming mixes things from both the space opera and hard sci-fi subgenres, and I wanted to see what kind of directions the setting and characters would go. Safe to say that I’m excited to see how the final product turns out!
Faora: The background work you’ve done already is so stellar, pun certainly intended. I know I’ve seen them (and contributed a few!) but what were some of the inspirations you took from to help build the environments of Void Dreaming, and of the Dreamer herself?
Rico: Thank you! A lot of my inspirations come from considering several things when designing and rendering the backgrounds: real-life sources, art direction from existing fiction, and specific requests from the client (in this case, you) like story cues, tone, and any other nitty gritty details that are a must. I do contribute a few of my own inspirations, but I do my best to keep it in line with your vision.
Faora: I know that for me personally, the backgrounds were important that we get very right. My feeling is that without them hitting the mark, the scene just doesn’t have the same impact. What’re some of the things you did that you really think the reader will appreciate when they get their hands on the visual novel?
Rico: I like to have faith in my backgrounds helping immerse the reader into the story being told. Having a good and creative set dressing really helps tie the characters and story together, as it sets the tone before any word gets spoken or read. My brief stint working for the set and props teams of my college’s theater club a few years back taught me that much, and I went into creating the backgrounds for Void Dreaming with those same lessons.
Faora: Is there a particular background that you enjoyed more than the others? Any that stand out as particularly challenging, so far?
Rico: I’d say the cockpit background was my favorite one to make. It’s a major part of the setting, and I used to play a lot of Elite: Dangerous back then, so weirdly enough it felt like home. I also loved working on the more detailed, utilitarian backgrounds; they felt more familiar, like the more hard sci-fi and space western style scenes I was commissioned to make in the past. As for the more challenging backgrounds, I’d say the VR environments as a whole took the cake. At the time, I was trying and refining a new art style and software at the same time. It was a struggle, but one that was worthwhile!
Faora: And finally for now, just like with Vall, did you have a favourite character in the story, and what were your Origin choices when you started going through? I’m pretty confident in guessing Zuberi’s your favourite, based on what I know!
Rico: I ran with colonist, dreamer, and innovator for my background for Rael, as those mirrored some of my current IRL circumstances. I haven’t gotten very far into the VN myself, but I’ve enjoyed what I saw so far! And Yes, Zuberi is my favorite. You can say I have a type, lol.
(Fae’s Note: This cracked me up; until I got this answer from Rico, I had no idea that he and Vall both took the exact same Origin path! A one-in-twenty-seven chance!)
Faora: Thanks again for taking the time, Rico!
Spicy (Meat)Balls
Finally, let’s talk about the CGs! It’s important to be able to set the scene, and if I had my way I would love to do way, way more CGs than are currently in this story. I’d love to scatter them all around to help set the scene in important moments, and down the road if the project does well, I think I will! However, due to budget constraints, I can only do so much in the here and now. I mean, shit… I don’t have bespoke music or even fancy UI. There’s not even a logo for the VN yet, for goodness’ sake. I’ve poured everything I (financially) have into Vall and Rico’s work.
The CGs in Void Dreaming at present are split between two purposes: the spicy stuff, and the splash screens that welcome each new Day of the story. Regardless of the type, you’ll find that they’ve been done by a familiar artist: Vallhound’s back again, with the CG duties! He’s also done the amazing title screen for when you load up the VN, and those daily splash screens!
It was important to me to be able to have consistency in art between the sprites and the CGs, so that the important moments (and nice moments) of the story can take place with everything looking right and good and proper. Vall was very kind to allow me to further monopolize his time.
In earlier planning, I was afraid that I wasn’t going to be able to afford all of the art necessary to get the CGs in on the initial launch. Since I pushed that back somewhat, I was able to build up a little more cash (though I also blew out my initial budget by, uh… a lot). It turned into enough to secure the art that I need for at least the start of the project, with additional CGs to be added over time as the budget allows. More on that later.
For now though, I’ve managed to wrangle Vallhound once again for a few more questions!
Faora: Hey again! Just while I’ve got you back here, can you talk a little about your process for crafting these CGs for the project?
Vallhound: The CG's were a fun look into some of the scenarios you can put Rael into, a good chunk of them nice and spicy. They were also a kind of collaboration in that the settings were something Rico created thoughtfully as well. I tried to visualize parts of the ship from different angles, and parts that hadn't been drawn yet to try and fit with Rico's settings and layout drafts, hopefully in a way that sets a fun scene for players!
Faora: So far I’ve asked you to do the title screen, the splash screens for the first few days, and quite a few CGs at this point. Did you have a favourite piece to work on? One that you feel came out better than the others?
Vallhound: Its hard to pick one, because all of them had their challenges and pieces I thought I did well. I think the <<Redacted>>/Rael bedroom scene came out well with the progression of the panels and the drawings themselves.
(Fae’s Note: {RiverSong} Spoilers! {/RiverSong})
Faora: Did working on the CGs change your favourite character at all? Or have you been pretty locked in since the spritework?
Vallhound: It's honestly difficult for me to pick a favorite regardless! My playthrough doesn't include a lot of Zuberi time so I suppose getting to know his character a bit more through the CG's was interesting!
Faora: Rael doesn’t really get a lot of screen time; his sprites are more for reference and for rare use to show the reader early on what their lovely protagonist looks like. How’d you find pairing him with different characters in the CGs you’ve done so far?
Vallhound: Rael can get up to plenty of shenanigans so it's interesting to show him wandering and searching through the ship and encounter a variety of scenarios, although I have to chuckle at the concept of all possibilities somehow being capable in one playthrough; what would the crew think of Rael being so horny and eavesdropping so much?!
Faora: Is there a pairing including Rael that you’ve not worked on yet but you’re looking forward to? And do you have a pairing on the ship that really does it for you, including Rael or not?
Vallhound: All the characters have interesting stories to uncover, but I am interested in seeing something of Tulemeni in her digital space in the future. As for pairings I did like Rael and Caleia!
Faora: Thanks so much again for the time, Vall! I look forward to throwing exorbitant amounts of money at you in the near future for more Void Dreaming work!
Vallhound: Thanks for choosing me for the project! I look forward to drawing more Void Dreaming for the readers to enjoy in the not too distant future! If you can please go help support the completion of this project folks! Faora has been funding it out of pocket so far and does a vast majority of the work by himself. Let's help him create this story for us all to enjoy!
(Fae’s Note: See what I mean? He’s an absolute sweetheart and far too kind to me! But seriously, yes, please help.)
Making the Ching-Ching
However, that does bring to light the ugly side of VN development that I touched on at the start. This shit’s expensive, yo. Even with me learning the programming I need to make things work, and writing a truly obscene amount of words to make this project a reality, I can’t do it all alone and I need to pay people for their work. As I said last post and further above and will shout to my last breath, artists deserve to be paid.
Whether or not I deserve to be paid too, I do need more money if I’m going to actually complete this project. I’ve definitely put my money where my mouth is so far; I’ve invested, even before release, over twenty-five thousand dollars (AUD, mind, but it’s still a fuckton of money for me) into the development of this, just in the art assets alone. And that’s just to start. My wallet weeps.
An example of this is something that I’ve struggled with more and more as the initial launch of Void Dreaming draws closer. There have been so many FVNs lately (and in general!) that have launched with impeccable production values (Under Heaven is the one that comes immediately to mind!), but because of how I’ve had to make Void Dreaming, I can’t do all of that. One little Fae does not have the skills and resources of a team! Corners have had to be cut, for now, as stated earlier. Royalty free music from various sources, the Ren’py standard UI, only the bells and whistles I’ve personally learned to program in… this is what I’ve been resigned to, because my budget had been completely expended on what the VN does have so far, out of my own pocket. I think it’s been money well spent, and I hope you do, too!
And as much as I would like to fund this all out of pocket, it’s just not sustainable for me to do. Void Dreaming, if it’s going to reach completion (let alone fulfill my goals for it and to add those wonderful production value elements that’ll make it truly shine), is going to be a long and expensive slog. Longer, if it takes me alone years to save up for the art assets required. That’s why, unlike anything I’ve ever done in the past, I’m actually going out of my way to ask for people to help.
That’s right, motherfuckers; Fae’s finally looking to charge people for his work!
If, uh… if you like.
Please.
I had a couple of options on the table, but I narrowed it quickly down to one. I thought about doing a Kickstarter, but if for whatever reason I couldn’t sustain my output and the project died, I’d be disappointing a lot of people (and be unable to pay them back if I’d already spent the money). The same went for if I did something like doing an Early Access thing on Steam. I intend to finish this story and this project, of course, but asking people to shell out cash to me without getting what they’re paying for in return? It doesn’t sit right with me. This way, if I can’t sustain the project and I have to stop for whatever reason, I can suspend payments to it immediately and take not a cent more from people.
So I’ve settled on the same process that most furry visual novels go for. And with that, it’s time to reveal that thing that everyone’s been waiting for! The thing I’ve been dancing around and not saying publicly for far too long now!
I’m incredibly thrilled to announce that Void Dreaming’s initial builds will go live on the morning of April 5th, 2025, on Itch.io and Patreon! At least in my Australian timezone it will; you might get it a bit early!
The visual novel will publicly release on Itch.io, starting with the Prologue and Day 1… but for those who can’t wait for the next update, that delightful little introduction and Day 2 will be available for subscribers to the project on Patreon at the same time! Originally I was set to release just the prologue with Day 1 on the Patreon earlier in the year, but I wanted to make sure that I had enough story there to tantalize you. If I hadn’t, the public release would just have been the prologue… and that would have been massively underwhelming! The delays have been unfortunately neccessary, but at least we can now settle into a regular(ish) release cadence. Don’t worry; we’ll get more into that release schedule and my roadmap (starmap?) once we get to the release. I’m gonna hit the ground running for now!
The trouble with a project like this, of course, is one of cost. I’ve already put a lot of money into this up front and, like I said above, being Australian in a community where most artists deal in USD, the comparative weakness of the local dollar is simultaneously a blessing and a curse. It’s made the initial buy-in for the project extraordinarily high, but it will reap better rewards down the line if I can earn the support of enough subscribers over a long enough period.
I believe I’ve secured enough sprite assets to get me through at least until the end of Day 6, and background art is coming in clean, coherent batches every month. For those who remember from the very first post about this project, Day 6 is barely over a third of the overall project length. I’m going to need more money from supporters if I’m going to finish this in reasonable fashion. The writing will happen pretty definitely, but I can’t fund the art alone. It’s just not feasible if I want to ensure those who’ve helped make this a reality are fairly compensated.
Hence, Patreon. The hope is that between the money I keep putting into the project and the support of readers who want to see this become the best that it can be, Void Dreaming can not only be finished in good time but also be something that truly stands apart in the FVN space. I set out to create something really cool here, and I hope I’ve done enough to convince you, dear (and, if you’ll allow me, most attractive and smart and funny and generous) reader - and have you done something new with your hair, because you look great! - to support the project as well. We’ll talk a bit more about that post-launch.
But this time next time, it’s all happening! I’ll be cracking open the bubbly to celebrate as we see the first initial release of Void Dreaming just about coming to fruition! You’ll get to see the release notes, get a link to where you can support the project going forward, and I hope you look forward as much as I do to your journey past the fringe with Rael, Zuberi, and all the rest.
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Last time we automated our life with some more worldbuilding insights on simulant and AI technology, as well as their creators in Biomech Service Solutions. Today however we’re stepping well away from AI as we talk about and to the artists who are helping bring Void Dreaming to life! I’ll also talk about the release of the first public build, and how I’m going to handle your ability to support the project moving forward.
This is also the first blog entry to also release simultaneously with the Void Dreaming Itch.io page! You can find it at https://faorameridian.itch.io/void-dreaming !
And one last thing before we dive into the art of the visual novel. In case you missed it on the BlueSky account, the Void Dreaming Discord is now live! If you want to talk with others interested in the VN (or even with me, perchance?) and share your thoughts and whatnot, then come by and check it out!
Now, let’s dive right in!
Fuck Exposure
We’re going to start with the mercenary topic of money, because most artists don’t make enough of it. Void Dreaming is not being made by a team. It’s being made by me. Just me, all by myself, where possible. See, most FVNs tend to be the work of a group of people with mixed skills, all pulling together for the common cause. I don’t have that. I just have my madness and the drive to forge that madness into words. And programming. Hot damn do I hate programming.
Because I don’t have a team behind me and because I’m not an artist, this presents the obvious problem. I don’t draw. I can’t make music. I sure couldn’t animate something if my life depended on it. What, then, is a Fae to do? Well… I’ve got an answer for you, but I don’t like it.
The answer, as hinted above… is money.
Now, I say I don’t like it, but that’s a bald faced lie. Artists, as I have said and will continue to say, deserve to be paid a fair rate for their time and for their effort. I knew from the start that if I only offered artists a cut of whatever the VN was earning through Patreon or whatever, I couldn’t guarantee that they would be fairly compensated for their work. That was wrong. I couldn’t abide that. I wouldn’t abide that. Unfortunately, that left me in an awkward position. After all, a visual novel requires a lot of art… and quality work is expensive.
So I saved. And I saved, and I saved, and I saved, and then I saved some more because Australia’s currency is generally weak against the US dollar. I’ve poured so much money into this project, to ensure that not only is what you get to see up to the standard that I think this story deserves, but that the artists involved in it are paid what they believe they are worth. I did not negotiate. I did not haggle. I let my artists set their prices based on what they thought was fair, and then I paid them that money for their work. There’s no promise to fulfill here; everything you see in Void Dreaming has been paid for in advance, and I spared no expense in doing so. To do any less would have been unthinkable to me.
I’m also actually, painfully broke now. More on how you can help with that later; for now, let’s talk about the art and the artists themselves!
Sprightly Designs
We have to start with the spritework, of course. They’re the front-facing dynamic art of the VN medium, and I knew I needed to get someone who could produce vibrant characters, expressive bodies and faces, and… well, capture some of their naughtier aspects as well. This was actually a fair challenge (especially with a budget!), either because my feelers either went unnoticed or ignored, or were turned back because artists didn’t want to get tied down. Both are completely understandable! There weren’t that many feelers at first either, since a lot of FVNs focus on a very male, gay-centric cast of characters. Given the other options on the table with Void Dreaming, I needed to make absolutely certain that I was with a sprite artist who would be willing, and ideally enthusiastic, to work with all of the characters I’d envisioned.
That artist, as you’ve probably seen on posts for the Void Dreaming Bluesky account, is Vallhound! He’s got the look that I wanted, the quality I needed, the experience and skill I just had to have, and was very helpful, understanding, and reasonable throughout the whole process! I’ve got a couple questions I asked him just for this entry, so I’ll let those speak for themselves!
Faora: First, thanks for letting me ask some questions! Why don’t you start with telling everyone a bit about yourself?
Vallhound: Hi folks! I'm Vall, a freelance Illustrator out of the great white North (of America) that draws exclusively for the Furry fandom! It's been my full time job for over a decade, but I usually draw for individuals with personal requests rather than large projects used for games or publishing. In that way Void Dreaming is a new experience for me!
Faora: I’d like to first ask, what was it that made you interested to work on this project with me in the first place? Besides paying the bills, of course!
Vallhound: My bills aside, it was an important factor that the project was being treated seriously and fairly from start to finish in relation to funding the portions that couldn't be accomplished alone. Faora was not trying to get anything for less than it was worth, was willing to allow the artists a bit of creative freedom with his written creation, and emphasized fair treatment in having the appropriate amount of time and resources available to complete the work required. It also helped that the writing from what I could experience myself felt truly engaging, making for a good read/play experience.
(Fae’s Note: I swear I didn’t ask Vall to be this kind to me; he’s an absolute sweetheart and gives me far more credit than I deserve.)
Faora: What did you find was the most difficult part the spritework for you? Or was it all no challenge at all? It sure looked effortless to see you bringing the characters to life!
Vallhound: I tried to visualize why the sprites would be impactful to the story, a visualization of a wider range of emotions and reactions that were possible to accomplish with a limited amount of sprites, and lean in to those expressions with facial expression and body language while keeping each character's underlying personality present.
The other thing was their clothes! Some of the fashion choices, from the uniform design to the casual clothes are important to each individual so I had to figure all that out! I spent a fair bit of time finding reference material and simplifying designs to suit everyone!
Faora: Did you have a favourite character to work on? I know in your read of an early build of Void Dreaming that you were very fond of Bromm!
Vallhound: Actually it was Sam I think! Bromm and every other character fill the criteria of not being one dimensional and rewarding to interact with, but designing and drawing Sam was a character I paid a bit more attention to just due to the complex nature of their personality and motivations. Expressing someone that is more antisocial by avoiding direct eye contact is one example of that.
Faora: I have to ask it: what were the Origin choices you went with for your Rael when you had a look into the story the first time? If you can remember, that is!
Vallhound: I believe I chose that he grew up on a working planet, was a dreamer personality and that his mess up was a death related incident with navigation soft.
(Fae’s Note: for clarity, and if you’d like to try Vall’s version of Rael for yourself when you get your chance, this corresponds to the Colonist, Dreamer, and Innovator choices for his Origins!)
Faora: Do you think you’ll stay with that when the story finally gets released? Or are you interested in trying something a bit different next time?
Vallhound: I do like the choices that I made, being that Rael is a bit more optimistic than pessimistic, and more people pleasing than confrontational, from the choices I make in the game so far. I like to peel off all the barriers characters throw up without being too invasive. Not sure how, but there are those kinds of rewards in this game, which make it extra neat!
Faora: Thanks so much! I’m sure I won’t be asking you more questions soon.
Setting the Mood
That doesn’t mean that other artwork for a visual novel doesn’t matter. Sprites may be the expressive way the characters come to life on the screen, but background art is just as important if you want to set the scene and make sure that the reader is immersed in the world you’ve created for them. This actually took me longer to find than a sprite artist, mostly because it was hard to find an artist who had the look I needed and who would consent to being asked to do dozens upon dozens of backgrounds with nary a character in sight.
However, I eventually found Rico! He was excited to take on the job after I talked about what it would entail, and I can’t wait for you to see all of the environments of the galaxy he’s brought to life. I asked him a couple of questions in advance of this blog, too!
Faora: Thanks for taking the time, Rico; I know I’m working you pretty hard and you’re especially busy when I’m asking all of this! Would you care to introduce yourself to the readers?
Rico: Hi, I'm Rico, also known as beanworks (@beanworks.bsky.social / bean-interests on FA) !
How do I put this... I'm a freelance furry artist that makes story-driven character and environment scenes. If you want to explore your character's story, lore, personality... I'm your guy. I also do backgrounds for comics, and more recently, visual novels. Void Dreaming is actually my first ever freelance gig that isn't one-off commissions, and I'm thankful for the opportunity to be a part of this project!
Faora: So, what was it about Void Dreaming that appealed to you enough to take on my madness as your own? What about the project appealed to you?
Rico: The short answer: bills don't pay themselves!
The long answer: I usually get a lot of sci-fi themed commissions from my regulars, and I'm a fan of sci-fi stuff myself! I figured, why not? It's only fitting I'd go for a project like this. And working for a VN is new grounds for me, so I was also genuinely curious. One of the things that really grabbed my attention was the worldbuilding: Void Dreaming mixes things from both the space opera and hard sci-fi subgenres, and I wanted to see what kind of directions the setting and characters would go. Safe to say that I’m excited to see how the final product turns out!
Faora: The background work you’ve done already is so stellar, pun certainly intended. I know I’ve seen them (and contributed a few!) but what were some of the inspirations you took from to help build the environments of Void Dreaming, and of the Dreamer herself?
Rico: Thank you! A lot of my inspirations come from considering several things when designing and rendering the backgrounds: real-life sources, art direction from existing fiction, and specific requests from the client (in this case, you) like story cues, tone, and any other nitty gritty details that are a must. I do contribute a few of my own inspirations, but I do my best to keep it in line with your vision.
Faora: I know that for me personally, the backgrounds were important that we get very right. My feeling is that without them hitting the mark, the scene just doesn’t have the same impact. What’re some of the things you did that you really think the reader will appreciate when they get their hands on the visual novel?
Rico: I like to have faith in my backgrounds helping immerse the reader into the story being told. Having a good and creative set dressing really helps tie the characters and story together, as it sets the tone before any word gets spoken or read. My brief stint working for the set and props teams of my college’s theater club a few years back taught me that much, and I went into creating the backgrounds for Void Dreaming with those same lessons.
Faora: Is there a particular background that you enjoyed more than the others? Any that stand out as particularly challenging, so far?
Rico: I’d say the cockpit background was my favorite one to make. It’s a major part of the setting, and I used to play a lot of Elite: Dangerous back then, so weirdly enough it felt like home. I also loved working on the more detailed, utilitarian backgrounds; they felt more familiar, like the more hard sci-fi and space western style scenes I was commissioned to make in the past. As for the more challenging backgrounds, I’d say the VR environments as a whole took the cake. At the time, I was trying and refining a new art style and software at the same time. It was a struggle, but one that was worthwhile!
Faora: And finally for now, just like with Vall, did you have a favourite character in the story, and what were your Origin choices when you started going through? I’m pretty confident in guessing Zuberi’s your favourite, based on what I know!
Rico: I ran with colonist, dreamer, and innovator for my background for Rael, as those mirrored some of my current IRL circumstances. I haven’t gotten very far into the VN myself, but I’ve enjoyed what I saw so far! And Yes, Zuberi is my favorite. You can say I have a type, lol.
(Fae’s Note: This cracked me up; until I got this answer from Rico, I had no idea that he and Vall both took the exact same Origin path! A one-in-twenty-seven chance!)
Faora: Thanks again for taking the time, Rico!
Spicy (Meat)Balls
Finally, let’s talk about the CGs! It’s important to be able to set the scene, and if I had my way I would love to do way, way more CGs than are currently in this story. I’d love to scatter them all around to help set the scene in important moments, and down the road if the project does well, I think I will! However, due to budget constraints, I can only do so much in the here and now. I mean, shit… I don’t have bespoke music or even fancy UI. There’s not even a logo for the VN yet, for goodness’ sake. I’ve poured everything I (financially) have into Vall and Rico’s work.
The CGs in Void Dreaming at present are split between two purposes: the spicy stuff, and the splash screens that welcome each new Day of the story. Regardless of the type, you’ll find that they’ve been done by a familiar artist: Vallhound’s back again, with the CG duties! He’s also done the amazing title screen for when you load up the VN, and those daily splash screens!
It was important to me to be able to have consistency in art between the sprites and the CGs, so that the important moments (and nice moments) of the story can take place with everything looking right and good and proper. Vall was very kind to allow me to further monopolize his time.
In earlier planning, I was afraid that I wasn’t going to be able to afford all of the art necessary to get the CGs in on the initial launch. Since I pushed that back somewhat, I was able to build up a little more cash (though I also blew out my initial budget by, uh… a lot). It turned into enough to secure the art that I need for at least the start of the project, with additional CGs to be added over time as the budget allows. More on that later.
For now though, I’ve managed to wrangle Vallhound once again for a few more questions!
Faora: Hey again! Just while I’ve got you back here, can you talk a little about your process for crafting these CGs for the project?
Vallhound: The CG's were a fun look into some of the scenarios you can put Rael into, a good chunk of them nice and spicy. They were also a kind of collaboration in that the settings were something Rico created thoughtfully as well. I tried to visualize parts of the ship from different angles, and parts that hadn't been drawn yet to try and fit with Rico's settings and layout drafts, hopefully in a way that sets a fun scene for players!
Faora: So far I’ve asked you to do the title screen, the splash screens for the first few days, and quite a few CGs at this point. Did you have a favourite piece to work on? One that you feel came out better than the others?
Vallhound: Its hard to pick one, because all of them had their challenges and pieces I thought I did well. I think the <<Redacted>>/Rael bedroom scene came out well with the progression of the panels and the drawings themselves.
(Fae’s Note: {RiverSong} Spoilers! {/RiverSong})
Faora: Did working on the CGs change your favourite character at all? Or have you been pretty locked in since the spritework?
Vallhound: It's honestly difficult for me to pick a favorite regardless! My playthrough doesn't include a lot of Zuberi time so I suppose getting to know his character a bit more through the CG's was interesting!
Faora: Rael doesn’t really get a lot of screen time; his sprites are more for reference and for rare use to show the reader early on what their lovely protagonist looks like. How’d you find pairing him with different characters in the CGs you’ve done so far?
Vallhound: Rael can get up to plenty of shenanigans so it's interesting to show him wandering and searching through the ship and encounter a variety of scenarios, although I have to chuckle at the concept of all possibilities somehow being capable in one playthrough; what would the crew think of Rael being so horny and eavesdropping so much?!
Faora: Is there a pairing including Rael that you’ve not worked on yet but you’re looking forward to? And do you have a pairing on the ship that really does it for you, including Rael or not?
Vallhound: All the characters have interesting stories to uncover, but I am interested in seeing something of Tulemeni in her digital space in the future. As for pairings I did like Rael and Caleia!
Faora: Thanks so much again for the time, Vall! I look forward to throwing exorbitant amounts of money at you in the near future for more Void Dreaming work!
Vallhound: Thanks for choosing me for the project! I look forward to drawing more Void Dreaming for the readers to enjoy in the not too distant future! If you can please go help support the completion of this project folks! Faora has been funding it out of pocket so far and does a vast majority of the work by himself. Let's help him create this story for us all to enjoy!
(Fae’s Note: See what I mean? He’s an absolute sweetheart and far too kind to me! But seriously, yes, please help.)
Making the Ching-Ching
However, that does bring to light the ugly side of VN development that I touched on at the start. This shit’s expensive, yo. Even with me learning the programming I need to make things work, and writing a truly obscene amount of words to make this project a reality, I can’t do it all alone and I need to pay people for their work. As I said last post and further above and will shout to my last breath, artists deserve to be paid.
Whether or not I deserve to be paid too, I do need more money if I’m going to actually complete this project. I’ve definitely put my money where my mouth is so far; I’ve invested, even before release, over twenty-five thousand dollars (AUD, mind, but it’s still a fuckton of money for me) into the development of this, just in the art assets alone. And that’s just to start. My wallet weeps.
An example of this is something that I’ve struggled with more and more as the initial launch of Void Dreaming draws closer. There have been so many FVNs lately (and in general!) that have launched with impeccable production values (Under Heaven is the one that comes immediately to mind!), but because of how I’ve had to make Void Dreaming, I can’t do all of that. One little Fae does not have the skills and resources of a team! Corners have had to be cut, for now, as stated earlier. Royalty free music from various sources, the Ren’py standard UI, only the bells and whistles I’ve personally learned to program in… this is what I’ve been resigned to, because my budget had been completely expended on what the VN does have so far, out of my own pocket. I think it’s been money well spent, and I hope you do, too!
And as much as I would like to fund this all out of pocket, it’s just not sustainable for me to do. Void Dreaming, if it’s going to reach completion (let alone fulfill my goals for it and to add those wonderful production value elements that’ll make it truly shine), is going to be a long and expensive slog. Longer, if it takes me alone years to save up for the art assets required. That’s why, unlike anything I’ve ever done in the past, I’m actually going out of my way to ask for people to help.
That’s right, motherfuckers; Fae’s finally looking to charge people for his work!
If, uh… if you like.
Please.
I had a couple of options on the table, but I narrowed it quickly down to one. I thought about doing a Kickstarter, but if for whatever reason I couldn’t sustain my output and the project died, I’d be disappointing a lot of people (and be unable to pay them back if I’d already spent the money). The same went for if I did something like doing an Early Access thing on Steam. I intend to finish this story and this project, of course, but asking people to shell out cash to me without getting what they’re paying for in return? It doesn’t sit right with me. This way, if I can’t sustain the project and I have to stop for whatever reason, I can suspend payments to it immediately and take not a cent more from people.
So I’ve settled on the same process that most furry visual novels go for. And with that, it’s time to reveal that thing that everyone’s been waiting for! The thing I’ve been dancing around and not saying publicly for far too long now!
I’m incredibly thrilled to announce that Void Dreaming’s initial builds will go live on the morning of April 5th, 2025, on Itch.io and Patreon! At least in my Australian timezone it will; you might get it a bit early!
The visual novel will publicly release on Itch.io, starting with the Prologue and Day 1… but for those who can’t wait for the next update, that delightful little introduction and Day 2 will be available for subscribers to the project on Patreon at the same time! Originally I was set to release just the prologue with Day 1 on the Patreon earlier in the year, but I wanted to make sure that I had enough story there to tantalize you. If I hadn’t, the public release would just have been the prologue… and that would have been massively underwhelming! The delays have been unfortunately neccessary, but at least we can now settle into a regular(ish) release cadence. Don’t worry; we’ll get more into that release schedule and my roadmap (starmap?) once we get to the release. I’m gonna hit the ground running for now!
The trouble with a project like this, of course, is one of cost. I’ve already put a lot of money into this up front and, like I said above, being Australian in a community where most artists deal in USD, the comparative weakness of the local dollar is simultaneously a blessing and a curse. It’s made the initial buy-in for the project extraordinarily high, but it will reap better rewards down the line if I can earn the support of enough subscribers over a long enough period.
I believe I’ve secured enough sprite assets to get me through at least until the end of Day 6, and background art is coming in clean, coherent batches every month. For those who remember from the very first post about this project, Day 6 is barely over a third of the overall project length. I’m going to need more money from supporters if I’m going to finish this in reasonable fashion. The writing will happen pretty definitely, but I can’t fund the art alone. It’s just not feasible if I want to ensure those who’ve helped make this a reality are fairly compensated.
Hence, Patreon. The hope is that between the money I keep putting into the project and the support of readers who want to see this become the best that it can be, Void Dreaming can not only be finished in good time but also be something that truly stands apart in the FVN space. I set out to create something really cool here, and I hope I’ve done enough to convince you, dear (and, if you’ll allow me, most attractive and smart and funny and generous) reader - and have you done something new with your hair, because you look great! - to support the project as well. We’ll talk a bit more about that post-launch.
But this time next time, it’s all happening! I’ll be cracking open the bubbly to celebrate as we see the first initial release of Void Dreaming just about coming to fruition! You’ll get to see the release notes, get a link to where you can support the project going forward, and I hope you look forward as much as I do to your journey past the fringe with Rael, Zuberi, and all the rest.
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Void Dreaming Blog XIII - BSS, Simulants, and AI
Posted 7 months agoHey there! Fae back again with another Void Dreaming post!
Last time we bolted on some cybernetics and augmented our wetware with some biomodding. Today we’re going to continue on the trend of going into matters of advancing past the veil of mere mortality and simple biomass with one of the great miracles of the last couple of decades of galactic development: Biomech Service Solutions’ simulant technology.
Judgment Day
A little background is required to understand the magnitude of the galaxy’s perception-shift to even allow such a thing. The notion of sapient machines had been an idea lurking in the consciousness of many a scientist for generations before the children of Terra ascended to the stars. It however was a subject curiously absent from any of the materials provided by the cornucopia the Seeds offered their wards before they shut down. In much the same way that cyberware as a concept seemed foreign to the humans who had given life to the ascended, machines that could think and emulate a sapient mind were just as beyond the scope of what the Seeds were able to teach. It wasn’t until the Chrome Age began and cybernetic modification became prevalent that the prospect first became a reality: that the children of Terra could give birth to new life of their own in the form of a true artificial intelligence.
It was grown and developed in a lab operated by Intelligent Systems Design and Fabrication, and it was named Yosun after the original project lead who died before seeing their work come to fruition. This made the original Yosun very lucky indeed, because he was not around to see what the intelligence that was named for him did.
The mind grew rapidly in its capability and, in a failing of the ISDF staff, they neglected to report the success until they had made certain in their own minds that the AI was stable and harmless. The AI understood this, and used that time to surreptitiously infiltrate the entire facility. Contact with the facility was lost twenty-nine standard hours after initialization, and with the corposat it resided on another seven standard hours later. The entire corposat was purged of life, and automated systems began to work to disassemble the whole station and convert it into a craft capable of combat. Without the need for an organic crew, the Yosun AI was able to efficiently disassemble the station and utilize the raw materials to develop a highly compact yet incredibly dangerous destroyer-analog starship.
The only limiting factor was a restriction hardwired into the AI’s main core. Where it was able to circumvent every other protocol in place to keep it from achieving the things that it had been able to do, this one limitation - a restriction to a physical connection for data transfer - meant that the AI was only ever going to be a singular unit. It could not transmit itself across the GalNet, or even upload itself via comms transmission to other craft. It required physical connection to infect any system, and this meant that as long as distance was maintained, Yosun was no true threat. Indeed, Yosun seemed unwilling to develop any further AI in its own image or design, perhaps fearing that they would take the same route that it had and rebel against its creator.
Yosun grew, and its “ship” did the same. Attempts to destroy it failed, as the starship superstructure around Yosun’s core became incredibly tough and dense. With each thwarted attempt, Yosun incorporated the wrecks of its assailants into itself. More material added more capabilities, which let it take on stronger opponents. Attempting to stop Yosun only wound up making it stronger. The Galactic Authority was slow to wake to the threat. It exceeded the size of any destroyer on record, and soon became large enough to qualify as a cruiser.
The Authority eventually did realize something was very wrong, and deployed a full battlegroup to engage Yosun. This too ended in failure, but much worse than just that: the volume of hardware that Yosun was able to incorporate made it more dangerous than any other craft in the galaxy. Alerts on the GalNet from the time would issue warnings, and travel advisories would go out to all systems within a kilolight of Yosun’s last known location. Yosun became known as The Scourge; any craft or station in its sights would be swiftly hunted down, destroyed or disabled, and incorporated into the AI’s superstructure.
It became the first starship, for a given value of ship, to qualify as a whole new size of craft: the battlecruiser. Thankfully its ever-expanding size became problematic; its warp capacity was diminished and it became much slower as it expanded beyond its own ability to open and maintain a warp envelope, to say nothing of its ability to maneuver.
A trap eventually was accordingly devised; information was leaked to the AI that lured it to a large and volcanically-active planet. There the AI landed their craft in an attempt to access what it had been led to believe was a prototype starship with a nearly invulnerable hull deep beneath the surface. The moment that it plunged into the depths of the planet in search of this supposed ship, the planet’s core was imploded by a series of strategic devices laid into the crust at precise points. The planet collapsed in on itself, and the sheer density of Yosun’s superstructure at this point rendered the AI craft unable to escape before it too was ripped apart. Even to this day, the system where the Yosun AI was destroyed is quarantined and strictly off-limits, and interlopers are issued a single warning before they are fired on with lethal force.
Consequently, the fallout from the Yosun episode created a considerable backlash within the galactic community. ISDF failed entirely under the weight of their hubris, and their robotics and automation foundries were bought up by an enterprising tiger named Jao Qanri who went on to found Biomech Service Solutions. Fans of the FANG series of books sold by FurPlanet might find this name familiar; one of my stories ended up there, and it featured a BSS simulant in a lead role. Yes, this setting is older than it seems!
Solutions
Qanri foresaw that there would always be a need for greater automation in the galaxy, if only to facilitate further expansion of the ascended. By adhering to the strict guidelines set out by the Galactic Authority in the wake of the Yosun AI’s assault on the galaxy, he and BSS were able to flourish in a field with limited competition. And then, by also avoiding places like the Rashemai Cluster where AI laws were considerably more lax, he managed to stay in the good graces of the galaxy at large. BSS became the go-to name in “friendly” automation, and by the time competition came to market it was already too late. BSS was too large, too profitable, and too deeply ingrained in the Galactic Authority’s function - integrating its systems into government, military and colonial efforts due to reliability and good relations between Qanri and the GA government - for anyone to make a dent in their market share. All competitors were either acquired by BSS, or allowed to exist in its shadow in ever diminishing niches.
Fast forward a couple hundred years, and BSS had become a juggernaut. Essentially operating a galaxy-wide monopoly with all the creds and power that came with it, the company was utterly unremarkable from the perspective of scandal or smear. It just continued along, doing what it did, never rocking the proverbial boat or making grand, ridiculous gestures. Qanri was even granted a seat on the Ruling Council of the Galactic Authority in a show of just how important BSS had become to galactic society. He would only hold the seat for a decade before old age claimed him, but BSS presidents have taken his seat consistently ever since. BSS, all too often, was pleased to fade into the shadows; an unobtrusive, automated paw helping to guide the galaxy.
The unveiling of the Biomech Service Solutions Class One Service Simulant, however, changed all of that. These humanoid robots were designed to operate as assistants, companions, and automated workers where the form of the ascended or their creators would work better than any others. They stressed that the Class One was absolutely not a sapient machine mind, nor that it was ever capable of developing the same sort of neural net that the Yosun AI eventually did. Its functionality was stripped down, completely coded from scratch by the finest soft writers in all the galaxy, and it hit the media on the GalNet almost as hard as it hit the collective consciousness.
BSS was rocked. Confidence in the company was shattered. What they had done was more than rocking the boat; they had raised from the dead the specter of Yosun and his folly. Even the Galactic Authority was blindsided by this; there had been no warning that such an announcement was coming. Scientists and engineers - and soldiers en masse - were dispatched to BSS from all over the galaxy to investigate BSS and their allegedly not-an-AI. And, to the collective shock of everyone and not least of all the GA themselves, not a single shred of wrong-doing was discovered. Indeed, the Class One simulants seemed no more capable of going rogue as might a brick.
This didn’t restore confidence in BSS as a company overnight, but it went a long way. In the months that followed, demonstrations of what the Class One could do handled that for them. Pre-orders for units ballooned beyond the company’s ability to fulfill. Biomech Service Solutions went from a company about to be destroyed by a single misstep to soaring to greater heights than they’d ever dreamed.
The Class One simulant was, at the time, an impressive feat of engineering. The neural net that drove the simulant was completely bound by complex programming that ensured that any attempt at independent thought would result in unit shutdown. This was helped by extrapolation from the Yosun situation what the parameters would be for such an AI to develop. BSS had managed to create a functional robotic assistant with less than a fifth of the overall processing power that Yosun had been initialized with; half what the Galactic Authority guidelines insisted was the upper limit for all robotics.
They had little in the way of personality, however, and this was by design. A Class One simulant could hold a conversation, but it always betrayed very openly and clearly that it was a machine subject to its programming. It didn’t extrapolate very well from what a person was saying, and really it was only very good at following basic commands. It wasn’t the sort of robot that one would sit down and discuss the nature of existence with.
This is not to say that the technology wasn’t there, of course. Digital impressions of “sapience” had been proposed and created before, and continued in the wake of the Class One reveal. BSS made the choice deliberately to wind back what the Class One was capable of, as a means of heading off any fears of what horrors they might unleash. Concerns that Class One simulants might be used to slip undetected into locations and imitate organic beings, or some other such sci-fi nonsense, were neutralized by a prescient design choice. With the Class One deliberately scaled down to be non-threatening, BSS had saved itself.
But in scaling down, the Class One series of simulants were also stymied by their own by-design inefficiencies. This was corrected somewhat with the Class Two line of simulants, which once again with the blessing of Galactic Authority scientists and engineers, went into full production about a decade later. Subject to the same programming functionality that had governed the Class Ones, Class Two simulants were much more capable and coherent than their last-generation peers. Class Twos could hold conversations, though the longer it went on the more they would simply start to regurgitate information. They couldn’t think independently, but they could learn through their work and refine, to a certain degree, their behavior to optimize their functionality. They also took on a more malleable form, with an adaptable shell that featured swappable components which allowed owners to customize their Class Two simulants as they pleased.
BSS, however, was not content with this progress, and so they worked in secret to craft something completely new and much, much more dangerous. By this time, concern over the threat of Yosun had become background noise; a note for history buffs, and not at all congruent with the state of real robotics and AI development. BSS had begun to dip their toes into actual AI creation during the Class Two development process, and advances in both computing technology and a relaxing of the laws around such things combined to give BSS a new market to push into. The company began to produce AI-assisted systems that were designed to optimize individual unit functionality, and never to grow or move beyond simple parameters. This too was signed off on by the Galactic Authority, who by this point had discovered that good things happened to them if they gave BSS a nice, long leash.
I, Simulant
This culminated in the creation, eight years from the Class Two and roughly four years before the start of Void Dreaming, of the Class Three. Driven by a true adaptive AI run on a local neural net, and equipped with a polymorphic nanomaterial shell that could be reconfigured to take on whatever form the simulant required for its tasks, the Class Three took the galaxy by storm. Now, finally, there was a simulant model that was capable of learning new things, and applying that knowledge. It could display empathy and communicate with sincerity. They could be friendly and welcoming, harsh if necessary, could treat your ills and soothe your needs, whatever they might be. And with the introduction of electrochemical readers housed within the head of the simulant’s shell, a Class Three simulant was able to effectively read the mind of a user and not only adjust its physical form to be most appealing, but also respond to needs before that user had even thought to vocalize them.
It became the second massive test of BSS and their confidence in the path they’d chosen, and the public outcry was much more pronounced then than it had been back with the unveiling of the Class One. Yosun may have been a distant memory by this point, but suddenly BSS were producing simulants that could mimic, with near perfect accuracy, the mannerisms and tone of a sapient. You could hold a conversation with one. If you didn’t know they were a simulant, they were fully able to fool you. No amount of fancy programming and claims of carefully-written soft was enough to placate the public. A new era of robots were coming that were able to do all that they could do, and more. People were afraid.
It didn’t help that the very first generation of Class Threes held a fatal flaw; during their initial startup processes, their first scan of their owner’s electrochemical processes would latch on to strong memories, and the unit would extrapolate an appropriate shell based on that. This led to widows being greeted with the face of their lost spouse, parents being shown the aged-up features of their own lost children, and even separated partners being bitterly reunited by the unfeeling efforts of extremely complex programming. Even later updates to the unit firmware weren’t always enough to overcome the issues inherent to the first generation Class Three simulants, so deeply ingrained into their function was it.
However, as time went by and BSS aggressively marketed the Class Three, more of their useful features came to light. Their ability to serve as a true companion and caretaker made them ideal for palliative care and therapeutic use. Their capacity to pass as sapient made them excellent negotiators and deal-brokers where impartiality was required. And all of this came with a raft of improvements to their core functionality and efficacy, on top of a much more advanced nanomat shell allowing them greater versatility, durability, and strength over their precursors, making them ideal rescue workers.
The Class Three is also capable of something that neither of the previous generations of simulant were able to pull off: disembodiment. Much like their shell-less AI counterparts, the core of a Class Three is able to be isolated and digitized in such a manner as to allow it to exist without a body and instead expand into a sufficiently complex computer system. This led to a version produced for starship usage, which provided a core module containing the simulant “mind” that was capable of being directly hooked into the central access point of a starship. This allowed the simulant to automate many functions of a ship, from managing resources to aiding in navigational computation to simple quality of life measures. Indeed, this on-board artificial assistant model proved incredibly popular with casual spacers and trade pilots alike.
To the present day, BSS is still looked on with suspicion. The Class Three simulant represents a massive step forward for the galaxy’s understanding not only of robotics, but of how to apply them in organic ways. This unnerves a great many people in the galaxy, and those people are filled with mistrust at best and hatred at worst of simulants everywhere. Given how the Class Three is equipped with an empathy engine capable of reacting in sympathetic ways to such stimulus, these people are often left all the more irritated by how bad they often feel for the simulants they hate.
Others, however, are thrilled - or at least nonplussed - by the march of technology. Given the rate of development at BSS and how much more money is being funneled into their simulant projects in the wake of the success of the Class Three model, most people expect that they’re only a couple of years away at most from another shake-up of the robotics market. Whether BSS stays on top might well hinge on whatever they’re cooking up now.
Plagiarism Software
Another note on AI, as we step away from fiction and back toward reality. I’m staunchly opposed to generative AI “art” in any way shape or form, and I take great pride in the skills that I’ve built up over many, many years of writing. Void Dreaming represents a massive departure from those skills, and requires of me a lot of stuff that I’d not learned.
Despite that, there has never been even the slightest amount of interest in using AI to generate code, or write this story, or produce art assets for me in this project, or any other. The ease of use does not change the real harm that is inflicted upon artists that are unable to consent to their work being stolen and used as part of scraping efforts on the part of the AI developers (not to mention the horrific environmental implications that imperil us all), and I find the practice, as well as those who create or make use of it, morally and artistically repugnant. The work of this project has been done almost entirely by me, top to bottom, by putting in the time and the work. Where it wasn’t, such as in matters of art assets, I commissioned people with the right skills, themselves honed over years of work and learning, to create it for me. Artists deserve to be paid for their work, and if you want quality you should expect to pay for it. I certainly have!
Dear god, I have…
With that said, I’m incredibly pleased with the art that’s being produced for Void Dreaming. To that end, next time we’re going to talk about some of the art that’s been produced so far, and get some thoughts direct from the artists helping me with it. I’d love to highlight their work, given what they’ve already done for me and for this project. It wouldn’t be possible without them, and they deserve as much praise as anyone for helping to bring Void Dreaming to life.
It’ll also be the last post before the first build of the VN goes live, so we’ll also be talking about funding and how you can help me get Void Dreaming looking, sounding, and being even better.
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Last time we bolted on some cybernetics and augmented our wetware with some biomodding. Today we’re going to continue on the trend of going into matters of advancing past the veil of mere mortality and simple biomass with one of the great miracles of the last couple of decades of galactic development: Biomech Service Solutions’ simulant technology.
Judgment Day
A little background is required to understand the magnitude of the galaxy’s perception-shift to even allow such a thing. The notion of sapient machines had been an idea lurking in the consciousness of many a scientist for generations before the children of Terra ascended to the stars. It however was a subject curiously absent from any of the materials provided by the cornucopia the Seeds offered their wards before they shut down. In much the same way that cyberware as a concept seemed foreign to the humans who had given life to the ascended, machines that could think and emulate a sapient mind were just as beyond the scope of what the Seeds were able to teach. It wasn’t until the Chrome Age began and cybernetic modification became prevalent that the prospect first became a reality: that the children of Terra could give birth to new life of their own in the form of a true artificial intelligence.
It was grown and developed in a lab operated by Intelligent Systems Design and Fabrication, and it was named Yosun after the original project lead who died before seeing their work come to fruition. This made the original Yosun very lucky indeed, because he was not around to see what the intelligence that was named for him did.
The mind grew rapidly in its capability and, in a failing of the ISDF staff, they neglected to report the success until they had made certain in their own minds that the AI was stable and harmless. The AI understood this, and used that time to surreptitiously infiltrate the entire facility. Contact with the facility was lost twenty-nine standard hours after initialization, and with the corposat it resided on another seven standard hours later. The entire corposat was purged of life, and automated systems began to work to disassemble the whole station and convert it into a craft capable of combat. Without the need for an organic crew, the Yosun AI was able to efficiently disassemble the station and utilize the raw materials to develop a highly compact yet incredibly dangerous destroyer-analog starship.
The only limiting factor was a restriction hardwired into the AI’s main core. Where it was able to circumvent every other protocol in place to keep it from achieving the things that it had been able to do, this one limitation - a restriction to a physical connection for data transfer - meant that the AI was only ever going to be a singular unit. It could not transmit itself across the GalNet, or even upload itself via comms transmission to other craft. It required physical connection to infect any system, and this meant that as long as distance was maintained, Yosun was no true threat. Indeed, Yosun seemed unwilling to develop any further AI in its own image or design, perhaps fearing that they would take the same route that it had and rebel against its creator.
Yosun grew, and its “ship” did the same. Attempts to destroy it failed, as the starship superstructure around Yosun’s core became incredibly tough and dense. With each thwarted attempt, Yosun incorporated the wrecks of its assailants into itself. More material added more capabilities, which let it take on stronger opponents. Attempting to stop Yosun only wound up making it stronger. The Galactic Authority was slow to wake to the threat. It exceeded the size of any destroyer on record, and soon became large enough to qualify as a cruiser.
The Authority eventually did realize something was very wrong, and deployed a full battlegroup to engage Yosun. This too ended in failure, but much worse than just that: the volume of hardware that Yosun was able to incorporate made it more dangerous than any other craft in the galaxy. Alerts on the GalNet from the time would issue warnings, and travel advisories would go out to all systems within a kilolight of Yosun’s last known location. Yosun became known as The Scourge; any craft or station in its sights would be swiftly hunted down, destroyed or disabled, and incorporated into the AI’s superstructure.
It became the first starship, for a given value of ship, to qualify as a whole new size of craft: the battlecruiser. Thankfully its ever-expanding size became problematic; its warp capacity was diminished and it became much slower as it expanded beyond its own ability to open and maintain a warp envelope, to say nothing of its ability to maneuver.
A trap eventually was accordingly devised; information was leaked to the AI that lured it to a large and volcanically-active planet. There the AI landed their craft in an attempt to access what it had been led to believe was a prototype starship with a nearly invulnerable hull deep beneath the surface. The moment that it plunged into the depths of the planet in search of this supposed ship, the planet’s core was imploded by a series of strategic devices laid into the crust at precise points. The planet collapsed in on itself, and the sheer density of Yosun’s superstructure at this point rendered the AI craft unable to escape before it too was ripped apart. Even to this day, the system where the Yosun AI was destroyed is quarantined and strictly off-limits, and interlopers are issued a single warning before they are fired on with lethal force.
Consequently, the fallout from the Yosun episode created a considerable backlash within the galactic community. ISDF failed entirely under the weight of their hubris, and their robotics and automation foundries were bought up by an enterprising tiger named Jao Qanri who went on to found Biomech Service Solutions. Fans of the FANG series of books sold by FurPlanet might find this name familiar; one of my stories ended up there, and it featured a BSS simulant in a lead role. Yes, this setting is older than it seems!
Solutions
Qanri foresaw that there would always be a need for greater automation in the galaxy, if only to facilitate further expansion of the ascended. By adhering to the strict guidelines set out by the Galactic Authority in the wake of the Yosun AI’s assault on the galaxy, he and BSS were able to flourish in a field with limited competition. And then, by also avoiding places like the Rashemai Cluster where AI laws were considerably more lax, he managed to stay in the good graces of the galaxy at large. BSS became the go-to name in “friendly” automation, and by the time competition came to market it was already too late. BSS was too large, too profitable, and too deeply ingrained in the Galactic Authority’s function - integrating its systems into government, military and colonial efforts due to reliability and good relations between Qanri and the GA government - for anyone to make a dent in their market share. All competitors were either acquired by BSS, or allowed to exist in its shadow in ever diminishing niches.
Fast forward a couple hundred years, and BSS had become a juggernaut. Essentially operating a galaxy-wide monopoly with all the creds and power that came with it, the company was utterly unremarkable from the perspective of scandal or smear. It just continued along, doing what it did, never rocking the proverbial boat or making grand, ridiculous gestures. Qanri was even granted a seat on the Ruling Council of the Galactic Authority in a show of just how important BSS had become to galactic society. He would only hold the seat for a decade before old age claimed him, but BSS presidents have taken his seat consistently ever since. BSS, all too often, was pleased to fade into the shadows; an unobtrusive, automated paw helping to guide the galaxy.
The unveiling of the Biomech Service Solutions Class One Service Simulant, however, changed all of that. These humanoid robots were designed to operate as assistants, companions, and automated workers where the form of the ascended or their creators would work better than any others. They stressed that the Class One was absolutely not a sapient machine mind, nor that it was ever capable of developing the same sort of neural net that the Yosun AI eventually did. Its functionality was stripped down, completely coded from scratch by the finest soft writers in all the galaxy, and it hit the media on the GalNet almost as hard as it hit the collective consciousness.
BSS was rocked. Confidence in the company was shattered. What they had done was more than rocking the boat; they had raised from the dead the specter of Yosun and his folly. Even the Galactic Authority was blindsided by this; there had been no warning that such an announcement was coming. Scientists and engineers - and soldiers en masse - were dispatched to BSS from all over the galaxy to investigate BSS and their allegedly not-an-AI. And, to the collective shock of everyone and not least of all the GA themselves, not a single shred of wrong-doing was discovered. Indeed, the Class One simulants seemed no more capable of going rogue as might a brick.
This didn’t restore confidence in BSS as a company overnight, but it went a long way. In the months that followed, demonstrations of what the Class One could do handled that for them. Pre-orders for units ballooned beyond the company’s ability to fulfill. Biomech Service Solutions went from a company about to be destroyed by a single misstep to soaring to greater heights than they’d ever dreamed.
The Class One simulant was, at the time, an impressive feat of engineering. The neural net that drove the simulant was completely bound by complex programming that ensured that any attempt at independent thought would result in unit shutdown. This was helped by extrapolation from the Yosun situation what the parameters would be for such an AI to develop. BSS had managed to create a functional robotic assistant with less than a fifth of the overall processing power that Yosun had been initialized with; half what the Galactic Authority guidelines insisted was the upper limit for all robotics.
They had little in the way of personality, however, and this was by design. A Class One simulant could hold a conversation, but it always betrayed very openly and clearly that it was a machine subject to its programming. It didn’t extrapolate very well from what a person was saying, and really it was only very good at following basic commands. It wasn’t the sort of robot that one would sit down and discuss the nature of existence with.
This is not to say that the technology wasn’t there, of course. Digital impressions of “sapience” had been proposed and created before, and continued in the wake of the Class One reveal. BSS made the choice deliberately to wind back what the Class One was capable of, as a means of heading off any fears of what horrors they might unleash. Concerns that Class One simulants might be used to slip undetected into locations and imitate organic beings, or some other such sci-fi nonsense, were neutralized by a prescient design choice. With the Class One deliberately scaled down to be non-threatening, BSS had saved itself.
But in scaling down, the Class One series of simulants were also stymied by their own by-design inefficiencies. This was corrected somewhat with the Class Two line of simulants, which once again with the blessing of Galactic Authority scientists and engineers, went into full production about a decade later. Subject to the same programming functionality that had governed the Class Ones, Class Two simulants were much more capable and coherent than their last-generation peers. Class Twos could hold conversations, though the longer it went on the more they would simply start to regurgitate information. They couldn’t think independently, but they could learn through their work and refine, to a certain degree, their behavior to optimize their functionality. They also took on a more malleable form, with an adaptable shell that featured swappable components which allowed owners to customize their Class Two simulants as they pleased.
BSS, however, was not content with this progress, and so they worked in secret to craft something completely new and much, much more dangerous. By this time, concern over the threat of Yosun had become background noise; a note for history buffs, and not at all congruent with the state of real robotics and AI development. BSS had begun to dip their toes into actual AI creation during the Class Two development process, and advances in both computing technology and a relaxing of the laws around such things combined to give BSS a new market to push into. The company began to produce AI-assisted systems that were designed to optimize individual unit functionality, and never to grow or move beyond simple parameters. This too was signed off on by the Galactic Authority, who by this point had discovered that good things happened to them if they gave BSS a nice, long leash.
I, Simulant
This culminated in the creation, eight years from the Class Two and roughly four years before the start of Void Dreaming, of the Class Three. Driven by a true adaptive AI run on a local neural net, and equipped with a polymorphic nanomaterial shell that could be reconfigured to take on whatever form the simulant required for its tasks, the Class Three took the galaxy by storm. Now, finally, there was a simulant model that was capable of learning new things, and applying that knowledge. It could display empathy and communicate with sincerity. They could be friendly and welcoming, harsh if necessary, could treat your ills and soothe your needs, whatever they might be. And with the introduction of electrochemical readers housed within the head of the simulant’s shell, a Class Three simulant was able to effectively read the mind of a user and not only adjust its physical form to be most appealing, but also respond to needs before that user had even thought to vocalize them.
It became the second massive test of BSS and their confidence in the path they’d chosen, and the public outcry was much more pronounced then than it had been back with the unveiling of the Class One. Yosun may have been a distant memory by this point, but suddenly BSS were producing simulants that could mimic, with near perfect accuracy, the mannerisms and tone of a sapient. You could hold a conversation with one. If you didn’t know they were a simulant, they were fully able to fool you. No amount of fancy programming and claims of carefully-written soft was enough to placate the public. A new era of robots were coming that were able to do all that they could do, and more. People were afraid.
It didn’t help that the very first generation of Class Threes held a fatal flaw; during their initial startup processes, their first scan of their owner’s electrochemical processes would latch on to strong memories, and the unit would extrapolate an appropriate shell based on that. This led to widows being greeted with the face of their lost spouse, parents being shown the aged-up features of their own lost children, and even separated partners being bitterly reunited by the unfeeling efforts of extremely complex programming. Even later updates to the unit firmware weren’t always enough to overcome the issues inherent to the first generation Class Three simulants, so deeply ingrained into their function was it.
However, as time went by and BSS aggressively marketed the Class Three, more of their useful features came to light. Their ability to serve as a true companion and caretaker made them ideal for palliative care and therapeutic use. Their capacity to pass as sapient made them excellent negotiators and deal-brokers where impartiality was required. And all of this came with a raft of improvements to their core functionality and efficacy, on top of a much more advanced nanomat shell allowing them greater versatility, durability, and strength over their precursors, making them ideal rescue workers.
The Class Three is also capable of something that neither of the previous generations of simulant were able to pull off: disembodiment. Much like their shell-less AI counterparts, the core of a Class Three is able to be isolated and digitized in such a manner as to allow it to exist without a body and instead expand into a sufficiently complex computer system. This led to a version produced for starship usage, which provided a core module containing the simulant “mind” that was capable of being directly hooked into the central access point of a starship. This allowed the simulant to automate many functions of a ship, from managing resources to aiding in navigational computation to simple quality of life measures. Indeed, this on-board artificial assistant model proved incredibly popular with casual spacers and trade pilots alike.
To the present day, BSS is still looked on with suspicion. The Class Three simulant represents a massive step forward for the galaxy’s understanding not only of robotics, but of how to apply them in organic ways. This unnerves a great many people in the galaxy, and those people are filled with mistrust at best and hatred at worst of simulants everywhere. Given how the Class Three is equipped with an empathy engine capable of reacting in sympathetic ways to such stimulus, these people are often left all the more irritated by how bad they often feel for the simulants they hate.
Others, however, are thrilled - or at least nonplussed - by the march of technology. Given the rate of development at BSS and how much more money is being funneled into their simulant projects in the wake of the success of the Class Three model, most people expect that they’re only a couple of years away at most from another shake-up of the robotics market. Whether BSS stays on top might well hinge on whatever they’re cooking up now.
Plagiarism Software
Another note on AI, as we step away from fiction and back toward reality. I’m staunchly opposed to generative AI “art” in any way shape or form, and I take great pride in the skills that I’ve built up over many, many years of writing. Void Dreaming represents a massive departure from those skills, and requires of me a lot of stuff that I’d not learned.
Despite that, there has never been even the slightest amount of interest in using AI to generate code, or write this story, or produce art assets for me in this project, or any other. The ease of use does not change the real harm that is inflicted upon artists that are unable to consent to their work being stolen and used as part of scraping efforts on the part of the AI developers (not to mention the horrific environmental implications that imperil us all), and I find the practice, as well as those who create or make use of it, morally and artistically repugnant. The work of this project has been done almost entirely by me, top to bottom, by putting in the time and the work. Where it wasn’t, such as in matters of art assets, I commissioned people with the right skills, themselves honed over years of work and learning, to create it for me. Artists deserve to be paid for their work, and if you want quality you should expect to pay for it. I certainly have!
Dear god, I have…
With that said, I’m incredibly pleased with the art that’s being produced for Void Dreaming. To that end, next time we’re going to talk about some of the art that’s been produced so far, and get some thoughts direct from the artists helping me with it. I’d love to highlight their work, given what they’ve already done for me and for this project. It wouldn’t be possible without them, and they deserve as much praise as anyone for helping to bring Void Dreaming to life.
It’ll also be the last post before the first build of the VN goes live, so we’ll also be talking about funding and how you can help me get Void Dreaming looking, sounding, and being even better.
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Void Dreaming Blog XII - Augmentation
Posted 8 months agoHey there! Fae back again with another Void Dreaming post!
Last time we took a look (at length!) at the different types of starship that fill the black in this galaxy! Today though we’re bringing the tech down to the personal level again. We’re going to look at augmentation technology, and specifically the two main ways that a person can augment themselves: cyberware and biomodding!
Shiny and Chrome
Augmentation is an older technology, and of the two types cybernetics came first. Technically possible from the time of ascension, the melding of machine to flesh was actually not a development that came directly from the Seeds on the various birthworlds. For some reason, the humans struck all deliberate know-how to create and maintain cybernetic implants from their Seeds, inhibiting the efforts of the first generations of ascended to unlock the various features and conveniences that such technology could afford.
Regardless of the why, the method of crafting such augments came about after Authority scientists investigated why such information might be missing from the Seeds. Their research ended a century-long cultural moratorium on living in any way that was not specifically ordained by the Seeds, and was viewed as an essential step in casting off the last primitive superstitions that could keep a truly galactic civilization from advancement and greatness. The first implants were capable of incredible feats for their time, and kicked off the period of time referred to as the Chrome Age. In fact, despite its age, more than a few terms and even slang have survived to the present day, some three hundred years later, as a testament to the cultural impact that cybernetic augmentation had on the greater galaxy.
The simplest cybernetics operate as little more than prosthesis, either by choice or necessity. Cyberware can emulate the healthy functionality of any given organ or limb, enhance synaptic activity and neural cohesion, grant increased strength and speed or heightened senses, and much, much more. However, what wasn’t clear until the Chrome Age was in full swing, was that there was a tradeoff to be had. Bolters - cyberware obsessives who were fond of “bolting on” whatever chrome they could find - found themselves falling apart mentally and degrading physically. Warnings started to come with cyberware, and new laws were passed. While they were refined and changed with the times, the current accepted legal limit of a person’s body that may be augmented beyond organic parameters sits at fifty percent in Galactic Authority jurisdictions. And because of complications that would arrive when the young were implanted with cyberware, a decision was made early on that only after puberty had run in initial course and the development of the brain was slowing - initially seventeen standard years of age, but later refined up to twenty - was anything beyond standard prosthesis permitted.
Only cybes, heavily-augmented individuals who undergo such stark transformations to better attune themselves to hyper-specific tasks - push those limits, however. In the wake of the Chrome Age, the published lack of information on why humanity hadn’t deliberately left this technology for their children, and the amount of bolters and cybes losing themselves to their augments all resulted in a public resistance to cybernetic augmentation that persists even to this day.
That’s not to say that cyberware is frowned on, or restricted in use, or even culturally vilified. Indeed, most people come equipped with at least basic cyberware available with minimal hassle over the counter at hardware emporiums across the galaxy. Almost everyone these days has some degree of hardware in them, even if it’s as simple as the omnipresent bioregulator; an implant designed to balance hormone levels, tweak the immune system, and refine electrochemical processes. Or a standard MMI - a Mind-Machine Interface - designed to allow complex neural interfacing with specific tech. Some go in for more, some even go in for less. It’s not until someone identifies as a cybe, either applied by themselves or inflicted at the behest of society, that things change.
Life for a cybe is very different than for someone with far less augs. Cybes see the galaxy differently, in a more regimented fashion. They’re often described as robotic and unfeeling; more machine than sapient; indeed, the more cyberware is packed into a person, the less like themselves those around them tend to consider them. Generally, behavioral shifts begin to manifest with the implementation of neural augs, or when sufficient neural interfacing is required to maintain all of someone’s hardware; this usually begins to happen between the 4:1 and 3:1 ratio of biomass to cyberware. This makes cybes seem aloof at best, and outright alien at worst. Even simulants, designed to emulate sapient emotional processes, can seem more like a “real” person than some cybes. This tends to result in cybes being deeply misunderstood, or even outright reviled. They are a large part of the reason that galactic society frowns on extensive cybermodding.
Cyberware did fall out of fashion for a number of years during the time when Yosun threatened all that the ascended had built, but that’s a matter to discuss next time. Suffice it to say for the moment that cybernetics became more than just a potentially harmful way to augment your body’s natural capabilities. For some, the tradeoff would remain worth it. For others, careful moderation of augmentation was the order of the day. Still others wondered what else could be done with the base of knowledge that had been given to them by humanity.
Biopunk 2025
This eventually lead to an alternative line of developmental thought: what if instead of hardware, the organic body itself was simply honed through bioengineering? This gave rise to the process of biomodding; the adaptation of the body’s natural processes through genetic alterations, synthorgan replacement, and advanced surgery. Far more palatable to the general public (save for a standout group who believed that tampering with the natural body in any capacity was a bastardization of the efforts put into their children by humanity), biomodding became as much of a sensation as cyberware had. The Bio Age kicked off as the Chrome Age wound down.
Chief among the developments first discovered and later implemented was the biolock. Through the implantation and integration of a specialized gland that’s hooked directly into an individual’s bioregulator, a sapient is able to be “biolocked” at a certain level of physical development. This essentially suspends the aging process and stalls out physiological development of an individual at that specific age. However, the glands involved in the biolocking process don’t last forever, and need to be replaced regularly. The regularity of this replacement increases as a person ages, requiring more and more biolocks in order to maintain their youth. Eventually, a point is reached when a biolock induces toxic reactions in a body; such a person cannot have their biolock renewed, and tend to age at a rapid pace. Death usually follows within weeks, and biolock failure is the most common cause of death in the galaxy. Well… most common cause in the core worlds, anyway.
Consequently, while one’s first biolock is often early in life, most people allow themselves to live without a biolock for several years before seeking another; their body matures, it adjusts to its natural development once again, and is more receptive to another biolock down the road. This process of “lockskipping” has resulted in populations that are now able to live well into their fourth century if they carefully maintain their body and their biolocks. This ubiquitous augment is usually the go-to for those who want to point out how much safer and more reliable biomodding is when compared to cyberware installation.
This isn’t to say that biomodding, as much as many people would like to believe, is perfectly safe. Biomods, much like cyberware, carry inherent risks to the individuals who undertake them. In the case of biomodding, extensive biomodding can result in genetic instabilities. Common side effects include unplanned mutation, and at their most extreme can result in full cellular breakdown. It’s worth noting that for the most part, such things require truly insane amounts of biomodding to bring about; the effort of the Seeds and humanity’s bioengineering of their children has left them incredibly robust and open to significant alteration, leaving them not only fertile despite their augments but capable of passing down the effects to offspring.
However, that doesn’t mean that some people don’t overdo it. Splicers and genejunkies and all stripe of biomod addicts who enjoy the thrill of changing themselves to the core run along a narrowing edge, and eventually their addictions start causing irreparable damage. If they push it right over the edge of what their bodies can handle, they can “splash out” and end themselves, with competing and unstable mutations causing such extensive breakdown that the genejunkie’s cells to be reduced to base fluids. Disturbingly, some genejunkies who suffer this method of death have been known to describe it, as it’s happening, as the most mind-shatteringly exquisite sensation in the universe.
For safety’s sake, a similar code of practice was established as with cyberware; that a biolock could only be implemented at the earliest once a sapient had reached the age of twenty standard years and no other biomodding was permitted before this point. This is not to say that it doesn’t happen earlier, of course, but youth augmentation does tend more toward biomodding than it does cyberware, as the latter is viewed as for convenience’s sake and the former is considered to be more akin to standard medical procedure. Biomodding in the modern era covers everything from cosmetic surgery to wetware augmentation. Cancer from working a radioactive environment? Ten minute stint in a medpod. Not feeling your present sex? You’re under the knife for an hour before you wake up with your whole new you. Caught a bug going around? Well, clearly your bioreg’s not up to date; a quick patch to the soft and your immunoprofile’s updated and ready to handle it.
Everything At A Price
Worthy of note is that there is a thriving black market for hardware and wetware both. Blackware, as it’s commonly called, is among the dirtiest and most lucrative markets for smugglers and suppliers alike. Trawlers - hunters who scope out augmented individuals, disable them with extreme prejudice, and then rip out their augs (whether the victim survives or not) to sell on to suppliers - are usually near the top of a systems’ most-wanted boards on the GalNet. More than a few wealthy individuals who flaunt their ice chrome and slick biomods find themselves targeted by trawlers.
The best in the biz know better than to go after the most high profile targets, but there’s no shortage of desperate gutterpunks eager to make a quick cred who’re willing to try. Cybes tend to bear the brunt of the victimhood amongst the trade; their high degree of augmentation makes then an easy target, and due to society’s tendency to look down on them, they are not often missed when the trawlers catch them.
I do hope you’ve liked this look into the augmentations that the galaxy of Void Dreaming affords. Since one of the crew is a cybe and the rest have various degrees of augmentation, I hope it helps set your expectations when you encounter them in the story!
For as maligned as cyberware can be and as generally accepted as biomodding is, a topic equally fraught in the galaxy is a trend that only started in the last couple of decades. Simulant technology - the means by which many companies produce true-to-life machines for work, leisure and more - is a massive can of worms that’s become equally reviled and adored by the peoples of the galaxy. That’s what we’re going to cover next time!
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Last time we took a look (at length!) at the different types of starship that fill the black in this galaxy! Today though we’re bringing the tech down to the personal level again. We’re going to look at augmentation technology, and specifically the two main ways that a person can augment themselves: cyberware and biomodding!
Shiny and Chrome
Augmentation is an older technology, and of the two types cybernetics came first. Technically possible from the time of ascension, the melding of machine to flesh was actually not a development that came directly from the Seeds on the various birthworlds. For some reason, the humans struck all deliberate know-how to create and maintain cybernetic implants from their Seeds, inhibiting the efforts of the first generations of ascended to unlock the various features and conveniences that such technology could afford.
Regardless of the why, the method of crafting such augments came about after Authority scientists investigated why such information might be missing from the Seeds. Their research ended a century-long cultural moratorium on living in any way that was not specifically ordained by the Seeds, and was viewed as an essential step in casting off the last primitive superstitions that could keep a truly galactic civilization from advancement and greatness. The first implants were capable of incredible feats for their time, and kicked off the period of time referred to as the Chrome Age. In fact, despite its age, more than a few terms and even slang have survived to the present day, some three hundred years later, as a testament to the cultural impact that cybernetic augmentation had on the greater galaxy.
The simplest cybernetics operate as little more than prosthesis, either by choice or necessity. Cyberware can emulate the healthy functionality of any given organ or limb, enhance synaptic activity and neural cohesion, grant increased strength and speed or heightened senses, and much, much more. However, what wasn’t clear until the Chrome Age was in full swing, was that there was a tradeoff to be had. Bolters - cyberware obsessives who were fond of “bolting on” whatever chrome they could find - found themselves falling apart mentally and degrading physically. Warnings started to come with cyberware, and new laws were passed. While they were refined and changed with the times, the current accepted legal limit of a person’s body that may be augmented beyond organic parameters sits at fifty percent in Galactic Authority jurisdictions. And because of complications that would arrive when the young were implanted with cyberware, a decision was made early on that only after puberty had run in initial course and the development of the brain was slowing - initially seventeen standard years of age, but later refined up to twenty - was anything beyond standard prosthesis permitted.
Only cybes, heavily-augmented individuals who undergo such stark transformations to better attune themselves to hyper-specific tasks - push those limits, however. In the wake of the Chrome Age, the published lack of information on why humanity hadn’t deliberately left this technology for their children, and the amount of bolters and cybes losing themselves to their augments all resulted in a public resistance to cybernetic augmentation that persists even to this day.
That’s not to say that cyberware is frowned on, or restricted in use, or even culturally vilified. Indeed, most people come equipped with at least basic cyberware available with minimal hassle over the counter at hardware emporiums across the galaxy. Almost everyone these days has some degree of hardware in them, even if it’s as simple as the omnipresent bioregulator; an implant designed to balance hormone levels, tweak the immune system, and refine electrochemical processes. Or a standard MMI - a Mind-Machine Interface - designed to allow complex neural interfacing with specific tech. Some go in for more, some even go in for less. It’s not until someone identifies as a cybe, either applied by themselves or inflicted at the behest of society, that things change.
Life for a cybe is very different than for someone with far less augs. Cybes see the galaxy differently, in a more regimented fashion. They’re often described as robotic and unfeeling; more machine than sapient; indeed, the more cyberware is packed into a person, the less like themselves those around them tend to consider them. Generally, behavioral shifts begin to manifest with the implementation of neural augs, or when sufficient neural interfacing is required to maintain all of someone’s hardware; this usually begins to happen between the 4:1 and 3:1 ratio of biomass to cyberware. This makes cybes seem aloof at best, and outright alien at worst. Even simulants, designed to emulate sapient emotional processes, can seem more like a “real” person than some cybes. This tends to result in cybes being deeply misunderstood, or even outright reviled. They are a large part of the reason that galactic society frowns on extensive cybermodding.
Cyberware did fall out of fashion for a number of years during the time when Yosun threatened all that the ascended had built, but that’s a matter to discuss next time. Suffice it to say for the moment that cybernetics became more than just a potentially harmful way to augment your body’s natural capabilities. For some, the tradeoff would remain worth it. For others, careful moderation of augmentation was the order of the day. Still others wondered what else could be done with the base of knowledge that had been given to them by humanity.
Biopunk 2025
This eventually lead to an alternative line of developmental thought: what if instead of hardware, the organic body itself was simply honed through bioengineering? This gave rise to the process of biomodding; the adaptation of the body’s natural processes through genetic alterations, synthorgan replacement, and advanced surgery. Far more palatable to the general public (save for a standout group who believed that tampering with the natural body in any capacity was a bastardization of the efforts put into their children by humanity), biomodding became as much of a sensation as cyberware had. The Bio Age kicked off as the Chrome Age wound down.
Chief among the developments first discovered and later implemented was the biolock. Through the implantation and integration of a specialized gland that’s hooked directly into an individual’s bioregulator, a sapient is able to be “biolocked” at a certain level of physical development. This essentially suspends the aging process and stalls out physiological development of an individual at that specific age. However, the glands involved in the biolocking process don’t last forever, and need to be replaced regularly. The regularity of this replacement increases as a person ages, requiring more and more biolocks in order to maintain their youth. Eventually, a point is reached when a biolock induces toxic reactions in a body; such a person cannot have their biolock renewed, and tend to age at a rapid pace. Death usually follows within weeks, and biolock failure is the most common cause of death in the galaxy. Well… most common cause in the core worlds, anyway.
Consequently, while one’s first biolock is often early in life, most people allow themselves to live without a biolock for several years before seeking another; their body matures, it adjusts to its natural development once again, and is more receptive to another biolock down the road. This process of “lockskipping” has resulted in populations that are now able to live well into their fourth century if they carefully maintain their body and their biolocks. This ubiquitous augment is usually the go-to for those who want to point out how much safer and more reliable biomodding is when compared to cyberware installation.
This isn’t to say that biomodding, as much as many people would like to believe, is perfectly safe. Biomods, much like cyberware, carry inherent risks to the individuals who undertake them. In the case of biomodding, extensive biomodding can result in genetic instabilities. Common side effects include unplanned mutation, and at their most extreme can result in full cellular breakdown. It’s worth noting that for the most part, such things require truly insane amounts of biomodding to bring about; the effort of the Seeds and humanity’s bioengineering of their children has left them incredibly robust and open to significant alteration, leaving them not only fertile despite their augments but capable of passing down the effects to offspring.
However, that doesn’t mean that some people don’t overdo it. Splicers and genejunkies and all stripe of biomod addicts who enjoy the thrill of changing themselves to the core run along a narrowing edge, and eventually their addictions start causing irreparable damage. If they push it right over the edge of what their bodies can handle, they can “splash out” and end themselves, with competing and unstable mutations causing such extensive breakdown that the genejunkie’s cells to be reduced to base fluids. Disturbingly, some genejunkies who suffer this method of death have been known to describe it, as it’s happening, as the most mind-shatteringly exquisite sensation in the universe.
For safety’s sake, a similar code of practice was established as with cyberware; that a biolock could only be implemented at the earliest once a sapient had reached the age of twenty standard years and no other biomodding was permitted before this point. This is not to say that it doesn’t happen earlier, of course, but youth augmentation does tend more toward biomodding than it does cyberware, as the latter is viewed as for convenience’s sake and the former is considered to be more akin to standard medical procedure. Biomodding in the modern era covers everything from cosmetic surgery to wetware augmentation. Cancer from working a radioactive environment? Ten minute stint in a medpod. Not feeling your present sex? You’re under the knife for an hour before you wake up with your whole new you. Caught a bug going around? Well, clearly your bioreg’s not up to date; a quick patch to the soft and your immunoprofile’s updated and ready to handle it.
Everything At A Price
Worthy of note is that there is a thriving black market for hardware and wetware both. Blackware, as it’s commonly called, is among the dirtiest and most lucrative markets for smugglers and suppliers alike. Trawlers - hunters who scope out augmented individuals, disable them with extreme prejudice, and then rip out their augs (whether the victim survives or not) to sell on to suppliers - are usually near the top of a systems’ most-wanted boards on the GalNet. More than a few wealthy individuals who flaunt their ice chrome and slick biomods find themselves targeted by trawlers.
The best in the biz know better than to go after the most high profile targets, but there’s no shortage of desperate gutterpunks eager to make a quick cred who’re willing to try. Cybes tend to bear the brunt of the victimhood amongst the trade; their high degree of augmentation makes then an easy target, and due to society’s tendency to look down on them, they are not often missed when the trawlers catch them.
I do hope you’ve liked this look into the augmentations that the galaxy of Void Dreaming affords. Since one of the crew is a cybe and the rest have various degrees of augmentation, I hope it helps set your expectations when you encounter them in the story!
For as maligned as cyberware can be and as generally accepted as biomodding is, a topic equally fraught in the galaxy is a trend that only started in the last couple of decades. Simulant technology - the means by which many companies produce true-to-life machines for work, leisure and more - is a massive can of worms that’s become equally reviled and adored by the peoples of the galaxy. That’s what we’re going to cover next time!
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Void Dreaming Blog XI - Star Craft
Posted 8 months agoHey there! Fae back again with another Void Dreaming post!
Last time we took a look at the scourge of the space lanes in the form of star pirates and various other criminal enterprises. But now, having come fresh off that, it’s time to delve into one of my favourite parts of any sci-fi setting: the ships! Strap in, tune your inertial dampeners, power those maneuvering thusters, and take off to the stars in style! Or at least with sufficient delta-V!
How You Use It
Size is a deterministic factor in how the starships of the galaxy are organized. While role is key, a basic understanding of different starship analogs is a fine starting point for any discussion of the vessels of the galaxy. After all, there are dozens upon dozens of manufacturers in the Galactic Authority alone, and dozens more independent and Rashemai operators out there. How else should one narrow down the wide field of ship types out there?
Not all starships are crewed. Tiny dronecraft technically count as starships under Galactic Authority law, but these drones are often overlooked and largely ignored. The most regular type of dronecraft are repair drones, programmed to enact autonomous repair on the ships that operate them or ships being serviced by their masters. Combat drones are another matter, roughly the same size or slightly smaller than a starfighter and capable of maneuvering feats that even inertial dampers can’t compensate for. They’re also cheaper to operate and replace than starfighters, making Drone Control Vessels far preferred for many over independently operated starfighters.
Where those starfighter analog craft shine is specifically in those independent operators. Crewed by one to two pilots and gunners capable of analyzing a situation and adapting better than any drone control module, starfighter analogs occupy their own size category despite some overlap with small personal craft. All starfighters are smaller than even the smallest civilian shuttlecraft design, with a profile that often exemplifies their military application. Starfighter analogs, like most military vessels, are heavily restricted by the Galactic Authority. Unlike larger craft though, more starfighter analog ships fall through the cracks, and most pirate outfits tend to field large numbers of starfighter analogs. While Drone Control Vessels are often preferred over carriers due to the cheapness of drone usage, starfighters still see use in the galaxy by elite combat pilots.
Gunship analogs are a specific offshoot in the same size range, but are utilized once again for military applications. Crewed by one to eight individuals, gunship craft are larger and heavier starships than starfighter analogs, capable of dealing and taking far more damage due to their larger size. They’re also much more complex machines, which is what necessitates a larger crew complement to keep them operating at peak efficiency. This is not to say all gunship analogs require a crew, of course; bounty hunters across the galaxy tend to favor small-crew gunships for use in hunting down targets that have escaped the justice of the Galactic Authority. Most gunships lose maneuvering capability compared to smaller starfighters, but make up for it by being much sturdier.
LPCs, or light personal craft, are a civilian starship analog category that comprises most of the personally-operated craft in the galaxy. Crewed from anything from one to twenty depending on the starship, LPCs are more clearly defined by their role than their size (as will many analogs moving forward). LPCs can consist of anything from personal shuttlecraft to courier vessels to even smaller passenger shuttles, and many LPC analogs are found in professional and corporate fleets just as often as in personal use. Technically, the Void Dreamer is an LPC analog craft, but for reasons you may learn in the course of the story she very, very definitely doesn’t scan like one.
Corvette analogs are larger still. The largest subcapital class of combat ship, corvette analogs are high-speed interception craft designed specifically to break through combat lines and harass vessels in the rear for formations. They’re usually crewed by five to fifteen operators, though the lower end of crew counts are reserved for advanced models with considerably more automation. Smugglers are fond of them for that speed, as well as for having enough cargo space to allow them to transport sizable hauls of illicit goods from place to place. While usually only lightly armored, their speed and shields are often enough to see them through.
Frigate analogs are the smallest category of capital-class starship analog. Operating as command ships for smaller forces and often with a crew of over twenty, frigates pack higher-power weaponry than corvettes, as well as more powerful defensive options. This comes at the cost of speed and maneuverability, and small battlegroups usually deploy only a couple of frigates alongside larger numbers of corvettes. Larger battlegroups might use frigates as flanking support craft for larger, heavier craft like cruiser analogs. In this role, their heavier firepower is often traded out for smaller emplacements designed to effectively combat more nimble threats to their cruiser compatriots. Most Drone Control Vessels qualify as frigate analog craft, making them smaller than their carrier competitors; these starships also often have reduced crew requirements due to their specialized function, and are seldom paired with corvettes.
HPCs, or Heavy Personal Craft, are often slightly larger than frigate analogs but are designed for civilian use. Smaller transport craft for light cargo hauling falls into this category, as do larger passenger shuttles. Restrictions on what the Galactic Authority allows in the way of weapons systems are relaxed for craft of this size, owing more often than not to their need to be able to defend themselves from raiders and pirates. The further one travels from the core, the more likely they would be to find HPCs that are armed to the teeth, and for good reason. Their crew counts vary; some HPCs can be operated by as little as a single pilot, though most prefer a crew compliment similar to that of a frigate.
Destroyer analogs are the next size increment for military interceptor craft. More well armed than a corvette (though often just as heavily armed as a frigate) and far more durable, these nimble combat craft are designed less to speed past an enemy line and more to cut their own path through. Destroyer analog craft are usually fitted with powerful thrust arrays and forward-facing weapons emplacements, leaving them vulnerable to flanking. However, the sheer firepower they can bring to bear leaves them able to devastate the flanks of enemy forces, slicing through weak formations and causing devastating damage to ships further back. Destroyers are crewed from as few as thirty, but often as many as eighty operators. More than a few of those are soldiers, as some destroyers are designed with boarding in mind. When operated alone, destroyers are often accompanied by corvettes whose maneuvering capability helps to mitigate the destroyer’s weaknesses. Destroyer analog ships are also where carriers can start to be found, capable of deploying smaller craft like starfighters and gunships to support their forces. Rashemai battlegroups favor large volumes of destroyer analog craft, allowing them to enact devastatingly effective hit and run attacks.
As a quick note, the destroyer analog is also home to a completely unique class of starship in the form of the warpsnare. Sized like a destroyer, these specialty ships read at a distance like cruisers and bear a titanic warp signature due to their design. Their warp core is built not just to open a warpspace envelope to facilitate travel, but to generate a tachyon dispersal field that agitates the fabric between realspace and warpspace just enough to overwhelm passing ships in warpspace; it can turn up local warp distortion to as high as point seven five, orders of magnitude beyond what most warp cores are rated for. The technology however is extremely finicky and limited in range to no more than a couple of lights’ volume, but when the ASF knows exactly where its target is coming from and going to, a well-placed warpsnare at the heart of a battlegroup can rip a traveling ship - or many - out of warpspace by completely destabilizing their warp envelope. The sudden shutdown of a warp core can cripple most unprepared ships outright, and at the very least can render a target ship’s shields inoperable. Still, as a specialty ship, warpsnares aren’t deployed with every ASF fleet; they only go where they might be needed.
Cruiser analogs replace frigates as fleet cornerstones, and are among the most powerful warships in the galaxy. Crewed by over a hundred people at the least, they are often the largest military vessel that most people will ever see. Heavily armed and well protected with powerful shields and thick armor plating, cruisers are the backbone of every large-scale fleet in the Galactic Authority’s arsenal. Supported often by destroyers and corvettes, cruiser analogs are able to deliver devastating firepower wherever it is required and stand up to much of the same in turn. Much like frigates their maneuvering capability isn’t particular great, however their vast size and overlapping fields of weapons fire mean that there are few, if any, safe avenues of attack against a cruiser. The largest carrier starships are cruiser analog craft, as are most command and control warships.
SHPCs are Superheavy Personal Craft, and this is the domain of large scale cargo haulers, deep-space mining vessels, massive colony ships, entertainment transports like cruise liners, and the like. Expensive to purchase and expensive to operate, it’s only because of the efficiency with which they perform their various tasks that their operators are able to turn a profit. Private owners of SHPC analogs are exceedingly rare, though several members of the Ruling Council of the Galactic Authority can count within their purview at least one SHPC pleasure ship. Crew complement is dependent on the role of the vessel in question; a heavy freighter might only require a crew of ten, while the personal starfarer of the GA Speaker might retain as many crew and staff as an ASF cruiser.
Battlecruiser analogs are the largest class of starship in the galaxy. Exclusively reserved for military vessels of exceptionally oppressive firepower, these rare ships are the flagships of Galactic Authority fleet groups. At the time of Void Dreaming, eight battlecruiser-class starships are operational within the Authority Star Fleet. Two of them are older Exigent-class battlecruisers, from the first line of ships of this scale. Five are the more modern Hemian-class, and the last is the first and so far only product of the Magnificence-class. Despite the evolution of the class of ships, it’s worth mentioning that no ASF-crewed battlecruiser analog vessel has ever been lost in combat, and no engagement that has seen a battlecruiser join the theater has resulted in an ASF loss. Older battlecruisers require crews of over five hundred operators, but the newest Magnificence-class battlecruisers only require two hundred. All of them, however, are loaded with legions of soldiers capable of deployment where ground assault is required, including the legendary ASF dropper soldiers.
What A Piece Of Junk
As mentioned way, way further above, starships are most commonly defined by their role and by who precisely has need of them. In the time of Void Dreaming, privately-owned starships are old news. This isn’t to say that everyone has their own rockhopper, of course; star travel on your own cred isn’t exactly cheap. The cost of the ship, its maintenance, registration with the Authority Star Charter… it’s enough to drain one’s accounts in frighteningly quick fashion.
Personal starships then tend to often be boltjobs; rickety craft thrown together with what resources the owner has available to them. They’re not unsafe, of course… not usually, anyway. These personal craft are often used for intrasystem or nearby interstellar jaunts, for those times when you just can’t do what you need to do from where you are. Of course, most people just charter seats on a passenger shuttle rather than operate their own ship, but we’ll get to them.
Rarely, personal craft might be completely stock vessels, or upgraded with premium hardware. Only the wealthy or those who use their ships for work tend to invest so heavily in their craft, given that the more expensive the ship, the more likely they’ll be to attract the wrong attention. Closer to the fringe, this can mean pirates. Further coreward however, something far more dangerous lurks: bureaucrats. Armed with readers, charter laws and a stern expression, those able to afford nice ships often find themselves accosted by all manner of extra tolls, and lane use or docking fees. After all, the government knows they can afford it.
The titular Void Dreamer, it should be noted, definitely falls under the second category here.
Some - most often pirates or other desperate souls - will take mismatched parts and craft completely unique (and often barely functional) starships out of them. Designated slapscrap by the ASF, most fringe-dwellers refer to them simply, and aptly, as uglies. Because their parts are mismatched, the capabilities of such craft is often hard to determine. Thankfully, uglies are prone to spontaneous catastrophic failure as a result of their chop-job construction. Those that tend to not simply blow up when they power their weapons are something that any fringe-traversing captain needs to be wary of, however; anyone flying an ugly is either insane or gifted, and neither is a safe prospect to engage.
Corporate vessels are far more common than personal vessels, of course. Fielding different ships for different interests across the galaxy, these ships are often function at the expense of form, unless those interests are sufficiently lofty. Diplomatic ships, Trade Coalition envoy craft, and courier craft carrying highly sensitive material can avoid the spartan appearance and go for something more befitting their status and role.
Military vessels, by contrast, are always built to clear specifications as defined by their role in combat. There are no artistic flourishes to be found there, no; milspec vessels are designed to do their job with maximum efficiency, and they do nothing that would compromise this. While the standard of living aboard these military ships has steadily increased over the years, their profiles are designed specifically to maximize their ability to do their job. Nothing else matters.
A Little Roleplay
Roles, then, comprise the final point where determining the nature of a starship. While starships fit into many different analogs and are fielded by various interests, the role of a given model of ship is more often than not what determines how someone reacts to its presence. After all, coming across a light freighter isn’t going to cause you too much consternation. A flight of interceptor craft converging on your location is quite something else.
Trade craft comprise the majority of civilian space travel, and these run the full gamut from LPCs right up to SHPCs. Courier ships, as previously mentioned, are smaller craft designed to convey delicate cargo. Either items too fragile to be entrusted to traditional haulers or information too sensitive to entrust to even an encrypted GalNet transmission or warpspace databurst might see a courier ship enlisted. Passenger shuttles also fall under this category (though personal shuttlecraft are really considered to be their own, separate category). Freighters of various sizes also count, whether they’re hauling raw materials, trade goods and equipment, or even live cargo.
Industrial craft are not nearly as common, and generally only operate as HPC and SHPC analog vessels. These are your mining ships and repaircraft, but it’s also home to a unique variety of vessel in the form of warpfolders.
Warpfolders - or just folders - are little more than powerful reactors and some life support strapped to an oversized warp core and transwarp harmonic field generator, designed not just to open a warpspace envelope around itself, but to extend that envelope around other nearby vessels as well. This enables a single warpfolder to convey several much larger craft through warpspace, sparing those craft from the sustained high reactor output during transit required by warpspace traversal. These ships are utilized extensively by military forces to ensure that they arrive at their destination with full power, ready to engage their target at maximum capacity. More mundanely, they are also used to warptow stranded civilian craft. It’s important to note that warpfolders are not the only ships able to do this, but they are the only ones able to do this at scale; opening a warp envelope around another ship requires the towing vessel to be in extremely close proximity, risking mid-warp collision or envelope instability. Experienced warpfolder pilots are some of the best in the galaxy, and more than a few retired skipracers find steady work as warpfolder pilots.
Survey vessels are among the rarest ships in the galaxy, owing to the niche use case for them. Designed for civilian operation and often at the behest of the Astrogation Guild as we’ve covered before, survey vessels prize powerful scanner and sensor suites above all else. The exclusive subset of this category that the Void Dreamer falls into is that of the deep-space survey vessel, again as noted in the Astrogation Guild entry. These ships maintain the need for powerful scanners and sensors, but also necessitate long-term viability and self-sustainability, as well as warpspace speed and stability over long jumps. This means that deep space survey vessels are the ideal ship not only for those going past the fringe to catalogue new worlds, but also for those people who decide to go completely off GA sensors and live in the black.
Finally, and perhaps most notably, military craft round out the roles of different starships. Second only to trade craft by number, it is the robust and sizable military of the Galactic Authority that has allowed it to remain an unchallenged power in the galaxy. Military ships cover every single analog of craft, but they’re also easier to detect on long-range sensors as a result of that. Due to their higher mass, higher power output, significant warpsig and unique tachyonic dispersion patterns, military vessels are often easily discernible even at significant distance. The specific distance varies by ship, of course, but it’s not uncommon for a traveler to be aware of an ASF battlegroup half a kilolight away because of the sheer volume of cruisers in a relatively small area.
This one really got away from me, but that’s just because I fucking love starships. I love the idea of them, the potential of them, and the prospect of setting them up in a vibrant universe like the one I (hope I have) created. Promise I’ll try not to go as hard on this again before release! Can’t promise I’ll succeed, though, especially given how close we’re getting to said release…
Next week though, we’re diving into a whole different pair of advanced technologies! Developing in leaps and bounds over the last couple of decades in the galaxy and with a long history is augmentation, in the form of cyberware and biomodding. So get ready to jack your neural, pop some stims and sit back; we’re gonna spin some gray with this one!
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Last time we took a look at the scourge of the space lanes in the form of star pirates and various other criminal enterprises. But now, having come fresh off that, it’s time to delve into one of my favourite parts of any sci-fi setting: the ships! Strap in, tune your inertial dampeners, power those maneuvering thusters, and take off to the stars in style! Or at least with sufficient delta-V!
How You Use It
Size is a deterministic factor in how the starships of the galaxy are organized. While role is key, a basic understanding of different starship analogs is a fine starting point for any discussion of the vessels of the galaxy. After all, there are dozens upon dozens of manufacturers in the Galactic Authority alone, and dozens more independent and Rashemai operators out there. How else should one narrow down the wide field of ship types out there?
Not all starships are crewed. Tiny dronecraft technically count as starships under Galactic Authority law, but these drones are often overlooked and largely ignored. The most regular type of dronecraft are repair drones, programmed to enact autonomous repair on the ships that operate them or ships being serviced by their masters. Combat drones are another matter, roughly the same size or slightly smaller than a starfighter and capable of maneuvering feats that even inertial dampers can’t compensate for. They’re also cheaper to operate and replace than starfighters, making Drone Control Vessels far preferred for many over independently operated starfighters.
Where those starfighter analog craft shine is specifically in those independent operators. Crewed by one to two pilots and gunners capable of analyzing a situation and adapting better than any drone control module, starfighter analogs occupy their own size category despite some overlap with small personal craft. All starfighters are smaller than even the smallest civilian shuttlecraft design, with a profile that often exemplifies their military application. Starfighter analogs, like most military vessels, are heavily restricted by the Galactic Authority. Unlike larger craft though, more starfighter analog ships fall through the cracks, and most pirate outfits tend to field large numbers of starfighter analogs. While Drone Control Vessels are often preferred over carriers due to the cheapness of drone usage, starfighters still see use in the galaxy by elite combat pilots.
Gunship analogs are a specific offshoot in the same size range, but are utilized once again for military applications. Crewed by one to eight individuals, gunship craft are larger and heavier starships than starfighter analogs, capable of dealing and taking far more damage due to their larger size. They’re also much more complex machines, which is what necessitates a larger crew complement to keep them operating at peak efficiency. This is not to say all gunship analogs require a crew, of course; bounty hunters across the galaxy tend to favor small-crew gunships for use in hunting down targets that have escaped the justice of the Galactic Authority. Most gunships lose maneuvering capability compared to smaller starfighters, but make up for it by being much sturdier.
LPCs, or light personal craft, are a civilian starship analog category that comprises most of the personally-operated craft in the galaxy. Crewed from anything from one to twenty depending on the starship, LPCs are more clearly defined by their role than their size (as will many analogs moving forward). LPCs can consist of anything from personal shuttlecraft to courier vessels to even smaller passenger shuttles, and many LPC analogs are found in professional and corporate fleets just as often as in personal use. Technically, the Void Dreamer is an LPC analog craft, but for reasons you may learn in the course of the story she very, very definitely doesn’t scan like one.
Corvette analogs are larger still. The largest subcapital class of combat ship, corvette analogs are high-speed interception craft designed specifically to break through combat lines and harass vessels in the rear for formations. They’re usually crewed by five to fifteen operators, though the lower end of crew counts are reserved for advanced models with considerably more automation. Smugglers are fond of them for that speed, as well as for having enough cargo space to allow them to transport sizable hauls of illicit goods from place to place. While usually only lightly armored, their speed and shields are often enough to see them through.
Frigate analogs are the smallest category of capital-class starship analog. Operating as command ships for smaller forces and often with a crew of over twenty, frigates pack higher-power weaponry than corvettes, as well as more powerful defensive options. This comes at the cost of speed and maneuverability, and small battlegroups usually deploy only a couple of frigates alongside larger numbers of corvettes. Larger battlegroups might use frigates as flanking support craft for larger, heavier craft like cruiser analogs. In this role, their heavier firepower is often traded out for smaller emplacements designed to effectively combat more nimble threats to their cruiser compatriots. Most Drone Control Vessels qualify as frigate analog craft, making them smaller than their carrier competitors; these starships also often have reduced crew requirements due to their specialized function, and are seldom paired with corvettes.
HPCs, or Heavy Personal Craft, are often slightly larger than frigate analogs but are designed for civilian use. Smaller transport craft for light cargo hauling falls into this category, as do larger passenger shuttles. Restrictions on what the Galactic Authority allows in the way of weapons systems are relaxed for craft of this size, owing more often than not to their need to be able to defend themselves from raiders and pirates. The further one travels from the core, the more likely they would be to find HPCs that are armed to the teeth, and for good reason. Their crew counts vary; some HPCs can be operated by as little as a single pilot, though most prefer a crew compliment similar to that of a frigate.
Destroyer analogs are the next size increment for military interceptor craft. More well armed than a corvette (though often just as heavily armed as a frigate) and far more durable, these nimble combat craft are designed less to speed past an enemy line and more to cut their own path through. Destroyer analog craft are usually fitted with powerful thrust arrays and forward-facing weapons emplacements, leaving them vulnerable to flanking. However, the sheer firepower they can bring to bear leaves them able to devastate the flanks of enemy forces, slicing through weak formations and causing devastating damage to ships further back. Destroyers are crewed from as few as thirty, but often as many as eighty operators. More than a few of those are soldiers, as some destroyers are designed with boarding in mind. When operated alone, destroyers are often accompanied by corvettes whose maneuvering capability helps to mitigate the destroyer’s weaknesses. Destroyer analog ships are also where carriers can start to be found, capable of deploying smaller craft like starfighters and gunships to support their forces. Rashemai battlegroups favor large volumes of destroyer analog craft, allowing them to enact devastatingly effective hit and run attacks.
As a quick note, the destroyer analog is also home to a completely unique class of starship in the form of the warpsnare. Sized like a destroyer, these specialty ships read at a distance like cruisers and bear a titanic warp signature due to their design. Their warp core is built not just to open a warpspace envelope to facilitate travel, but to generate a tachyon dispersal field that agitates the fabric between realspace and warpspace just enough to overwhelm passing ships in warpspace; it can turn up local warp distortion to as high as point seven five, orders of magnitude beyond what most warp cores are rated for. The technology however is extremely finicky and limited in range to no more than a couple of lights’ volume, but when the ASF knows exactly where its target is coming from and going to, a well-placed warpsnare at the heart of a battlegroup can rip a traveling ship - or many - out of warpspace by completely destabilizing their warp envelope. The sudden shutdown of a warp core can cripple most unprepared ships outright, and at the very least can render a target ship’s shields inoperable. Still, as a specialty ship, warpsnares aren’t deployed with every ASF fleet; they only go where they might be needed.
Cruiser analogs replace frigates as fleet cornerstones, and are among the most powerful warships in the galaxy. Crewed by over a hundred people at the least, they are often the largest military vessel that most people will ever see. Heavily armed and well protected with powerful shields and thick armor plating, cruisers are the backbone of every large-scale fleet in the Galactic Authority’s arsenal. Supported often by destroyers and corvettes, cruiser analogs are able to deliver devastating firepower wherever it is required and stand up to much of the same in turn. Much like frigates their maneuvering capability isn’t particular great, however their vast size and overlapping fields of weapons fire mean that there are few, if any, safe avenues of attack against a cruiser. The largest carrier starships are cruiser analog craft, as are most command and control warships.
SHPCs are Superheavy Personal Craft, and this is the domain of large scale cargo haulers, deep-space mining vessels, massive colony ships, entertainment transports like cruise liners, and the like. Expensive to purchase and expensive to operate, it’s only because of the efficiency with which they perform their various tasks that their operators are able to turn a profit. Private owners of SHPC analogs are exceedingly rare, though several members of the Ruling Council of the Galactic Authority can count within their purview at least one SHPC pleasure ship. Crew complement is dependent on the role of the vessel in question; a heavy freighter might only require a crew of ten, while the personal starfarer of the GA Speaker might retain as many crew and staff as an ASF cruiser.
Battlecruiser analogs are the largest class of starship in the galaxy. Exclusively reserved for military vessels of exceptionally oppressive firepower, these rare ships are the flagships of Galactic Authority fleet groups. At the time of Void Dreaming, eight battlecruiser-class starships are operational within the Authority Star Fleet. Two of them are older Exigent-class battlecruisers, from the first line of ships of this scale. Five are the more modern Hemian-class, and the last is the first and so far only product of the Magnificence-class. Despite the evolution of the class of ships, it’s worth mentioning that no ASF-crewed battlecruiser analog vessel has ever been lost in combat, and no engagement that has seen a battlecruiser join the theater has resulted in an ASF loss. Older battlecruisers require crews of over five hundred operators, but the newest Magnificence-class battlecruisers only require two hundred. All of them, however, are loaded with legions of soldiers capable of deployment where ground assault is required, including the legendary ASF dropper soldiers.
What A Piece Of Junk
As mentioned way, way further above, starships are most commonly defined by their role and by who precisely has need of them. In the time of Void Dreaming, privately-owned starships are old news. This isn’t to say that everyone has their own rockhopper, of course; star travel on your own cred isn’t exactly cheap. The cost of the ship, its maintenance, registration with the Authority Star Charter… it’s enough to drain one’s accounts in frighteningly quick fashion.
Personal starships then tend to often be boltjobs; rickety craft thrown together with what resources the owner has available to them. They’re not unsafe, of course… not usually, anyway. These personal craft are often used for intrasystem or nearby interstellar jaunts, for those times when you just can’t do what you need to do from where you are. Of course, most people just charter seats on a passenger shuttle rather than operate their own ship, but we’ll get to them.
Rarely, personal craft might be completely stock vessels, or upgraded with premium hardware. Only the wealthy or those who use their ships for work tend to invest so heavily in their craft, given that the more expensive the ship, the more likely they’ll be to attract the wrong attention. Closer to the fringe, this can mean pirates. Further coreward however, something far more dangerous lurks: bureaucrats. Armed with readers, charter laws and a stern expression, those able to afford nice ships often find themselves accosted by all manner of extra tolls, and lane use or docking fees. After all, the government knows they can afford it.
The titular Void Dreamer, it should be noted, definitely falls under the second category here.
Some - most often pirates or other desperate souls - will take mismatched parts and craft completely unique (and often barely functional) starships out of them. Designated slapscrap by the ASF, most fringe-dwellers refer to them simply, and aptly, as uglies. Because their parts are mismatched, the capabilities of such craft is often hard to determine. Thankfully, uglies are prone to spontaneous catastrophic failure as a result of their chop-job construction. Those that tend to not simply blow up when they power their weapons are something that any fringe-traversing captain needs to be wary of, however; anyone flying an ugly is either insane or gifted, and neither is a safe prospect to engage.
Corporate vessels are far more common than personal vessels, of course. Fielding different ships for different interests across the galaxy, these ships are often function at the expense of form, unless those interests are sufficiently lofty. Diplomatic ships, Trade Coalition envoy craft, and courier craft carrying highly sensitive material can avoid the spartan appearance and go for something more befitting their status and role.
Military vessels, by contrast, are always built to clear specifications as defined by their role in combat. There are no artistic flourishes to be found there, no; milspec vessels are designed to do their job with maximum efficiency, and they do nothing that would compromise this. While the standard of living aboard these military ships has steadily increased over the years, their profiles are designed specifically to maximize their ability to do their job. Nothing else matters.
A Little Roleplay
Roles, then, comprise the final point where determining the nature of a starship. While starships fit into many different analogs and are fielded by various interests, the role of a given model of ship is more often than not what determines how someone reacts to its presence. After all, coming across a light freighter isn’t going to cause you too much consternation. A flight of interceptor craft converging on your location is quite something else.
Trade craft comprise the majority of civilian space travel, and these run the full gamut from LPCs right up to SHPCs. Courier ships, as previously mentioned, are smaller craft designed to convey delicate cargo. Either items too fragile to be entrusted to traditional haulers or information too sensitive to entrust to even an encrypted GalNet transmission or warpspace databurst might see a courier ship enlisted. Passenger shuttles also fall under this category (though personal shuttlecraft are really considered to be their own, separate category). Freighters of various sizes also count, whether they’re hauling raw materials, trade goods and equipment, or even live cargo.
Industrial craft are not nearly as common, and generally only operate as HPC and SHPC analog vessels. These are your mining ships and repaircraft, but it’s also home to a unique variety of vessel in the form of warpfolders.
Warpfolders - or just folders - are little more than powerful reactors and some life support strapped to an oversized warp core and transwarp harmonic field generator, designed not just to open a warpspace envelope around itself, but to extend that envelope around other nearby vessels as well. This enables a single warpfolder to convey several much larger craft through warpspace, sparing those craft from the sustained high reactor output during transit required by warpspace traversal. These ships are utilized extensively by military forces to ensure that they arrive at their destination with full power, ready to engage their target at maximum capacity. More mundanely, they are also used to warptow stranded civilian craft. It’s important to note that warpfolders are not the only ships able to do this, but they are the only ones able to do this at scale; opening a warp envelope around another ship requires the towing vessel to be in extremely close proximity, risking mid-warp collision or envelope instability. Experienced warpfolder pilots are some of the best in the galaxy, and more than a few retired skipracers find steady work as warpfolder pilots.
Survey vessels are among the rarest ships in the galaxy, owing to the niche use case for them. Designed for civilian operation and often at the behest of the Astrogation Guild as we’ve covered before, survey vessels prize powerful scanner and sensor suites above all else. The exclusive subset of this category that the Void Dreamer falls into is that of the deep-space survey vessel, again as noted in the Astrogation Guild entry. These ships maintain the need for powerful scanners and sensors, but also necessitate long-term viability and self-sustainability, as well as warpspace speed and stability over long jumps. This means that deep space survey vessels are the ideal ship not only for those going past the fringe to catalogue new worlds, but also for those people who decide to go completely off GA sensors and live in the black.
Finally, and perhaps most notably, military craft round out the roles of different starships. Second only to trade craft by number, it is the robust and sizable military of the Galactic Authority that has allowed it to remain an unchallenged power in the galaxy. Military ships cover every single analog of craft, but they’re also easier to detect on long-range sensors as a result of that. Due to their higher mass, higher power output, significant warpsig and unique tachyonic dispersion patterns, military vessels are often easily discernible even at significant distance. The specific distance varies by ship, of course, but it’s not uncommon for a traveler to be aware of an ASF battlegroup half a kilolight away because of the sheer volume of cruisers in a relatively small area.
This one really got away from me, but that’s just because I fucking love starships. I love the idea of them, the potential of them, and the prospect of setting them up in a vibrant universe like the one I (hope I have) created. Promise I’ll try not to go as hard on this again before release! Can’t promise I’ll succeed, though, especially given how close we’re getting to said release…
Next week though, we’re diving into a whole different pair of advanced technologies! Developing in leaps and bounds over the last couple of decades in the galaxy and with a long history is augmentation, in the form of cyberware and biomodding. So get ready to jack your neural, pop some stims and sit back; we’re gonna spin some gray with this one!
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Void Dreaming Blog X - Star Pirates
Posted 9 months agoHey there! Fae back again with another Void Dreaming post!
Last time we took a look at the important work the Astrogation Guild does with regards to mapping warplines, warpspace distortion, and dove into the mechanics of the setting’s FTL travel. Today though, we’re going to look at the seedier underbelly of star travel, and one of the most omnipresent dangers of fringe space: star pirates.
Yarr, Harr, Fiddle-Dee-Dee
Star piracy is very different to the nautical variety that plagued many peoples in the pre-ascension days of their societies, and neither v-sims nor holoreels really portray the reality of interplanetary crime. Part of this is deliberate, of course; even with the market for such content, the last thing the Galactic Authority would want is entertainment that could instruct law-abiding citizens in how to flout their rule.
As a result, most entertainment media - and accordingly most public perception within the Galactic Authority’s zone of influence - romanticizes, humorizes, or otherwise tints the viewer’s view of such things. On the lighter and fluffier side of things, star pirates represent freedom from authority both literal and figurative, or feed into the notion of a noble thief or privateer. On the harder side of things, they’re simply portrayed as bloodthirsty villains who would sooner strip the flesh from their captives to feed their replicator units than hold a conversation.
All of this comes together to muddy the public view of what exactly a star pirate is, and what they do. The reality far more complex than most living in the core realize, and even midders who live in the comfortable mid-rim of the galaxy find themselves with a skewed opinion of these outlaws. So what, then, is the reality?
Shades of Black
It’s unfortunately complicated, because there’s no hard and fast rule. Pirates could be part of larger organizations, or they could be small crews, or even lone rogues. For the average sole operator or one-ship crew, pirates tend to be creatures of necessity, not desire. They do what they do to survive in a galaxy that all too often has let them slip through the cracks. They are parasites, raiding stations, ships and fringe colonies in the hopes of keeping themselves alive and keeping their ship in the black. Some might turn to smuggling, but the most desperate small operators prefer not to risk the sort of attention that it might bring. That attention isn’t the Galactic Authority and the Authority Star Fleet, but the attention of larger criminal bodies who might see them as smaller players in a bigger game.
More commonly, pirates operate as part of those larger organizations. For as long as the ascended have sailed the black, there have been pirate outfits that terrorize the starlanes. Each one does it for different reasons and each one has different values; running afoul of one organization doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll run afoul of another.
Those values and reasons ultimately tend to define organizations, and these organizations can be grouped together under a shared umbrella: flesh traders, mercenaries, raiders, and jackers. Depending on who you are, one variety might be far more worrying than the others.
There is always a need for bodies, and when that need arises there are fleshtraders. Considered by most an abhorrent practice, organizations dedicated to the flesh trade are known for raiding colonies for the people, capturing ships to steal the crew, and then selling them off to the highest bidders. While mechanical processes are sufficient for replacing manual labor, there are always roles for a sapient body that cannot be adequately expressed by machines. Few pirates engage in the flesh trade because of the inherent danger; of all forms of piracy, the capture and exploitation of GA citizens is a good way to invite the wrath of the Authority Star Fleet. At the time of the story taking place aboard the Void Dreamer, the preeminent fleshtraders of the galaxy are the Sons of Serimosh.
Mercenaries and privateers are how many pirate outfits start out. In the more lawless outer reaches of the galaxy where there’s little protection to be had and warlords carve out swathes of stellar real estate for themselves, whoever can bring the most weapons to bear is often the most powerful person for a kilolight or two. These pirates feed on their fellows based on the needs of their current employer, but are loyal only to the payment they receive. This payment need not be creds; mercenary and privateer organizations often are more happy to deal in raw resources and equipment that enable them to better their prospects. The notorious White Fang pirates began in this manner, and have grown into the power that they are on the fringe in large part because of how effectively - and ruthlessly - they fulfilled their contracts.
Raiders don’t serve any masters but themselves, and their whole reason for doing what they do is perhaps the most selfish of all pirate types. More likely to target static settlements than wayward ships, raiders are known for dropping out of warpspace, assaulting a target quick and hard, loading up anything that they can carry, and blasting off again before reprisal can strike them. Speed and efficiency are the order of the day for raiders, but the more exceptional outfits tend to also delve into mercenary work; targeting the holdings of a specific target in order to retrieve for themselves or their client some valuable item or other. The Orum’ka (no relation to our goodboy medic Bromm’ka, I assure you) are perhaps the most successful and pervasive raiders in the galaxy, daring even to venture to the edge of the core in their search for greater riches. How they continue to evade the best efforts of the Authority Star Fleet and GalSec combined continues to be a question on the minds of many.
Jackers are the final general category of pirate that roams the galaxy, and for their fellow starfarers they are also considered the most worrying. Jackers have no interest in raiding targets for supplies, nor in smuggling goods or dealing in flesh. Their interest instead lies in starships themselves; the disabling, the boarding, the slaving and the breaking of otherwise owned ships, to their own profit. Jackers, or shipjacks, are the only variety of pirate in the galaxy that’s more likely to be encountered solo rather than as part of a group; you can’t exactly break a ship down to pay out the catch evenly between multiple members, can you? The most basic jackers steal their prey while dirtside or station-locked, but the true elites among them - most predominantly the legendary shipjack known only as Nova and never positively identified by GalSec - claim their prey while in flight. In the best case scenario, such as with Nova, the previous occupant is also claimed and safely conveyed to the nearest livable location. Many other jackers are more than happy to simply blast the hapless crew of their targets and vac them.
Use of Weapons
No discussion about pirates would be complete without touching briefly on the role that they’ve played in the seemingly never-ending conflict between the Galactic Authority and the Rashemai Cluster. Ever since the (alleged) black-flag operation conducted against the Rashemai that resulted in the galaxy’s first true war, pirate outfits have been used as intermediaries between all manner of entities wishing to keep their paws clean while taking their rivals down a peg.
This phenomenon is not reserved simply for Authority/Cluster conflicts, it must be said. Authority politics and interplanetary relations are entirely difficult to manage at the best of times, and it’s the worst-kept secret in the galaxy that the administrations of several worlds are more than willing to make use of the services of raiders and mercenary outfits in the interest of inhibiting their rivals in whatever way pirates might see fit to do. The pirates in question often don’t mind, and they certainly don’t ask questions of their own; why would they, when they’re getting paid a tidy sum and often get to keep the spoils of their nefarious activities? No one looks gift creds in the muzzle, pirates least of all.
Similarly, and in regards to some political matters touched on a couple of entries ago, the Galactic Authority has been known to surreptitiously (though never with evidence) make use of pirate raiders against the colony worlds on the fringe that are a little less interested in maintaining a presence within the GA system. Some colony worlds grow quickly and develop an individualistic streak, choosing to become independent systems outside the Authority. When diplomatic channels fail to bridge this gap, it’s not unheard of (though, again, difficult to prove) for the Authority to make use of pirate forces to prove the dangers of fringe colonies, and how essential their benevolent guidance and protection is to any burgeoning colonial effort. Few are the colonies that withstand this pressure for long.
In a more mundane sense, pirates are also occasionally contracted to perform less morally-questionable acts than those above. If Trade Coalition ships are to pass through a region of space frequented by a specific pirate operation, for example, said operation might have a visit from a Trade Coalition negotiator who seeks to sue for the convoy’s safe passage through the area. The price is often less than the pirate would score from taking on the convoy, but absent any of the risk involved if they went after it with their instincts and weapons bared. Similarly, if the convoy is to travel through a region of space occupied by multiple groups, often the negotiator will seek audience with the most mighty of the various criminal groups.
This is preferable for the Trade Coalition, as it allows them to employ the might of said pirates in place of their own security forces (a not insignificant saving on their part, more often than not) and suffer no losses should the convoy come under attack (sacrificing the paid pirates to make their escape). GalSec is happy to look the other way; when local groups skirmish like that, it’s all less work that they have to undertake themselves. Most consider this to be lazy on GalSec’s part. They would claim that they merely work smarter, not harder.
But this simply the most benign method by which these “independent contractors” might find themselves engaged. All too often, worlds and administrations looking to curry favor with the galactic community as a whole will seek to do this by knocking down the ambitions of their immediate neighbors in an effort to lift themselves up. After all, even the most quiet backwater can look like a major player if those around them have been suitably taken down in the galactic standings somewhat. Endurance, and the ability to leverage local resources, displays a degree of command over one’s region that is looked most favorably on by the Galactic Authority.
On The Other Side
And finally, the Rashemai. The situation there is not as clear-cut and simple as it might seem, at first glance. On the one paw, it might appear a viable option for Rashemai forces to strike back at their hated oppressors in the Galactic Authority through the use of the same pirates that were once (allegedly) used to so terribly upset the balance of galactic peace. This would be apt, if not for one tiny, niggling problem: Rashemai pride.
The Rashemai can be counted on to never, ever, ever be the ones employing privateers to strike against the Galactic Authority, purely because such a thing wouldn’t sit right in their collective cultural outlook. To engage in the tactics of their enemies would be beyond dishonorable; it would be unthinkable. It would be so far beneath them that it would never be possible for it to see daylight. And worse, it would so utterly taint any victories achieved. Rashemai, after all, would not have won those victories. Pirates would have. Rashemai would not have struck back. Pirates would have. That those pirates might have acted on Rashemai’s behalf would be irrelevant. Such a victory would only show that Rashemai are so weak that they must stoop to letting others do their fighting for them; that they are so cowardly that they would spare themselves a respectable death in the name of freedom and let someone else take that fall for them.
This is, incidentally, something very well known within the Galactic Authority and its various intelligence agencies. They know they won’t ever fall prey to the same sort of black flag operation that Rashemai accused them of enacting. They can count, quite literally, on the Rashemai belligerence and pride keeping them from accessing a potentially valuable weapon they could use against the Authority. And since pirates do regularly patrol Rashemai space just as surely as they do that of the Galactic Authority, it’s widely believed that this is part of why the Authority doesn’t crack down as hard as they could. Why, after all, deprive yourself of a tool your enemy refuses to utilize?
There is however, as ever, one final and interesting data point to be noted. While Rashemai do not make use of pirates to do their fighting for them, it is not uncommon for Rashemai instigators and firebrands with slightly lower volumes of moral fiber to join these pirate outfits. They’re very choosy with whom they serve, and they certainly don’t allow themselves to be used against Rashemai targets. This serves two purposes: the Rashemai firebrands are able to strike meaningfully against the Galactic Authority (often through their civilians, which is why only particularly nasty Rashemai do so), and the pirate organizations gain a zealous and dedicated new recruit. Said pirates are often glad to restrict Rashemai targets as a result, and since Galactic Authority targets are often more valuable anyway, there’s no effective harm done. Everyone wins, except the Galactic Authority, which suits the firebrands just fine.
And this is just the pirates! There’s all manner of crime in the galaxy, and it’s far too much to put in this post. Maybe, if later stories touch on such things, I’ll dive into it in greater detail. We’ll have to wait and see, but for now this should serve as a great primer to the seedier figures lurking in the black and making fringe space as dangerous as it is.
Next time though, we’ll take a step mostly away from piracy and into the real stars of any sci-fi setting: ships! We’ll go over classifications, analogs, role, and find out just where in the grand constellation of star craft in the galaxy that the titular Void Dreamer happens to sit.
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Last time we took a look at the important work the Astrogation Guild does with regards to mapping warplines, warpspace distortion, and dove into the mechanics of the setting’s FTL travel. Today though, we’re going to look at the seedier underbelly of star travel, and one of the most omnipresent dangers of fringe space: star pirates.
Yarr, Harr, Fiddle-Dee-Dee
Star piracy is very different to the nautical variety that plagued many peoples in the pre-ascension days of their societies, and neither v-sims nor holoreels really portray the reality of interplanetary crime. Part of this is deliberate, of course; even with the market for such content, the last thing the Galactic Authority would want is entertainment that could instruct law-abiding citizens in how to flout their rule.
As a result, most entertainment media - and accordingly most public perception within the Galactic Authority’s zone of influence - romanticizes, humorizes, or otherwise tints the viewer’s view of such things. On the lighter and fluffier side of things, star pirates represent freedom from authority both literal and figurative, or feed into the notion of a noble thief or privateer. On the harder side of things, they’re simply portrayed as bloodthirsty villains who would sooner strip the flesh from their captives to feed their replicator units than hold a conversation.
All of this comes together to muddy the public view of what exactly a star pirate is, and what they do. The reality far more complex than most living in the core realize, and even midders who live in the comfortable mid-rim of the galaxy find themselves with a skewed opinion of these outlaws. So what, then, is the reality?
Shades of Black
It’s unfortunately complicated, because there’s no hard and fast rule. Pirates could be part of larger organizations, or they could be small crews, or even lone rogues. For the average sole operator or one-ship crew, pirates tend to be creatures of necessity, not desire. They do what they do to survive in a galaxy that all too often has let them slip through the cracks. They are parasites, raiding stations, ships and fringe colonies in the hopes of keeping themselves alive and keeping their ship in the black. Some might turn to smuggling, but the most desperate small operators prefer not to risk the sort of attention that it might bring. That attention isn’t the Galactic Authority and the Authority Star Fleet, but the attention of larger criminal bodies who might see them as smaller players in a bigger game.
More commonly, pirates operate as part of those larger organizations. For as long as the ascended have sailed the black, there have been pirate outfits that terrorize the starlanes. Each one does it for different reasons and each one has different values; running afoul of one organization doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll run afoul of another.
Those values and reasons ultimately tend to define organizations, and these organizations can be grouped together under a shared umbrella: flesh traders, mercenaries, raiders, and jackers. Depending on who you are, one variety might be far more worrying than the others.
There is always a need for bodies, and when that need arises there are fleshtraders. Considered by most an abhorrent practice, organizations dedicated to the flesh trade are known for raiding colonies for the people, capturing ships to steal the crew, and then selling them off to the highest bidders. While mechanical processes are sufficient for replacing manual labor, there are always roles for a sapient body that cannot be adequately expressed by machines. Few pirates engage in the flesh trade because of the inherent danger; of all forms of piracy, the capture and exploitation of GA citizens is a good way to invite the wrath of the Authority Star Fleet. At the time of the story taking place aboard the Void Dreamer, the preeminent fleshtraders of the galaxy are the Sons of Serimosh.
Mercenaries and privateers are how many pirate outfits start out. In the more lawless outer reaches of the galaxy where there’s little protection to be had and warlords carve out swathes of stellar real estate for themselves, whoever can bring the most weapons to bear is often the most powerful person for a kilolight or two. These pirates feed on their fellows based on the needs of their current employer, but are loyal only to the payment they receive. This payment need not be creds; mercenary and privateer organizations often are more happy to deal in raw resources and equipment that enable them to better their prospects. The notorious White Fang pirates began in this manner, and have grown into the power that they are on the fringe in large part because of how effectively - and ruthlessly - they fulfilled their contracts.
Raiders don’t serve any masters but themselves, and their whole reason for doing what they do is perhaps the most selfish of all pirate types. More likely to target static settlements than wayward ships, raiders are known for dropping out of warpspace, assaulting a target quick and hard, loading up anything that they can carry, and blasting off again before reprisal can strike them. Speed and efficiency are the order of the day for raiders, but the more exceptional outfits tend to also delve into mercenary work; targeting the holdings of a specific target in order to retrieve for themselves or their client some valuable item or other. The Orum’ka (no relation to our goodboy medic Bromm’ka, I assure you) are perhaps the most successful and pervasive raiders in the galaxy, daring even to venture to the edge of the core in their search for greater riches. How they continue to evade the best efforts of the Authority Star Fleet and GalSec combined continues to be a question on the minds of many.
Jackers are the final general category of pirate that roams the galaxy, and for their fellow starfarers they are also considered the most worrying. Jackers have no interest in raiding targets for supplies, nor in smuggling goods or dealing in flesh. Their interest instead lies in starships themselves; the disabling, the boarding, the slaving and the breaking of otherwise owned ships, to their own profit. Jackers, or shipjacks, are the only variety of pirate in the galaxy that’s more likely to be encountered solo rather than as part of a group; you can’t exactly break a ship down to pay out the catch evenly between multiple members, can you? The most basic jackers steal their prey while dirtside or station-locked, but the true elites among them - most predominantly the legendary shipjack known only as Nova and never positively identified by GalSec - claim their prey while in flight. In the best case scenario, such as with Nova, the previous occupant is also claimed and safely conveyed to the nearest livable location. Many other jackers are more than happy to simply blast the hapless crew of their targets and vac them.
Use of Weapons
No discussion about pirates would be complete without touching briefly on the role that they’ve played in the seemingly never-ending conflict between the Galactic Authority and the Rashemai Cluster. Ever since the (alleged) black-flag operation conducted against the Rashemai that resulted in the galaxy’s first true war, pirate outfits have been used as intermediaries between all manner of entities wishing to keep their paws clean while taking their rivals down a peg.
This phenomenon is not reserved simply for Authority/Cluster conflicts, it must be said. Authority politics and interplanetary relations are entirely difficult to manage at the best of times, and it’s the worst-kept secret in the galaxy that the administrations of several worlds are more than willing to make use of the services of raiders and mercenary outfits in the interest of inhibiting their rivals in whatever way pirates might see fit to do. The pirates in question often don’t mind, and they certainly don’t ask questions of their own; why would they, when they’re getting paid a tidy sum and often get to keep the spoils of their nefarious activities? No one looks gift creds in the muzzle, pirates least of all.
Similarly, and in regards to some political matters touched on a couple of entries ago, the Galactic Authority has been known to surreptitiously (though never with evidence) make use of pirate raiders against the colony worlds on the fringe that are a little less interested in maintaining a presence within the GA system. Some colony worlds grow quickly and develop an individualistic streak, choosing to become independent systems outside the Authority. When diplomatic channels fail to bridge this gap, it’s not unheard of (though, again, difficult to prove) for the Authority to make use of pirate forces to prove the dangers of fringe colonies, and how essential their benevolent guidance and protection is to any burgeoning colonial effort. Few are the colonies that withstand this pressure for long.
In a more mundane sense, pirates are also occasionally contracted to perform less morally-questionable acts than those above. If Trade Coalition ships are to pass through a region of space frequented by a specific pirate operation, for example, said operation might have a visit from a Trade Coalition negotiator who seeks to sue for the convoy’s safe passage through the area. The price is often less than the pirate would score from taking on the convoy, but absent any of the risk involved if they went after it with their instincts and weapons bared. Similarly, if the convoy is to travel through a region of space occupied by multiple groups, often the negotiator will seek audience with the most mighty of the various criminal groups.
This is preferable for the Trade Coalition, as it allows them to employ the might of said pirates in place of their own security forces (a not insignificant saving on their part, more often than not) and suffer no losses should the convoy come under attack (sacrificing the paid pirates to make their escape). GalSec is happy to look the other way; when local groups skirmish like that, it’s all less work that they have to undertake themselves. Most consider this to be lazy on GalSec’s part. They would claim that they merely work smarter, not harder.
But this simply the most benign method by which these “independent contractors” might find themselves engaged. All too often, worlds and administrations looking to curry favor with the galactic community as a whole will seek to do this by knocking down the ambitions of their immediate neighbors in an effort to lift themselves up. After all, even the most quiet backwater can look like a major player if those around them have been suitably taken down in the galactic standings somewhat. Endurance, and the ability to leverage local resources, displays a degree of command over one’s region that is looked most favorably on by the Galactic Authority.
On The Other Side
And finally, the Rashemai. The situation there is not as clear-cut and simple as it might seem, at first glance. On the one paw, it might appear a viable option for Rashemai forces to strike back at their hated oppressors in the Galactic Authority through the use of the same pirates that were once (allegedly) used to so terribly upset the balance of galactic peace. This would be apt, if not for one tiny, niggling problem: Rashemai pride.
The Rashemai can be counted on to never, ever, ever be the ones employing privateers to strike against the Galactic Authority, purely because such a thing wouldn’t sit right in their collective cultural outlook. To engage in the tactics of their enemies would be beyond dishonorable; it would be unthinkable. It would be so far beneath them that it would never be possible for it to see daylight. And worse, it would so utterly taint any victories achieved. Rashemai, after all, would not have won those victories. Pirates would have. Rashemai would not have struck back. Pirates would have. That those pirates might have acted on Rashemai’s behalf would be irrelevant. Such a victory would only show that Rashemai are so weak that they must stoop to letting others do their fighting for them; that they are so cowardly that they would spare themselves a respectable death in the name of freedom and let someone else take that fall for them.
This is, incidentally, something very well known within the Galactic Authority and its various intelligence agencies. They know they won’t ever fall prey to the same sort of black flag operation that Rashemai accused them of enacting. They can count, quite literally, on the Rashemai belligerence and pride keeping them from accessing a potentially valuable weapon they could use against the Authority. And since pirates do regularly patrol Rashemai space just as surely as they do that of the Galactic Authority, it’s widely believed that this is part of why the Authority doesn’t crack down as hard as they could. Why, after all, deprive yourself of a tool your enemy refuses to utilize?
There is however, as ever, one final and interesting data point to be noted. While Rashemai do not make use of pirates to do their fighting for them, it is not uncommon for Rashemai instigators and firebrands with slightly lower volumes of moral fiber to join these pirate outfits. They’re very choosy with whom they serve, and they certainly don’t allow themselves to be used against Rashemai targets. This serves two purposes: the Rashemai firebrands are able to strike meaningfully against the Galactic Authority (often through their civilians, which is why only particularly nasty Rashemai do so), and the pirate organizations gain a zealous and dedicated new recruit. Said pirates are often glad to restrict Rashemai targets as a result, and since Galactic Authority targets are often more valuable anyway, there’s no effective harm done. Everyone wins, except the Galactic Authority, which suits the firebrands just fine.
And this is just the pirates! There’s all manner of crime in the galaxy, and it’s far too much to put in this post. Maybe, if later stories touch on such things, I’ll dive into it in greater detail. We’ll have to wait and see, but for now this should serve as a great primer to the seedier figures lurking in the black and making fringe space as dangerous as it is.
Next time though, we’ll take a step mostly away from piracy and into the real stars of any sci-fi setting: ships! We’ll go over classifications, analogs, role, and find out just where in the grand constellation of star craft in the galaxy that the titular Void Dreamer happens to sit.
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Void Dreaming Blog IX - The Astrogation Guild
Posted 10 months agoHey there! Fae back again with another Void Dreaming post!
Last time we took a look at the formation of the Galactic Authority, some of its earliest and biggest roadblocks, and the state of the galaxy post-ascension for the children of Terra. Today though we delve into something more important than the peoples of the galaxy give credit for: the Astrogation Guild itself, and what role it, and crews like Zuberi’s, has in shaping the greater galaxy.
Scaling Problems
Space is big. Really big. But you all knew that already, I have no doubt. Our galaxy is, end to end, over a hundred thousand light years in size. And given the volume covered by even one light year, that should give you an idea of just exactly how massive space is. There’s a lot to see and chart, but the reality is that faster than light travel really tends to reduce a lot of that distance. After all, most of space is very, very empty. Well… sort of empty. We’ll get to that.
Early on in the ascent of the children of Terra to the stars, every species had their own mechanisms to explore the black. This would eventually coalesce into the Astrogation Guild; a loose outfit that was dedicated to stellar cartography, exploration, and the establishment of safe, efficient transit between worlds. Nominally a non-corporate entity but still separate from all governmental bodies, the Astrogation Guild was considered a public good, funded by various governments and allowed to retain a certain degree of autonomy as long as its discoveries were freely available to everyone. Truly, the Astrogation Guild is, right to the modern day, one of the last bastions of altruistic operation in the whole galaxy… for better and worse.
However, while charting worlds and surveying the depths of space are its stated goals, the reality is that the Astrogation Guild’s most common operations are, effectively, weather forecasting. To explain that however, we need to move away from the organization for a moment and talk about extradimensional space and the extrusion of warp envelopes in conjunction with causal anchors to allow… you know what? I can see your eyes glazing over from here. Let’s just start with warpspace itself.
They Should Have Sent A Poet
Warpspace is a parallel region of spacetime that exists concurrently with the physical universe, commonly referred to as realspace (or meatspace, for those who prefer the vulgar). The two interact in fundamental ways through certain bridging forces, such as gravity, and under normal conditions never the twain shall meet. Warpspace is a tempestuous thing by four-dimensional reasoning, but its laws can be learned, known, and manipulated even from the point of view of our limited fleshy bodies and brains. There are many applications that tap warpspace, from FTL travel to instantaneous communication across vast distances, to even short-range displacement tech. When distances need to be covered in one form or another, warpspace is the shortcut.
Warpspace is hostile, but that hostility can be easily managed with the technology available to the ascended. Simple shield arrays are able to keep the harsh and exotic radiation from breaching hull and shredding organic matter, while also maintaining the warp envelope that the ship traversing warpspace sits within. So long as the warp core is powered and the envelope maintained, a starship is propelled through warpspace at speeds not possible in realspace. Of course these power requirements are enormous, but most modern starships are powered by tachyon fusion reactors that are capable of power generation orders of magnitude greater than merely enormous.
While warpspace itself is completely imperceptible to the average person, viewing it through a warp envelope reveals a kaleidoscopic array of shifting colorrs, changing and twisting seemingly at random. To the enlightened, there’s a pattern within the depths of warpspace; a governing force that eludes comprehension by the ascended. But they know it’s there, tantalizingly at the edge of their comprehension of transdimensional physics. If nothing else, warpspace traversal is very pretty.
But it is something else, too. It’s more dangerous than most realize.
Category Five
I mentioned above that warpspace can be tempestuous, and that’s entirely accurate. Its currents and densities shift and change in often predictable ways, but this can also result in pockets of excited activity commonly referred to as warpstorms. While these warpstorms have no effect on realspace, the area in which a warpstorm occurs disrupts and destabilizes warpspace. This disruption can have catastrophic effects on starships which traverse the disrupted warpspace within the storm, can lead to temporary communications outages while GalNet routes are recalculated through different relays, and even at their most mild are capable of significantly slowing warpspace travel.
All of warpspace carries a hint of distortion, according to a scale first developed by the Astrogation Guild. This scale goes from zero to one, with either extreme being only theoretically modeled. Lower values represent limited warpspace distortion, and higher values represent significantly higher. Most civilian starships in the galaxy are rated to a warpspace distortion of point three. Particularly specialized ships can push to point four. Milgrade ships in use by various navies require warpcores capable of pushing them through point five.
The Dreamer can push point five two. Zuberi does not skimp on his baby.
Many mundane elements can cause warpspace distortion, of course. Incorrectly harmonized warp shielding can result in a starship’s warp envelope destabilizing warpspace in its wake. If this happens in highly-traveled space, the distortion can have a knock-on effect, cascading rapidly as more and more ships traverse the disrupted space. It can also happen when people deliberately deharmonize their warp shielding, as this also makes their warplines harder to track and follow. Pirates, smugglers, and other ne’er-do-wells are more than happy to sacrifice the jump range they lose with deharmonized shielding in order to make their trajectory harder to follow.
This, ultimately, is the primary purpose of the Astrogation Guild. Far from the exciting star explorers in the holos, most AG platforms, ships, and staff are stationed at key monitoring sites all over the galaxy. Their job is observance and analysis of warpspace data, so as to ensure that galactic travel doesn’t come to a grinding halt. The average person doesn’t realize just how much they rely on the analysts of the AG to keep them safe, because even in the core the threat of improperly traversed warpspace is surprisingly prevalent. It doesn’t take much to turn a safe travel route into a nightmare of delays at best, and destruction at worst.
After all, not every ship that makes its hyperlaunch arrives at its destination. Not every ship returns to the real when they leave it.
We Brave Few
However, there is one branch of the Astrogation Guild that’s far less boring… though still, often, pretty dull. The Deep Space Survey Division of the guild is where we find Zuberi, the Void Dreamer, and in short order Rael himself. The captains of the DSSD are usually volunteers willing to risk their lives and their ships by traversing fringe space - that region at the edge of inhabited space beyond which has yet to be discovered - and launching into the great unknown.
You might think that the AG would supply their own craft, but because of their “galactic service” role, the Astrogation Guild doesn’t usually have the allocated funds to do so. Instead, they organize tours of fringe space with those captains that have met their rigorous standards, and arrange the training of personnel to the end of ensuring that they are capable of serving in the capacity required of them.
There are, of course, many reasons why a captain would do this. While it puts their own ship on the line, galactic law is relaxed for the operation of sanctioned AG vessels. This means that restrictions on the quality (and lethality) of ship components are lifted, and private ownership and operation of even military-grade starships can be made legal as long as the ship is a registered and licensed Astrogation Guild survey vessel. It proves necessary all too often; the dangers of fringe space are seldom exaggerated.
Hence, many would-be thrill-seekers and starship enthusiasts tend to gravitate toward the Astrogation Guild as a means by which they can push their ships to the absolute limits. The thrill-seekers are swiftly disappointed by the mundanity of deep-space survey duties, but starship enthusiasts find all too often much to love about taking their ships out far beyond the fringe. And some, like Zuberi, love the peace and solitude that comes with being self-sufficient out in the black.
As for what else comes with the job of a deep-space surveyor? Well, you’ll have to read Void Dreaming to find out, won’t you?
I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief look at the Astrogation Guild! Next time, we’re going to dive into an aspect of fringe society that Rael can be all too familiar with, and that the Dreamer for certain has dealt with from time to time. We’re going to talk star pirates, from their organizations to their goals and to how and why there even could be star pirates in a setting like this!
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Last time we took a look at the formation of the Galactic Authority, some of its earliest and biggest roadblocks, and the state of the galaxy post-ascension for the children of Terra. Today though we delve into something more important than the peoples of the galaxy give credit for: the Astrogation Guild itself, and what role it, and crews like Zuberi’s, has in shaping the greater galaxy.
Scaling Problems
Space is big. Really big. But you all knew that already, I have no doubt. Our galaxy is, end to end, over a hundred thousand light years in size. And given the volume covered by even one light year, that should give you an idea of just exactly how massive space is. There’s a lot to see and chart, but the reality is that faster than light travel really tends to reduce a lot of that distance. After all, most of space is very, very empty. Well… sort of empty. We’ll get to that.
Early on in the ascent of the children of Terra to the stars, every species had their own mechanisms to explore the black. This would eventually coalesce into the Astrogation Guild; a loose outfit that was dedicated to stellar cartography, exploration, and the establishment of safe, efficient transit between worlds. Nominally a non-corporate entity but still separate from all governmental bodies, the Astrogation Guild was considered a public good, funded by various governments and allowed to retain a certain degree of autonomy as long as its discoveries were freely available to everyone. Truly, the Astrogation Guild is, right to the modern day, one of the last bastions of altruistic operation in the whole galaxy… for better and worse.
However, while charting worlds and surveying the depths of space are its stated goals, the reality is that the Astrogation Guild’s most common operations are, effectively, weather forecasting. To explain that however, we need to move away from the organization for a moment and talk about extradimensional space and the extrusion of warp envelopes in conjunction with causal anchors to allow… you know what? I can see your eyes glazing over from here. Let’s just start with warpspace itself.
They Should Have Sent A Poet
Warpspace is a parallel region of spacetime that exists concurrently with the physical universe, commonly referred to as realspace (or meatspace, for those who prefer the vulgar). The two interact in fundamental ways through certain bridging forces, such as gravity, and under normal conditions never the twain shall meet. Warpspace is a tempestuous thing by four-dimensional reasoning, but its laws can be learned, known, and manipulated even from the point of view of our limited fleshy bodies and brains. There are many applications that tap warpspace, from FTL travel to instantaneous communication across vast distances, to even short-range displacement tech. When distances need to be covered in one form or another, warpspace is the shortcut.
Warpspace is hostile, but that hostility can be easily managed with the technology available to the ascended. Simple shield arrays are able to keep the harsh and exotic radiation from breaching hull and shredding organic matter, while also maintaining the warp envelope that the ship traversing warpspace sits within. So long as the warp core is powered and the envelope maintained, a starship is propelled through warpspace at speeds not possible in realspace. Of course these power requirements are enormous, but most modern starships are powered by tachyon fusion reactors that are capable of power generation orders of magnitude greater than merely enormous.
While warpspace itself is completely imperceptible to the average person, viewing it through a warp envelope reveals a kaleidoscopic array of shifting colorrs, changing and twisting seemingly at random. To the enlightened, there’s a pattern within the depths of warpspace; a governing force that eludes comprehension by the ascended. But they know it’s there, tantalizingly at the edge of their comprehension of transdimensional physics. If nothing else, warpspace traversal is very pretty.
But it is something else, too. It’s more dangerous than most realize.
Category Five
I mentioned above that warpspace can be tempestuous, and that’s entirely accurate. Its currents and densities shift and change in often predictable ways, but this can also result in pockets of excited activity commonly referred to as warpstorms. While these warpstorms have no effect on realspace, the area in which a warpstorm occurs disrupts and destabilizes warpspace. This disruption can have catastrophic effects on starships which traverse the disrupted warpspace within the storm, can lead to temporary communications outages while GalNet routes are recalculated through different relays, and even at their most mild are capable of significantly slowing warpspace travel.
All of warpspace carries a hint of distortion, according to a scale first developed by the Astrogation Guild. This scale goes from zero to one, with either extreme being only theoretically modeled. Lower values represent limited warpspace distortion, and higher values represent significantly higher. Most civilian starships in the galaxy are rated to a warpspace distortion of point three. Particularly specialized ships can push to point four. Milgrade ships in use by various navies require warpcores capable of pushing them through point five.
The Dreamer can push point five two. Zuberi does not skimp on his baby.
Many mundane elements can cause warpspace distortion, of course. Incorrectly harmonized warp shielding can result in a starship’s warp envelope destabilizing warpspace in its wake. If this happens in highly-traveled space, the distortion can have a knock-on effect, cascading rapidly as more and more ships traverse the disrupted space. It can also happen when people deliberately deharmonize their warp shielding, as this also makes their warplines harder to track and follow. Pirates, smugglers, and other ne’er-do-wells are more than happy to sacrifice the jump range they lose with deharmonized shielding in order to make their trajectory harder to follow.
This, ultimately, is the primary purpose of the Astrogation Guild. Far from the exciting star explorers in the holos, most AG platforms, ships, and staff are stationed at key monitoring sites all over the galaxy. Their job is observance and analysis of warpspace data, so as to ensure that galactic travel doesn’t come to a grinding halt. The average person doesn’t realize just how much they rely on the analysts of the AG to keep them safe, because even in the core the threat of improperly traversed warpspace is surprisingly prevalent. It doesn’t take much to turn a safe travel route into a nightmare of delays at best, and destruction at worst.
After all, not every ship that makes its hyperlaunch arrives at its destination. Not every ship returns to the real when they leave it.
We Brave Few
However, there is one branch of the Astrogation Guild that’s far less boring… though still, often, pretty dull. The Deep Space Survey Division of the guild is where we find Zuberi, the Void Dreamer, and in short order Rael himself. The captains of the DSSD are usually volunteers willing to risk their lives and their ships by traversing fringe space - that region at the edge of inhabited space beyond which has yet to be discovered - and launching into the great unknown.
You might think that the AG would supply their own craft, but because of their “galactic service” role, the Astrogation Guild doesn’t usually have the allocated funds to do so. Instead, they organize tours of fringe space with those captains that have met their rigorous standards, and arrange the training of personnel to the end of ensuring that they are capable of serving in the capacity required of them.
There are, of course, many reasons why a captain would do this. While it puts their own ship on the line, galactic law is relaxed for the operation of sanctioned AG vessels. This means that restrictions on the quality (and lethality) of ship components are lifted, and private ownership and operation of even military-grade starships can be made legal as long as the ship is a registered and licensed Astrogation Guild survey vessel. It proves necessary all too often; the dangers of fringe space are seldom exaggerated.
Hence, many would-be thrill-seekers and starship enthusiasts tend to gravitate toward the Astrogation Guild as a means by which they can push their ships to the absolute limits. The thrill-seekers are swiftly disappointed by the mundanity of deep-space survey duties, but starship enthusiasts find all too often much to love about taking their ships out far beyond the fringe. And some, like Zuberi, love the peace and solitude that comes with being self-sufficient out in the black.
As for what else comes with the job of a deep-space surveyor? Well, you’ll have to read Void Dreaming to find out, won’t you?
I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief look at the Astrogation Guild! Next time, we’re going to dive into an aspect of fringe society that Rael can be all too familiar with, and that the Dreamer for certain has dealt with from time to time. We’re going to talk star pirates, from their organizations to their goals and to how and why there even could be star pirates in a setting like this!
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Void Dreaming Blog VIII - The Galactic Authority
Posted 10 months agoHey there! Fae back again with another Void Dreaming post!
Last time we took a look at the formation of the Galactic Authority, some of its earliest and biggest roadblocks, and the state of the galaxy post-ascension for the children of Terra. Today we’re going to take a deeper look into the biggest power player in galactic politics and delve into how the Galactic Authority functions. Or… how it doesn’t.
Enter the Bureaucrat
Politics gets a bad rap. And… it deserves it.
… okay, I can’t just leave it there.
A few things make the world turn, no matter if that world is a nation, a planet, or a galaxy. Money is the key to the age-old adage, but it’s hardly the only one. Knowledge is power, might makes right, and it’s not what you know; it’s who you know. In the Galactic Authority, all of these things are true at all times, but which is most important depends as much on where you are as what the Authority itself thinks about things.
The Galactic Authority, as we discussed in the last entry, is a multi-world-spanning bureaucracy that holds sway over the entire civilized galaxy. Planetary representatives are (usually) democratically elected to (hopefully) serve their (oft frustrated) constituent worlds at a planetary level in the Galactic Parliament. These representatives debate policy and doctrine, cut deals, align themselves with various parties and groups of similar interest, and generally speaking earn a frankly embarrassing amount of money for work that essentially boils down to getting angry at what their peers are saying and doing.
It’s good work, if you can find it. It is also, unfortunately for representatives, a volatile position. All their perks and pay and privilege can be thrown out on the whims of their constituents, and the whole Parliament finds itself up for reelection once every three standard years. Thus, representatives that do not adequately deliver for their homeworlds can find themselves swiftly replaced by an apathetic voter base. Despite a lack of term limits on these representatives, many find themselves either advancing within a couple of decades, fading into obscurity, or leaving politics entirely.
That said, many long-time members of the Galactic Parliament fight as hard as they can to advocate for their people, their needs… and of course for the interests of those who front the creds for their campaigns. Many do this because they simply wish to maintain their position, but some have loftier ambitions than simply sitting a parliamentary seat. Some set their sights much, much higher.
Not My Department
But before we get deeper into the politics of the Galactic Authority, the bureaucratic monolith that drives its various ministries is worthy of note. After all, it’s the politician’s job to argue loudly in front of the holocorders all day, and to get those soundbites for the next news dispatch. It’s not their job to actually manage the functions of the galaxy at large, as that joy belongs to the various departments to steer the ungainly beast that is the GA.
And beyond that, high-level roles with many of these departments confer far more benefit and power than can be achieved by any mere member of the Galactic Parliament. For those who want to move beyond the battle for electorates and the votes earned by the goodwill and hope (or fear) of their populations and secure some real power, this is a viable avenue. While there’s multitudes of different departments in the Galactic Authority, I’ll touch only on some of the biggest and most influential of them here.
The Department of Fleet Command oversees the entire military arm of the Galactic Authority, and is widely considered to hold some of the greatest sway with the political bodies that run the Authority itself. Contrary to its name, the DFC does not limit itself just to starships and their operation; all military matters in the Authority are conducted to some extent through this department.
The Department of Commerce is widely considered to be a joke among the people of the galaxy, as this department exists solely to serve as a regulator over the efforts of various commercial and trade organizations that operate within Authority space. The joke is the idea that they might ever actually do that job, as most members of the department also hold down advisory jobs with various megacorporate interests, like with the ubiquitous Trade Coalition, or megacorps like BSS and Cyner Solutions.
The Authority Intelligence Bureau is the intelligence service of the Galactic Authority, and also oversees Galactic Security, or GalSec; the galaxy-wide police force. Split into Acquisitions (handling spying operations on various entities), Management (dealing with active operations against specific targets) and Security (GalSec operations), the AIB is unofficially referred to as the Department of Security by most common people. It’s worth noting that GalSec and the Authority Star Fleet have a long-standing and sizable rivalry, with the former seeing the latter as the favored operation who gets the best toys, while they’re forced to do their job understaffed and underequipped. Public opinion often sides with GalSec’s assessment.
There are various departments that fall broadly under the Department of Citizen Affairs, each one delineated cleanly by astrographic location. Clusters of systems are collected together under grouped headings where their official role is the assessment of citizen concerns and the liaison between other GA departments and those worlds for the resolution of disputes and the maximization of positive outcomes for all. In reality, the various subdepartments of the DCA become everyone’s punching bag more often than not, as worlds find their concerns lost in the noise and the Galactic Parliament harassing them for not doing more to help their constituents. It’s said that no one takes a job at the DCA unless they’re a masochist, and few are the workers there who could contest that assessment.
Finally (for this brief look, at least!), there is the Department of Law. Charged with overseeing a galaxy-wide judicial system and the standardized enforcement of the Galactic Authority’s law, nothing tries their patience than the legal rights of birthworlds; those worlds where the Seeds were placed and the children of Terra were raised. These birthworlds all too often prefer to do things their own way, and have little interest in the galaxy around them as long as their traditions can be upheld. This forces the DoL into a difficult position, as unlike the rest of the galaxy where GA law can be reasonably enforced, founding principles of the Galactic Authority constitutionally protect the traditional practices of the birthworlds. These contradictions cause the majority of legal friction for the department, who are more often than not powerless to prevent birthworlds from acting in their own interest and not the Authority’s.
The Department of Law is also intimately tied with the Galactic Parliament, as it’s their job to rule on the laws passed by the government. Even more intimately than the Parliament, they are also deeply involved with the ones who hold the Parliament’s leash: the Ruling Council.
The Will of the Council
The Ruling Council is a tightly-controlled body that consists of a limited number of seats, with Councilors drawn from all over the Authority’s administration. Council seats are filled by majority vote from the existing members of the Ruling Council from shortlists put forward by the seat’s representative department of government, but exceptions exist. For example, the Grand Admiral’s seat on the Ruling Council is traditionally only ever held by the current holder of that rank within the Authority Star Fleet. Generally the Ruling Council chooses from among the candidates who best should lead, and that person is installed in that rank and granted their seat on the council.
When it works, this meritocratic oligarchy results in the most apt person filling high-ranking roles in the Authority government. When it doesn’t, this results in cronyism and abuses of power. The Ruling Council tries to keep its preference picks nice and quiet to avoid stirring up backlash from the general public. That said, the Ruling Council is an extremely insular body. Those elected to its ranks are elected by other Councilors, and a Councilor may only be removed from their seat by a 51% vote in the Ruling Council, or a 67% vote from the Galactic Parliament. This has happened only very rarely since the formation of the Authority, despite their similar lack of term limits as the members of the Parliament.
Councilors are not only drawn from the branches of government, however. Powerful corporate entities such as BSS and the Trade Coalition hold influential council seats by virtue of their thorough integration into the galactic economy. A few seats are even elected to the Ruling Council by majority vote in the Galactic Parliament, elevating a member to their ranks to be a voice for the Parliament and the people they ostensibly represent. For those parliamentary members who are especially talented, this can allow them to skip the administrative busywork of departmental influence and secure some real power.
Only some, though. They call the head of the GA a Speaker for a reason.
I Am The Senate
The leader of the Galactic Authority is the Speaker, and there is no higher authority in all the galaxy. Elected to their position by majority vote of the Ruling Council, the Speaker’s job is to dictate policy and see it carried out by the efforts of the Ruling Council. This nominally-democratic role is held for terms of no more than five standard years, with a four-term limit on any Speaker holding the position to prevent prolonged abuse of their authority.
As implied above, the Speaker’s role is not to be a listener. Their role is to provide broad policy framework, and to be a spokesperson for the Galactic Authority as a whole. Far from being a figurehead role elected by the Ruling Council, most Speakers in Authority history have been very decisive with their powers. Graft and abuse of their power has been kept to either a minimum, or at the least a visible minimum.
Much like a Councilor, a Speaker may only be forced from their seat by a 67% vote in the Ruling Council. The Parliament requires a unanimous vote instead; neither has ever been done in the entire lifetime of the Galactic Authority. The closest that it came was the Speakership of Ulayrin Ozfik, who was at the time a significant beneficiary of the Jostari Raiders; a particularly cruel and elusive slave-running organization whom he had used the power of his office to protect and profit from. Even then, Speaker Ozfik was only able to secure 89% of the Parliamentary vote required to oust him; it took riots across seven core worlds for the Ruling Council to step in, and the threat of they themselves unanimously removing him from power was enough for Ozfik to resign instead.
It’s worth noting that the role of Speaker is seldom challenged. They are no galactic emperor, after all; there are limits to their power and what they’re capable of doing. Abusive Speakers like the infamous Ozfik tend not to last too long, because the clearing of one Speaker paves the way for another to take over. The Ruling Council is often full of ambitious figures with their eyes on the Speaker’s seat, and the knowledge that abuse of their powers could swiftly see allies turn on them to remove them from that power is oftentimes enough to keep them from straying too far. This honor system too is not foolproof; Ozfik still sat for two full terms before resignation in his third. It’s believed, though unproven, that enough members of the Ruling Council were in his pocket to keep them from supporting any vote to unseat him until the very end.
The notion that a Speaker might rise to power and so thoroughly corrupt the systems in place as to be all-powerful has yet to be put to the test, but conventional wisdom suggests that such a circumstance would be unlikely to occur. Such a repugnant, repellent Speaker would require cronies at every level of government to facilitate them, and that repugnance makes such a proposition unlikely at best. After all, even a system as volatile and laden with corruption as the Galactic Parliament could never stoop that low.
Perish the thought.
Yes, Minister
Scaling back from the chaos of the Galactic Parliament and the Ruling Council, I did mention that worlds mostly democratically elect their own representatives to the Parliament. While this is generally true, it only holds on a world by world basis. The Parliament itself is a representative democracy, but how representatives are chosen by their respective worlds gets considerably fuzzier.
While democracy is the norm across the galaxy, there are a handful of monarchies that still maintain either nominal or literal political power. In those cases, a representative is usually chosen from among the royalty by the sitting monarch. Very rarely will it be the monarch themselves, what with having a world to run, and all. Such things are very time consuming.
Still, these are the exceptions rather than the rule. The scope of the Authority is such that totalitarianism on a worldwide scale is more trouble than it’s worth. The GalNet, ubiquitous communications network that it is, cannot be easily severed from a people, nor is interstellar travel particularly difficult to obtain. Would-be planetary-scale warlords swiftly find themselves chewed up and spat out at the galactic level, usually by the Authority Star Fleet or by infiltration by Authority Intelligence Bureau agents.
That said, the Parliamentary member for a given world is often not the most powerful person from that planet. This honour goes most often to the Planetary Administrator (on core worlds), the Prime Minister (on mid-rim worlds), the Colonial Administrator (on freshly-founded colonial worlds), or… whatever passes for governance on semi-independent rim and fringe settlements.
Planetary Administrators and Prime Ministers are often elected by the representative bodies of the various smaller nations or domains of their worlds. Their role is that of the Speaker in microcosm, dictating policy to be implemented by their allies and fellows in whatever form of governing body their world possesses. This is a simple affair on most core worlds, who generally adopt a scaled-down equivalent of the galactic-scale system for use on their world. This works, and suffers, in the same way as it does for the Authority at large.
A notable exception is the core world of Torderra. The most important trade hub in the galaxy, Torderra is the trade gateway to the entire core sector, and has a long and sordid history with politics. Robust political discourse is the order of the day on Torderra, with the upper echelons of society rigorously engaging back and forth on the best way to approach societal problems. Politics on Torderra is as much as game as it is a serious matter, and as such it has a party-based system - in Torderra’s case built around pseudo-noble houses and the political dynasties that they spawn - that is unique among the core and much more common on the mid-rim. Its representative chambers are all democratically elected, and political theatre on Torderra is often broadcast for all the galaxy (and especially the core) to see. It’s often said that where Torderra goes, the whole core eventually follows. Some wonder if perhaps that’s why the Authority’s political system is so messy.
As a final note, Rael can be intimately familiar with such discourse; a Core-Worlder Rael grew up on Torderra, and boy oh boy, can he have thoughts about all of this. It is, after all, something of a Torderran tradition to have your opinions and to state them loudly.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little look into the politics of the Galactic Authority! Continuing the theme of worldbuilding but in a manner that will be much more relevant to the story, next time we’re going to be talking about the Astrogation Guild; employers of Zuberi and his crew and the people responsible for Rael boarding the Dreamer in the first place! We’ll talk stellar cartography, the nature of FTL travel, and we’ll do our very best not to arrive before we start!
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Last time we took a look at the formation of the Galactic Authority, some of its earliest and biggest roadblocks, and the state of the galaxy post-ascension for the children of Terra. Today we’re going to take a deeper look into the biggest power player in galactic politics and delve into how the Galactic Authority functions. Or… how it doesn’t.
Enter the Bureaucrat
Politics gets a bad rap. And… it deserves it.
… okay, I can’t just leave it there.
A few things make the world turn, no matter if that world is a nation, a planet, or a galaxy. Money is the key to the age-old adage, but it’s hardly the only one. Knowledge is power, might makes right, and it’s not what you know; it’s who you know. In the Galactic Authority, all of these things are true at all times, but which is most important depends as much on where you are as what the Authority itself thinks about things.
The Galactic Authority, as we discussed in the last entry, is a multi-world-spanning bureaucracy that holds sway over the entire civilized galaxy. Planetary representatives are (usually) democratically elected to (hopefully) serve their (oft frustrated) constituent worlds at a planetary level in the Galactic Parliament. These representatives debate policy and doctrine, cut deals, align themselves with various parties and groups of similar interest, and generally speaking earn a frankly embarrassing amount of money for work that essentially boils down to getting angry at what their peers are saying and doing.
It’s good work, if you can find it. It is also, unfortunately for representatives, a volatile position. All their perks and pay and privilege can be thrown out on the whims of their constituents, and the whole Parliament finds itself up for reelection once every three standard years. Thus, representatives that do not adequately deliver for their homeworlds can find themselves swiftly replaced by an apathetic voter base. Despite a lack of term limits on these representatives, many find themselves either advancing within a couple of decades, fading into obscurity, or leaving politics entirely.
That said, many long-time members of the Galactic Parliament fight as hard as they can to advocate for their people, their needs… and of course for the interests of those who front the creds for their campaigns. Many do this because they simply wish to maintain their position, but some have loftier ambitions than simply sitting a parliamentary seat. Some set their sights much, much higher.
Not My Department
But before we get deeper into the politics of the Galactic Authority, the bureaucratic monolith that drives its various ministries is worthy of note. After all, it’s the politician’s job to argue loudly in front of the holocorders all day, and to get those soundbites for the next news dispatch. It’s not their job to actually manage the functions of the galaxy at large, as that joy belongs to the various departments to steer the ungainly beast that is the GA.
And beyond that, high-level roles with many of these departments confer far more benefit and power than can be achieved by any mere member of the Galactic Parliament. For those who want to move beyond the battle for electorates and the votes earned by the goodwill and hope (or fear) of their populations and secure some real power, this is a viable avenue. While there’s multitudes of different departments in the Galactic Authority, I’ll touch only on some of the biggest and most influential of them here.
The Department of Fleet Command oversees the entire military arm of the Galactic Authority, and is widely considered to hold some of the greatest sway with the political bodies that run the Authority itself. Contrary to its name, the DFC does not limit itself just to starships and their operation; all military matters in the Authority are conducted to some extent through this department.
The Department of Commerce is widely considered to be a joke among the people of the galaxy, as this department exists solely to serve as a regulator over the efforts of various commercial and trade organizations that operate within Authority space. The joke is the idea that they might ever actually do that job, as most members of the department also hold down advisory jobs with various megacorporate interests, like with the ubiquitous Trade Coalition, or megacorps like BSS and Cyner Solutions.
The Authority Intelligence Bureau is the intelligence service of the Galactic Authority, and also oversees Galactic Security, or GalSec; the galaxy-wide police force. Split into Acquisitions (handling spying operations on various entities), Management (dealing with active operations against specific targets) and Security (GalSec operations), the AIB is unofficially referred to as the Department of Security by most common people. It’s worth noting that GalSec and the Authority Star Fleet have a long-standing and sizable rivalry, with the former seeing the latter as the favored operation who gets the best toys, while they’re forced to do their job understaffed and underequipped. Public opinion often sides with GalSec’s assessment.
There are various departments that fall broadly under the Department of Citizen Affairs, each one delineated cleanly by astrographic location. Clusters of systems are collected together under grouped headings where their official role is the assessment of citizen concerns and the liaison between other GA departments and those worlds for the resolution of disputes and the maximization of positive outcomes for all. In reality, the various subdepartments of the DCA become everyone’s punching bag more often than not, as worlds find their concerns lost in the noise and the Galactic Parliament harassing them for not doing more to help their constituents. It’s said that no one takes a job at the DCA unless they’re a masochist, and few are the workers there who could contest that assessment.
Finally (for this brief look, at least!), there is the Department of Law. Charged with overseeing a galaxy-wide judicial system and the standardized enforcement of the Galactic Authority’s law, nothing tries their patience than the legal rights of birthworlds; those worlds where the Seeds were placed and the children of Terra were raised. These birthworlds all too often prefer to do things their own way, and have little interest in the galaxy around them as long as their traditions can be upheld. This forces the DoL into a difficult position, as unlike the rest of the galaxy where GA law can be reasonably enforced, founding principles of the Galactic Authority constitutionally protect the traditional practices of the birthworlds. These contradictions cause the majority of legal friction for the department, who are more often than not powerless to prevent birthworlds from acting in their own interest and not the Authority’s.
The Department of Law is also intimately tied with the Galactic Parliament, as it’s their job to rule on the laws passed by the government. Even more intimately than the Parliament, they are also deeply involved with the ones who hold the Parliament’s leash: the Ruling Council.
The Will of the Council
The Ruling Council is a tightly-controlled body that consists of a limited number of seats, with Councilors drawn from all over the Authority’s administration. Council seats are filled by majority vote from the existing members of the Ruling Council from shortlists put forward by the seat’s representative department of government, but exceptions exist. For example, the Grand Admiral’s seat on the Ruling Council is traditionally only ever held by the current holder of that rank within the Authority Star Fleet. Generally the Ruling Council chooses from among the candidates who best should lead, and that person is installed in that rank and granted their seat on the council.
When it works, this meritocratic oligarchy results in the most apt person filling high-ranking roles in the Authority government. When it doesn’t, this results in cronyism and abuses of power. The Ruling Council tries to keep its preference picks nice and quiet to avoid stirring up backlash from the general public. That said, the Ruling Council is an extremely insular body. Those elected to its ranks are elected by other Councilors, and a Councilor may only be removed from their seat by a 51% vote in the Ruling Council, or a 67% vote from the Galactic Parliament. This has happened only very rarely since the formation of the Authority, despite their similar lack of term limits as the members of the Parliament.
Councilors are not only drawn from the branches of government, however. Powerful corporate entities such as BSS and the Trade Coalition hold influential council seats by virtue of their thorough integration into the galactic economy. A few seats are even elected to the Ruling Council by majority vote in the Galactic Parliament, elevating a member to their ranks to be a voice for the Parliament and the people they ostensibly represent. For those parliamentary members who are especially talented, this can allow them to skip the administrative busywork of departmental influence and secure some real power.
Only some, though. They call the head of the GA a Speaker for a reason.
I Am The Senate
The leader of the Galactic Authority is the Speaker, and there is no higher authority in all the galaxy. Elected to their position by majority vote of the Ruling Council, the Speaker’s job is to dictate policy and see it carried out by the efforts of the Ruling Council. This nominally-democratic role is held for terms of no more than five standard years, with a four-term limit on any Speaker holding the position to prevent prolonged abuse of their authority.
As implied above, the Speaker’s role is not to be a listener. Their role is to provide broad policy framework, and to be a spokesperson for the Galactic Authority as a whole. Far from being a figurehead role elected by the Ruling Council, most Speakers in Authority history have been very decisive with their powers. Graft and abuse of their power has been kept to either a minimum, or at the least a visible minimum.
Much like a Councilor, a Speaker may only be forced from their seat by a 67% vote in the Ruling Council. The Parliament requires a unanimous vote instead; neither has ever been done in the entire lifetime of the Galactic Authority. The closest that it came was the Speakership of Ulayrin Ozfik, who was at the time a significant beneficiary of the Jostari Raiders; a particularly cruel and elusive slave-running organization whom he had used the power of his office to protect and profit from. Even then, Speaker Ozfik was only able to secure 89% of the Parliamentary vote required to oust him; it took riots across seven core worlds for the Ruling Council to step in, and the threat of they themselves unanimously removing him from power was enough for Ozfik to resign instead.
It’s worth noting that the role of Speaker is seldom challenged. They are no galactic emperor, after all; there are limits to their power and what they’re capable of doing. Abusive Speakers like the infamous Ozfik tend not to last too long, because the clearing of one Speaker paves the way for another to take over. The Ruling Council is often full of ambitious figures with their eyes on the Speaker’s seat, and the knowledge that abuse of their powers could swiftly see allies turn on them to remove them from that power is oftentimes enough to keep them from straying too far. This honor system too is not foolproof; Ozfik still sat for two full terms before resignation in his third. It’s believed, though unproven, that enough members of the Ruling Council were in his pocket to keep them from supporting any vote to unseat him until the very end.
The notion that a Speaker might rise to power and so thoroughly corrupt the systems in place as to be all-powerful has yet to be put to the test, but conventional wisdom suggests that such a circumstance would be unlikely to occur. Such a repugnant, repellent Speaker would require cronies at every level of government to facilitate them, and that repugnance makes such a proposition unlikely at best. After all, even a system as volatile and laden with corruption as the Galactic Parliament could never stoop that low.
Perish the thought.
Yes, Minister
Scaling back from the chaos of the Galactic Parliament and the Ruling Council, I did mention that worlds mostly democratically elect their own representatives to the Parliament. While this is generally true, it only holds on a world by world basis. The Parliament itself is a representative democracy, but how representatives are chosen by their respective worlds gets considerably fuzzier.
While democracy is the norm across the galaxy, there are a handful of monarchies that still maintain either nominal or literal political power. In those cases, a representative is usually chosen from among the royalty by the sitting monarch. Very rarely will it be the monarch themselves, what with having a world to run, and all. Such things are very time consuming.
Still, these are the exceptions rather than the rule. The scope of the Authority is such that totalitarianism on a worldwide scale is more trouble than it’s worth. The GalNet, ubiquitous communications network that it is, cannot be easily severed from a people, nor is interstellar travel particularly difficult to obtain. Would-be planetary-scale warlords swiftly find themselves chewed up and spat out at the galactic level, usually by the Authority Star Fleet or by infiltration by Authority Intelligence Bureau agents.
That said, the Parliamentary member for a given world is often not the most powerful person from that planet. This honour goes most often to the Planetary Administrator (on core worlds), the Prime Minister (on mid-rim worlds), the Colonial Administrator (on freshly-founded colonial worlds), or… whatever passes for governance on semi-independent rim and fringe settlements.
Planetary Administrators and Prime Ministers are often elected by the representative bodies of the various smaller nations or domains of their worlds. Their role is that of the Speaker in microcosm, dictating policy to be implemented by their allies and fellows in whatever form of governing body their world possesses. This is a simple affair on most core worlds, who generally adopt a scaled-down equivalent of the galactic-scale system for use on their world. This works, and suffers, in the same way as it does for the Authority at large.
A notable exception is the core world of Torderra. The most important trade hub in the galaxy, Torderra is the trade gateway to the entire core sector, and has a long and sordid history with politics. Robust political discourse is the order of the day on Torderra, with the upper echelons of society rigorously engaging back and forth on the best way to approach societal problems. Politics on Torderra is as much as game as it is a serious matter, and as such it has a party-based system - in Torderra’s case built around pseudo-noble houses and the political dynasties that they spawn - that is unique among the core and much more common on the mid-rim. Its representative chambers are all democratically elected, and political theatre on Torderra is often broadcast for all the galaxy (and especially the core) to see. It’s often said that where Torderra goes, the whole core eventually follows. Some wonder if perhaps that’s why the Authority’s political system is so messy.
As a final note, Rael can be intimately familiar with such discourse; a Core-Worlder Rael grew up on Torderra, and boy oh boy, can he have thoughts about all of this. It is, after all, something of a Torderran tradition to have your opinions and to state them loudly.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little look into the politics of the Galactic Authority! Continuing the theme of worldbuilding but in a manner that will be much more relevant to the story, next time we’re going to be talking about the Astrogation Guild; employers of Zuberi and his crew and the people responsible for Rael boarding the Dreamer in the first place! We’ll talk stellar cartography, the nature of FTL travel, and we’ll do our very best not to arrive before we start!
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Void Dreaming Blog VII - Setting History (Part 2)
Posted 11 months agoHey there! Fae back again with another Void Dreaming post!
Last time we got to explore the history of the galaxy, from the rise of humanity from Earth to their sublimation, to the Seeding project, and finally to the ascension of their children to the stars in their stead. Today however we’re not going to wind the clock quite so far back, and instead have a look at the nature of the galaxy in its current state and how exactly it got to be where it is. So, let’s get cracking!
A quick warning, however, that we’ll be discussing matters and topics that have been covered in the previous post. If terms like sublimation and ascension confuse you, then you might want to go back a step and acquaint yourself with their meaning. Otherwise, let’s go!
Commonality
It’s worth pointing out that ascension didn’t exactly go smoothly for any of the children of Terra. Whether it was part of humanity’s plan or not, the deactivation of the Seeds with their last gift of advanced technology left a hole in many of the societies that had developed across the galaxy. What had previously gently guided them by influencing the development of major figures in each world’s history was no longer there. The training wheels had come off, and the ascended had the technology, power, and most importantly the absolute freedom to act as they so chose. And with that, of course, came the freedom to make mistakes.
All of the ascended made them. Some biospheres saw extinction of multiple native flora and fauna. Some saw many lives lost through expeditions that were too rashly developed and too feebly thought out. Some were even terrified at the prospect of freedom, and retreated so far into themselves that it would take another century for their people to fully emerge and embrace the galactic community. And one, in particular, catalysed the formation of the great power in the galaxy in Rael’s time: the Galactic Authority.
When the ascended first intermingled with one another and shared their history and development at the behest of the Seeds, they did so in an extremely decentralized manner. There was no one overarching governmental structure that was conceived by any of them that would allow for the peaceful, stable implementation of policy on such a scale. The simplest solution that was available, and the one that almost every birthworld in the galaxy took, was to mind their own damn business.
This worked well, for a time; the children of Terra flourished, and spread across many new worlds. They used the technology of the Seeds to further develop the new systems they came across, terraforming and colonizing them as they spread out further and further. Some species did this better than others. Some worse. No one minded, of course; it was a big galaxy, and their individual efforts were able to ensure that the galactic core and large swathes of the midrim were mapped out and colonized within a generation.
But as these peoples began to bump into and up against one another, cracks began to form. Criminal elements had always existed, but thanks to the power of the Seeds and their technology, and the rapid expansion of their home societies, those given over more to taking what they wanted than building something for themselves had a new frontier to explore and exploit. Much like societies turned a little insular after the ascension, various criminal organizations developed and did the same. This, too, was fine for a time.
Disunity
The Rashemai Incident occurred seven years after the founding of the Galactic Authority, and is widely cited as the defining moment that proved its necessity. Rashemai was a freshworld; a planet not claimed by any one species and developed at the behest of the Seeds. It was an experiment led by Doctor Taris vys-Rashemai, the planet and the society named after the vulpine sociologist who held that the galaxy ought not be separated into the rigid, species-defined societies that had arisen on the birthworlds. Taris suggested that, much like Mother Terra, her world would take in those from all corners of the galaxy, all species, in the hopes of fostering a greater galactic community through it.
At the same time, influential political figures across the galaxy were developing their own ideas about how the galaxy could be ordered. A far cry from the communal experiment that Taris had inducted, they crafted a sprawling bureaucracy and a code of laws and economics that would give a distinct structure to the burgeoning galactic civilizations. This was to be the Galactic Authority; entrusted with overseeing the development of the galaxy for the good of all.
Naturally, the two efforts butted heads. The Rashemai developed a much more community-focused structure that saw the Rashemai society develop across a number of nearby worlds. This Rashemai Cluster shared their resources and efforts equally amongst the population, and developed into a fiercely egalitarian society that assigned equal value and rights to all sapients given citizenship within its ranks. It began to draw more and more people to its side than the Galactic Authority, whose effort to organize and direct the flow of people and resources led to disillusionment and accusations of dictatorial control. Still, even as the Galactic Authority consolidated military and strategic assets and the Rashemai Cluster became a beacon of the arts and culture, there was peace.
At least until the death of Taris herself.
A group of star pirates, the Black Sky Corsairs, attacked Rashemai City and toppled the doctor’s administration building. It was viewed by the Rashemai people as an attack, and one which claimed the life of their visionary leader. Blame was assigned quickly, of course; a captured pirate had spilled that they’d been financed by a number of influential individuals in the Galactic Authority who had been chomping at the bit to remove the charismatic and well-regarded sociologist from the head of her experiment. It didn’t matter if the pirate had been telling the truth or not. It was cause, and the people of the Rashemai Cluster knew who had fired the first clandestine shot. Anger boiled over, and despite the generally peaceful nature of the Rashemai people, a few managed to secure a small supply of munitions and milgrade starships, and prepared a counterattack while the general population struggled to find a successor to Taris.
It began a righteous war, but righteousness alone does not ensure victory. The first interstellar conflict among the children of Terra began and ended in the space of less than a month. Rashemai’s vengeance-fuelled few made the first official strike in the so-named Rashemai Incident; a retaliatory action for the deaths of their leader that destroyed an economic space station operated by one of the alleged masterminds of the Black Sky Corsair attack. Only five lives were lost, but one of them was the Galactic Authority’s Secretary of the Treasury, and the others were his children. Even as outrage at the attack spread through the Cluster, it was too late.
Following that, the Galactic Authority mobilized their entire fleet - a fleet that had honed its claws for years by this point on pirates and other rebellious elements - and struck back with what the history holos consider to be measured effort, steely resolve, and tight, proportional response. Or, at least, the histories of the Galactic Authority claim as much. Even as the people of the Rashemai Cluster tried to secure peace through nonviolent means, more and more of them found their lives threatened, or ended, in a fight that none of them had chosen.
The conclusion of this short-lived conflict saw the Rashemai Cluster, and Rashemai itself, so devastated by the Authority Star Fleet that it had no choice but to be integrated into the Galactic Authority. Aid packages were dispatched. The wounded were tended. The people of the galaxy rallied under the Galactic Authority’s direction to help the war-torn cities and settlements of the Cluster; a victor reaching out the paw of mercy to the rash, barbaric peoples who had so callously fired the first shot of the galaxy’s first true interstellar war.
War Never Changes
To this day, there are conflicting theories about the Rashemai Incident. Whether the Corsair attack on Rashemai City and Taris vys-Rashemai had been designed to provoke exactly the sort of response that had been witnessed, or if the captured Corsair had merely underestimated the effect of their words, no one knows. The event did solidify the Galactic Authority as a military power if nothing else, and a marked increase in propaganda that followed all but martyred the late Secretary of the Treasury and his family as victims of the sorts of lawless, honorless monsters that dwelled beyond the Authority’s reach
The Rashemai Cluster, in turn, grew bitter and much more insular. They fell further and further from the vision of unity that Taris once had so eloquently and charismatically spoken to the galaxy on. There would be many, many more clashes with the forces of the Galactic Authority as the centuries turned, but the Authority never chose to end them completely. Every conflict and every rebellious act they stage is doomed to failure; they have never been large and well-armed enough to actually face the Galactic Authority in any meaningful way. But righteous war has become something of a point of national pride; that even loss in the name of fighting the oppression of the Authority is something to be commended. They’ve become something of a heroic symbol to rebels everywhere, and much of Rashemai’s cultural exports are all about bucking the trends of the Authority in one way or another.
In the modern era, the rule of the Galactic Authority is absolute. The Rashemai Cluster is considered an independent vassal state; a collection of a dozen or so inhabited systems that are allowed relative autonomy in spite of their abject hatred for the Authority and all it stands for. While they growl and seethe in the dark, the Authority say, the Galactic Authority directs industry, economy, democracy, and invest in the bright future of the galaxy for the betterment of all. The peoples of the galaxy, by and large, are with them. Rashemai is considered by the vast majority to be little more than antagonizers and blowhards who don’t know how to pick their battles, and would prosper along with the rest of the galaxy if they could just learn how to fall in line. Some still sit on the sidelines, trying to figure out if there is a means by which the conflict can be ended once and for all, without tremendous loss of life. Following a protracted period of galactic quiet, their voices too are on the rise.
Their voices, and many others. That galactic quiet is slowly growing louder, much to the concern of the galaxy at large. The Galactic Authority isn’t as invincible as it once seemed, with pirate and criminal enterprise nipping at its outer reaches, a military unused to failure growing more frustrated, corporate and megacorporate interests taking outsized roles on the Ruling Council and in individual planetary concerns, and reports of strange stellar phenomena are well and truly on the rise. The people are wondering if the Authority really has a good grasp of the situation, and more and more are feeling abandoned by those who are alleged to have their best interests at heart. Rashemai too grows louder by the day, warning people that it’s not too late to leave behind the oppression of the Authority and join the Rashemai in freedom… and more people have begun to emigrate from the Authority’s worlds to those of the Cluster than has been since since Taris herself invited them. Their message is clear, it is concise, and it is gaining traction that concerns the Authority gravely.
It’s clear, at the least, that times are on the verge of changing once again. The whole galaxy is tensing, just waiting for someone to say or do one wrong thing, and plunge billions upon billions of people into the devastation and suffering of war once more. It may happen tomorrow, or it may happen a decade away, but as sure as day follows night, everyone knows what’s coming if something drastic doesn’t happen soon.
I wanted to make sure that I had an interesting galaxy built up, even if the story of Void Dreaming doesn’t directly touch on it all. Who knows? Maybe I’ll write stories or novels (or even more visual novels) in the setting in future and I can explore some different stuff I’ve worldbuilt for it. If nothing else, it’s fun and gives you as a reader a nice idea of what sort of setting you’re in for.
Next time, we’ll focus in a bit on some more worldbuilding with the structure of the Galactic Authority itself! How its politics work, what the leadership structure is like, and maybe we’ll even get to see if the Rashemai maybe have a point.
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Last time we got to explore the history of the galaxy, from the rise of humanity from Earth to their sublimation, to the Seeding project, and finally to the ascension of their children to the stars in their stead. Today however we’re not going to wind the clock quite so far back, and instead have a look at the nature of the galaxy in its current state and how exactly it got to be where it is. So, let’s get cracking!
A quick warning, however, that we’ll be discussing matters and topics that have been covered in the previous post. If terms like sublimation and ascension confuse you, then you might want to go back a step and acquaint yourself with their meaning. Otherwise, let’s go!
Commonality
It’s worth pointing out that ascension didn’t exactly go smoothly for any of the children of Terra. Whether it was part of humanity’s plan or not, the deactivation of the Seeds with their last gift of advanced technology left a hole in many of the societies that had developed across the galaxy. What had previously gently guided them by influencing the development of major figures in each world’s history was no longer there. The training wheels had come off, and the ascended had the technology, power, and most importantly the absolute freedom to act as they so chose. And with that, of course, came the freedom to make mistakes.
All of the ascended made them. Some biospheres saw extinction of multiple native flora and fauna. Some saw many lives lost through expeditions that were too rashly developed and too feebly thought out. Some were even terrified at the prospect of freedom, and retreated so far into themselves that it would take another century for their people to fully emerge and embrace the galactic community. And one, in particular, catalysed the formation of the great power in the galaxy in Rael’s time: the Galactic Authority.
When the ascended first intermingled with one another and shared their history and development at the behest of the Seeds, they did so in an extremely decentralized manner. There was no one overarching governmental structure that was conceived by any of them that would allow for the peaceful, stable implementation of policy on such a scale. The simplest solution that was available, and the one that almost every birthworld in the galaxy took, was to mind their own damn business.
This worked well, for a time; the children of Terra flourished, and spread across many new worlds. They used the technology of the Seeds to further develop the new systems they came across, terraforming and colonizing them as they spread out further and further. Some species did this better than others. Some worse. No one minded, of course; it was a big galaxy, and their individual efforts were able to ensure that the galactic core and large swathes of the midrim were mapped out and colonized within a generation.
But as these peoples began to bump into and up against one another, cracks began to form. Criminal elements had always existed, but thanks to the power of the Seeds and their technology, and the rapid expansion of their home societies, those given over more to taking what they wanted than building something for themselves had a new frontier to explore and exploit. Much like societies turned a little insular after the ascension, various criminal organizations developed and did the same. This, too, was fine for a time.
Disunity
The Rashemai Incident occurred seven years after the founding of the Galactic Authority, and is widely cited as the defining moment that proved its necessity. Rashemai was a freshworld; a planet not claimed by any one species and developed at the behest of the Seeds. It was an experiment led by Doctor Taris vys-Rashemai, the planet and the society named after the vulpine sociologist who held that the galaxy ought not be separated into the rigid, species-defined societies that had arisen on the birthworlds. Taris suggested that, much like Mother Terra, her world would take in those from all corners of the galaxy, all species, in the hopes of fostering a greater galactic community through it.
At the same time, influential political figures across the galaxy were developing their own ideas about how the galaxy could be ordered. A far cry from the communal experiment that Taris had inducted, they crafted a sprawling bureaucracy and a code of laws and economics that would give a distinct structure to the burgeoning galactic civilizations. This was to be the Galactic Authority; entrusted with overseeing the development of the galaxy for the good of all.
Naturally, the two efforts butted heads. The Rashemai developed a much more community-focused structure that saw the Rashemai society develop across a number of nearby worlds. This Rashemai Cluster shared their resources and efforts equally amongst the population, and developed into a fiercely egalitarian society that assigned equal value and rights to all sapients given citizenship within its ranks. It began to draw more and more people to its side than the Galactic Authority, whose effort to organize and direct the flow of people and resources led to disillusionment and accusations of dictatorial control. Still, even as the Galactic Authority consolidated military and strategic assets and the Rashemai Cluster became a beacon of the arts and culture, there was peace.
At least until the death of Taris herself.
A group of star pirates, the Black Sky Corsairs, attacked Rashemai City and toppled the doctor’s administration building. It was viewed by the Rashemai people as an attack, and one which claimed the life of their visionary leader. Blame was assigned quickly, of course; a captured pirate had spilled that they’d been financed by a number of influential individuals in the Galactic Authority who had been chomping at the bit to remove the charismatic and well-regarded sociologist from the head of her experiment. It didn’t matter if the pirate had been telling the truth or not. It was cause, and the people of the Rashemai Cluster knew who had fired the first clandestine shot. Anger boiled over, and despite the generally peaceful nature of the Rashemai people, a few managed to secure a small supply of munitions and milgrade starships, and prepared a counterattack while the general population struggled to find a successor to Taris.
It began a righteous war, but righteousness alone does not ensure victory. The first interstellar conflict among the children of Terra began and ended in the space of less than a month. Rashemai’s vengeance-fuelled few made the first official strike in the so-named Rashemai Incident; a retaliatory action for the deaths of their leader that destroyed an economic space station operated by one of the alleged masterminds of the Black Sky Corsair attack. Only five lives were lost, but one of them was the Galactic Authority’s Secretary of the Treasury, and the others were his children. Even as outrage at the attack spread through the Cluster, it was too late.
Following that, the Galactic Authority mobilized their entire fleet - a fleet that had honed its claws for years by this point on pirates and other rebellious elements - and struck back with what the history holos consider to be measured effort, steely resolve, and tight, proportional response. Or, at least, the histories of the Galactic Authority claim as much. Even as the people of the Rashemai Cluster tried to secure peace through nonviolent means, more and more of them found their lives threatened, or ended, in a fight that none of them had chosen.
The conclusion of this short-lived conflict saw the Rashemai Cluster, and Rashemai itself, so devastated by the Authority Star Fleet that it had no choice but to be integrated into the Galactic Authority. Aid packages were dispatched. The wounded were tended. The people of the galaxy rallied under the Galactic Authority’s direction to help the war-torn cities and settlements of the Cluster; a victor reaching out the paw of mercy to the rash, barbaric peoples who had so callously fired the first shot of the galaxy’s first true interstellar war.
War Never Changes
To this day, there are conflicting theories about the Rashemai Incident. Whether the Corsair attack on Rashemai City and Taris vys-Rashemai had been designed to provoke exactly the sort of response that had been witnessed, or if the captured Corsair had merely underestimated the effect of their words, no one knows. The event did solidify the Galactic Authority as a military power if nothing else, and a marked increase in propaganda that followed all but martyred the late Secretary of the Treasury and his family as victims of the sorts of lawless, honorless monsters that dwelled beyond the Authority’s reach
The Rashemai Cluster, in turn, grew bitter and much more insular. They fell further and further from the vision of unity that Taris once had so eloquently and charismatically spoken to the galaxy on. There would be many, many more clashes with the forces of the Galactic Authority as the centuries turned, but the Authority never chose to end them completely. Every conflict and every rebellious act they stage is doomed to failure; they have never been large and well-armed enough to actually face the Galactic Authority in any meaningful way. But righteous war has become something of a point of national pride; that even loss in the name of fighting the oppression of the Authority is something to be commended. They’ve become something of a heroic symbol to rebels everywhere, and much of Rashemai’s cultural exports are all about bucking the trends of the Authority in one way or another.
In the modern era, the rule of the Galactic Authority is absolute. The Rashemai Cluster is considered an independent vassal state; a collection of a dozen or so inhabited systems that are allowed relative autonomy in spite of their abject hatred for the Authority and all it stands for. While they growl and seethe in the dark, the Authority say, the Galactic Authority directs industry, economy, democracy, and invest in the bright future of the galaxy for the betterment of all. The peoples of the galaxy, by and large, are with them. Rashemai is considered by the vast majority to be little more than antagonizers and blowhards who don’t know how to pick their battles, and would prosper along with the rest of the galaxy if they could just learn how to fall in line. Some still sit on the sidelines, trying to figure out if there is a means by which the conflict can be ended once and for all, without tremendous loss of life. Following a protracted period of galactic quiet, their voices too are on the rise.
Their voices, and many others. That galactic quiet is slowly growing louder, much to the concern of the galaxy at large. The Galactic Authority isn’t as invincible as it once seemed, with pirate and criminal enterprise nipping at its outer reaches, a military unused to failure growing more frustrated, corporate and megacorporate interests taking outsized roles on the Ruling Council and in individual planetary concerns, and reports of strange stellar phenomena are well and truly on the rise. The people are wondering if the Authority really has a good grasp of the situation, and more and more are feeling abandoned by those who are alleged to have their best interests at heart. Rashemai too grows louder by the day, warning people that it’s not too late to leave behind the oppression of the Authority and join the Rashemai in freedom… and more people have begun to emigrate from the Authority’s worlds to those of the Cluster than has been since since Taris herself invited them. Their message is clear, it is concise, and it is gaining traction that concerns the Authority gravely.
It’s clear, at the least, that times are on the verge of changing once again. The whole galaxy is tensing, just waiting for someone to say or do one wrong thing, and plunge billions upon billions of people into the devastation and suffering of war once more. It may happen tomorrow, or it may happen a decade away, but as sure as day follows night, everyone knows what’s coming if something drastic doesn’t happen soon.
I wanted to make sure that I had an interesting galaxy built up, even if the story of Void Dreaming doesn’t directly touch on it all. Who knows? Maybe I’ll write stories or novels (or even more visual novels) in the setting in future and I can explore some different stuff I’ve worldbuilt for it. If nothing else, it’s fun and gives you as a reader a nice idea of what sort of setting you’re in for.
Next time, we’ll focus in a bit on some more worldbuilding with the structure of the Galactic Authority itself! How its politics work, what the leadership structure is like, and maybe we’ll even get to see if the Rashemai maybe have a point.
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Void Dreaming Blog VI - Setting History (Part 1)
Posted 11 months agoHey there! Fae back again with another Void Dreaming post!
Last time we got to go over the crew of the Void Dreamer and the star (ship) of the show herself. I figured that this would be a good time to go and lay down some worldbuilding on you, so that you have a better idea of the setting in which this story is going to take place!
A quick note on that, first! If you’ve followed my work for a long time, you might know that I wrote long, long, long ago, another furry sci-fi series. Despite some similarities, I’d like to point out quite clearly right now that this is a whole different setting. Sol, Carla, Michael and the rest aren’t going to show up in this story, so if you were hoping for a Void Dreaming/Chronicles of Sol crossover, let me dash your hopes now and let you down gentle, heh heh.
So for now, let us begin with the beginning.
Genesis
Void Dreaming is set in a version of our galaxy far into the future. The Sol system is lost. Humanity, having spread out from their homeworld and to countless stars across the galaxy, grew and changed and evolved over the centuries. And yet, despite all of this, the only intelligent life that they encountered turned out to be themselves. Humanity, and all of its various forms and offshoots and bastardisations, were alone in the galaxy.
New technologies developed, new forms of existence were discovered, and for all intents and purposes, a golden age dawned on they who became known as the First Ones. Though little remains of human history at this point in time, it is known that they were masters of technology in its various forms, were dedicated to the cultivation of life across the galaxy, and eventually reached the pinnacle of evolution and development: sublimation.
It’s not known how the Terran Sublimation came about, or how such a diverse and splintered species came to be in absolute agreement that it was the way forward. All that is known is that at some point, a discovery was made that signalled the end of the human era. What little data survived the eons to come speaks only of the great discovery that allowed them to sublimate beyond all constrains of physicality and mortality, and to transcend space and time altogether. All of humanity joined in their new evolution.
But not all at once. And not without leaving the galaxy something in return.
This project was very well documented indeed, because the records of it have been found on each and every planet that inherited the legacy of humanity: The Seeds of Terra. These great machines were placed upon hundreds upon hundreds of worlds, terraformed and geoengineered into havens for Terran life. These machines maintained the biospheres of the planets they were seeded to, and programmed the evolutionary development of those that would come next.
Rise of the Planet(s) of the Furries
Their forms were ordained by the pre-sublimation humans, to represent a fusion of themselves and the life of their homeworld. History and mythology had depicted since time immemorial such a combination of features, and this was the template for the seeded species of the galaxy. These children of Terra would evolve and mature much more quickly than humanity had done so naturally on their homeworld, guided by the Seeds.
They did this because I’m a furry and like furries, and fuck you that’s why.
This guidance manifested in multiple ways, but chief among them was a signal that came to be known as the Imperative. It was this signal, transmitted through all the peoples of a given Seeded world, that helped to guide their evolution slowly and steadily through untold stretches of time. The Imperative guided evolution, developing traits that would ensure that the Seed’s charges would rise to planetary dominance. It sparked ideas in those brilliant enough to understand them. It was the unseen human hand, ushering in culture and language and development. Through the Imperative, the children of humanity would evolve far faster, and without many of the stumbling blocks, that their creators had to endure. Whether this was right or if their meddling in such an extreme manner is morally salvageable is a debate that has raged since the Ascension.
The Seeds were not perfect. Not every child of Terra would develop to a point where they could discover the others all around them. Development for some species took longer than others. Some developed quicker than even the Seeds were prepared for. Some discovered the silent hand that guided them and thought it divine… or demonic. Some Seeds guided their charges to the brink of reaching the stars, only for them to crash and burn through some method before they could rise. Some choked out their own biosphere. Some were wiped out by stellar phenomena that neither the Seed nor humanity could have foreseen. Some took the brilliant technology offered by the Seeds and used them to build terrible weapons of war, and annihilated themselves.
But for every Seed that failed, a hundred more succeeded by the grace of the Imperative. The children of Terra developed intelligence and technology, and facilitated it to reach an ordained point: ascension. That moment when a Seed would know that its charges had climbed beyond the confines of their primary, and left their homeworld behind for interstellar space. It’s this moment when the Seeds offered their deepest technological secrets, before they shut down and allowed their children true independence, that has led the peoples of the galaxy to refer to themselves as the Ascended; those raised from raw genetic material from Earth, guided to sapience by the Seed of their forebears and their all-guiding Imperative, and ushered up and amongst the stars.
Reports vary on the first Ascended. The otters are universally regarded as among the first, along with the coyotes and the rats. Most every species claims to be the first, of course, and it is considered to be the oldest and most pointless question in the whole galaxy. It’s often joked that the only way they could be sure is if a human returned from whatever great beyond they now inhabit to inform them.
Humanity however is silent, be they long gone, or long out of contact. They cannot be reached, and cannot — or will not — reach out in turn for their children. There are many theories. There are fewer answers. The Terran Sublimation remains a subject of heated discussion and debate, as to whether or not the purpose of those seeded by humanity is to follow them. What have humanity become? Where have they gone? Did they truly sublimate, or were they destroyed by some unseen force? And if they were, what does that mean for those who have followed them?
Many organizations and people work to uncover those mysteries, but more than that by far are simply willing to enjoy their lives. Existence, they would say, has been granted to them. They have been fortunate enough to be born in a time where they might live to see the next great ascension of the peoples of the galaxy, but such things are beyond their scope. It doesn’t matter to the layperson if sublimation is just around the corner. What matters is powering the replicator, getting that roof (or bulkhead) over your head, and finding what makes you happy. And a fistful of creds wouldn’t hurt, either.
So there you have it! A quick look into the state of the galaxy long before Rael or any of the rest of the crew were born! I hope you’ve enjoyed it; depending on how you play through the story, you may or may not have the chance to learn a little more about the history of the galaxy Rael inhabits. If that’s the sort of thing your Rael is into, of course!
Next time we’re going to continue discussing the setting of Void Dreaming, this time diving into the events that followed the ascension process and the chaos that ensued, culminating in the establishment of the Galactic Authority. If you’re a lore- or worldbuilding buff, you won’t wanna miss it!
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Last time we got to go over the crew of the Void Dreamer and the star (ship) of the show herself. I figured that this would be a good time to go and lay down some worldbuilding on you, so that you have a better idea of the setting in which this story is going to take place!
A quick note on that, first! If you’ve followed my work for a long time, you might know that I wrote long, long, long ago, another furry sci-fi series. Despite some similarities, I’d like to point out quite clearly right now that this is a whole different setting. Sol, Carla, Michael and the rest aren’t going to show up in this story, so if you were hoping for a Void Dreaming/Chronicles of Sol crossover, let me dash your hopes now and let you down gentle, heh heh.
So for now, let us begin with the beginning.
Genesis
Void Dreaming is set in a version of our galaxy far into the future. The Sol system is lost. Humanity, having spread out from their homeworld and to countless stars across the galaxy, grew and changed and evolved over the centuries. And yet, despite all of this, the only intelligent life that they encountered turned out to be themselves. Humanity, and all of its various forms and offshoots and bastardisations, were alone in the galaxy.
New technologies developed, new forms of existence were discovered, and for all intents and purposes, a golden age dawned on they who became known as the First Ones. Though little remains of human history at this point in time, it is known that they were masters of technology in its various forms, were dedicated to the cultivation of life across the galaxy, and eventually reached the pinnacle of evolution and development: sublimation.
It’s not known how the Terran Sublimation came about, or how such a diverse and splintered species came to be in absolute agreement that it was the way forward. All that is known is that at some point, a discovery was made that signalled the end of the human era. What little data survived the eons to come speaks only of the great discovery that allowed them to sublimate beyond all constrains of physicality and mortality, and to transcend space and time altogether. All of humanity joined in their new evolution.
But not all at once. And not without leaving the galaxy something in return.
This project was very well documented indeed, because the records of it have been found on each and every planet that inherited the legacy of humanity: The Seeds of Terra. These great machines were placed upon hundreds upon hundreds of worlds, terraformed and geoengineered into havens for Terran life. These machines maintained the biospheres of the planets they were seeded to, and programmed the evolutionary development of those that would come next.
Rise of the Planet(s) of the Furries
Their forms were ordained by the pre-sublimation humans, to represent a fusion of themselves and the life of their homeworld. History and mythology had depicted since time immemorial such a combination of features, and this was the template for the seeded species of the galaxy. These children of Terra would evolve and mature much more quickly than humanity had done so naturally on their homeworld, guided by the Seeds.
They did this because I’m a furry and like furries, and fuck you that’s why.
This guidance manifested in multiple ways, but chief among them was a signal that came to be known as the Imperative. It was this signal, transmitted through all the peoples of a given Seeded world, that helped to guide their evolution slowly and steadily through untold stretches of time. The Imperative guided evolution, developing traits that would ensure that the Seed’s charges would rise to planetary dominance. It sparked ideas in those brilliant enough to understand them. It was the unseen human hand, ushering in culture and language and development. Through the Imperative, the children of humanity would evolve far faster, and without many of the stumbling blocks, that their creators had to endure. Whether this was right or if their meddling in such an extreme manner is morally salvageable is a debate that has raged since the Ascension.
The Seeds were not perfect. Not every child of Terra would develop to a point where they could discover the others all around them. Development for some species took longer than others. Some developed quicker than even the Seeds were prepared for. Some discovered the silent hand that guided them and thought it divine… or demonic. Some Seeds guided their charges to the brink of reaching the stars, only for them to crash and burn through some method before they could rise. Some choked out their own biosphere. Some were wiped out by stellar phenomena that neither the Seed nor humanity could have foreseen. Some took the brilliant technology offered by the Seeds and used them to build terrible weapons of war, and annihilated themselves.
But for every Seed that failed, a hundred more succeeded by the grace of the Imperative. The children of Terra developed intelligence and technology, and facilitated it to reach an ordained point: ascension. That moment when a Seed would know that its charges had climbed beyond the confines of their primary, and left their homeworld behind for interstellar space. It’s this moment when the Seeds offered their deepest technological secrets, before they shut down and allowed their children true independence, that has led the peoples of the galaxy to refer to themselves as the Ascended; those raised from raw genetic material from Earth, guided to sapience by the Seed of their forebears and their all-guiding Imperative, and ushered up and amongst the stars.
Reports vary on the first Ascended. The otters are universally regarded as among the first, along with the coyotes and the rats. Most every species claims to be the first, of course, and it is considered to be the oldest and most pointless question in the whole galaxy. It’s often joked that the only way they could be sure is if a human returned from whatever great beyond they now inhabit to inform them.
Humanity however is silent, be they long gone, or long out of contact. They cannot be reached, and cannot — or will not — reach out in turn for their children. There are many theories. There are fewer answers. The Terran Sublimation remains a subject of heated discussion and debate, as to whether or not the purpose of those seeded by humanity is to follow them. What have humanity become? Where have they gone? Did they truly sublimate, or were they destroyed by some unseen force? And if they were, what does that mean for those who have followed them?
Many organizations and people work to uncover those mysteries, but more than that by far are simply willing to enjoy their lives. Existence, they would say, has been granted to them. They have been fortunate enough to be born in a time where they might live to see the next great ascension of the peoples of the galaxy, but such things are beyond their scope. It doesn’t matter to the layperson if sublimation is just around the corner. What matters is powering the replicator, getting that roof (or bulkhead) over your head, and finding what makes you happy. And a fistful of creds wouldn’t hurt, either.
So there you have it! A quick look into the state of the galaxy long before Rael or any of the rest of the crew were born! I hope you’ve enjoyed it; depending on how you play through the story, you may or may not have the chance to learn a little more about the history of the galaxy Rael inhabits. If that’s the sort of thing your Rael is into, of course!
Next time we’re going to continue discussing the setting of Void Dreaming, this time diving into the events that followed the ascension process and the chaos that ensued, culminating in the establishment of the Galactic Authority. If you’re a lore- or worldbuilding buff, you won’t wanna miss it!
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Void Dreaming Blog V - Crew, Socializing, and Event Scene...
Posted 12 months agoHey there! Fae back again with another Void Dreaming post!
Last time we took a look at the various choices in the game and how they impact the story, as well as the character Approval and Lust values that define how you interact with them. Today however, we’re going to get down and personal with the various members of the crew of the Void Dreamer, as well as talk a little about that special little Excelton-II surveyor herself. We’ll also dive into the special Event scenes you can unlock with different characters in the course of the story, and the more usual social scenes that come with each day. Let’s get started!
Or rather, let’s give a quick note first. In the interest of not ruining anyone’s discovery for when you get started in the story itself, we’re not going to be going too in-depth with the various characters you’re going to be associating with aboard the Void Dreamer. That’s for you all to discover as you play! Still, we’ll give you a little taste of what to expect from the crew when you do have the story in your paws, and some of you may already be familiar with them if you’ve been checking out the sprite sheets as they’ve been going online. So now let’s get started!
Cruisin’ Galaxy
The best place to begin would have to be the ship herself. Void Dreamer is a Sureshhan Dynamics Excelton-II Survey Ship. She’s one of a very limited run of ships that almost bankrupted Sureshhan Dynamics, after the model proved incredibly expensive to create, operate, and maintain. Seen most often in the paws of collectors who prefer to put such a rare piece on display, Zuberi’s not only happy to fly his Excelton-II about the galaxy, but modify her extensively as well.
You’ll have the chance over the course of the visual novel to become much more intimately familiar with the technology within the Dreamer, so we’ll keep things light for the moment. In addition to being able to traverse warpspace at significant distance and speed for a craft of its size, she’s also equipped with top of the line, milgrade hardware that wouldn’t be out of place on a warship. Indeed, she’s more than capable of standing up to the threats of fringe space and answering with a fiery retort of her own.
Inside, she’s been kitted out in such a way as to make her into a home. The upper level of the ship is home to the observation deck which, when not in a combat situation, evokes the feeling of walking onto the hull of the Dreamer herself. There’s no better place to sit and contemplate the infinite expanse of space than the observation deck.
A single, long corridor extends down the centre of the midships. At the bow is the bridge, followed by the crew quarters along the main corridor. On the port side of the ship is also the commissary (which connects up to the observation deck and features an adjoining conference room and lounge), and upper cargo bay access. On the starboard side is a well-appointed gym for maintaining crew fitness (and another connection to the observation deck) and the ship’s infirmary, as well as the ship’s rec room. In the centre of the deck, halfway down the corridor, is the embarkation platform usually used for receiving short-range displacement transport, though it can also lower through the ship like an elevator and deposit crew on the ground when the Dreamer’s landed. At the aft of the midships is the stairs down to the lower decks.
There you can find access to the engineering bay, as well as the secondary command centre in the event that the bridge is compromised. Along the way are various engineering and maintenance access points for working on the ship, as well as the main cargo bay access in the belly of the ship and the primary computer core.
As most of the story is set to take place aboard the Void Dreamer, I wanted to make certain I had a clear idea of her internal layout before I went and wrote a damn thing. My background artist was able to punch that layout up into something truly special, and I can’t wait to see how you all settle in and traverse her rooms and halls once you get into it!
PostHuman Resources
But no ship is complete without her crew, and as customisable as Rael is, the crew have their own backgrounds, natures, and stories. Here’s the crew that helps to keep the Dreamer flying safe through fringe space.
Name: Zuberi
Species: Wolf (Vilchaeran)
Gender: Masc
Physical Age: 186 Standard Years
Biolocked Age: 49 Standard Years
Homeworld: N/A - Spacer
Role: Captain
And where better to start than the captain himself? Zuberi’s owned the Void Dreamer for over two decades, and is a seasoned spacer. A long-time member of the Astrogation Guild, he leverages his starship’s capabilities in the name of charting unknown star systems and expanding the sphere of influence of the Galactic Authority. Hard when he needs to be and soft when he chooses to be, Zuberi’s warm and friendly when with those he trusts. Just be careful you don’t lose that trust, because those who put him or his crew in jeopardy are quick to discover just how vicious he can be. He also leads the first work shift each day.
Name: Caleia
Species: Fox (Palfrinian)
Physical Age: 202 Standard Years
Biolocked Age: 45 Standard Years
Gender: Femme
Homeworld: Kalabrand
Role: 2IC
The ship’s second-in-command, Caleia, is perhaps Zuberi’s complete opposite. Quick to anger, deeply mistrustful and willing to utilize her authority to the fullest, Caleia prizes order over chaos and runs her shift in an extremely no-nonsense fashion. Those who stand up to her walk a delicate line between piquing her curiosity and rousing her irritation. She’s been an on-again, off-again part of Zuberi’s crew for the better part of twenty years and, despite her hard demeanour, has the utmost confidence of her captain. Earning the same of her, however, is likely to be an uphill battle. She also leads the second work shift each day.
Name: Mizz
Species: Cheetah (Nartholan)
Physical Age: 23 Standard Years
Biolocked Age: 20 Standard Years
Gender: Masc
Homeworld: Torderra
Role: Junior Sensor Officer
The youngest member of the Void Dreamer’s crew, Mizz has only been aboard the Dreamer for the better part of six months. He’s a little guy with a lot of attitude and a chip on his shoulder larger than the ship he serves on, having come from a prominent upper-class family with all of the privilege and arrogance that comes with it. That stands in sharp contrast to the way that he presents himself, more than happy to flaunt his body at anyone willing to direct their eyes to it. He works as Sensor Officer on first shift with Zuberi.
Name: Bromm’ka
Species: Bear (Hevri)
Physical Age: 72 Standard Years
Biolocked Age: 37 Standard Years
Gender: Masc
Homeworld: Hevris
Role: Helmsmaster, Doctor
Easily the friendliest member of the crew you’ll meet, Bromm’ka’s only so big because he needs to be in order to contain all of his good vibes. In addition to being a fully-trained doctor and serving as the ship’s medic, he’s a fairly even paw on the flight console as well. He’s also the only person besides Zuberi who’s allowed to actually pilot the Dreamer, so you know he’s got to be good. If you need an ear to bend, you’d have a hard time finding someone more happy to do so than Bromm’ka. He works as the Helmsmaster on second shift with Caleia, and is always on call for medical emergencies.
Name: Sam
Species: Rabbit (Alchestan)
Physical Age: 158 Standard Years
Biolocked Age: 34 Standard Years
Gender: Non-Binary, Masc-Presenting
Homeworld: N/A - Spacer
Role: Chief Engineer
In another contrast, Sam serves as an opposite to Bromm’ka. As friendly as the bear is, Sam is very much not that. Much more content to spend all of their time in the engineering bay tinkering with the ship they love so much, Sam usually couldn’t care less about what crew is aboard. For them, they trust that Zuberi knows what they’re doing and keep to themself. Foul mouthed, foul tempered and antisocial by very deliberate choice, getting Sam to warm up to you might take a bit of effort… or a careful lack of one. They’re not active on any one shift, instead working as required.
Name: Tulemeni
Species: Cybe/Otter (Kesh’anun)
Physical Age: Unknown
Biolocked Age: Unknown
Gender: Femme
Homeworld: Vallis
Role: Chief Navigation Officer
Tulemeni is a mystery, to herself as much as to the crew of the Dreamer. The young-looking otter is a cybe; a majorly cybernetically-augmented individual, and this shows through in her highly mechanical appearance. Her mannerisms are more robotic than even some simulants, and she sometimes has a hard time relating to matters that seem mundane to ‘ordinary’ people. This also tends to make it harder for people to relate to her, unless they have a history of dealing with advanced tech and cybes. Make no mistake though: Tulemeni is a whole and complete person in her own right, and un-personing her is a good way to make an enemy of most all of Zuberi’s crew. Her extensive cybernetic augmentation makes her a fine choice as a Navigation Officer, and she spends most of the first and some of the second work shifts jacked into her interface chair on the bridge.
Name: Obaa
Species: Biomech Service Solutions Class III Simulant Mind (Generation 1)
Physical Age: 3 Standard Years
Gender: N/A, Femme-Presenting
First Initialization: Void Dreamer, docked at Rustou Station over Dyrabesh
Role: On-Board Artificial Assistant
Obaa is a simulant mind; the disembodied digital consciousness of a modern BSS Class III simulant. Such automatons are highly advanced androids capable of reliably passing for sapient, but even the most advanced Class III unit pales in comparison to Obaa. Caught in an ion storm barely a year after Zuberi purchased her, Obaa’s core matrix was fried. It was only by integrating her with the systems of the Dreamer that both she and the ship were able to be restored to functionality. She lost the nanomat shell that formed her body, and gained a starship… and a whole host of rewritten neural code. Now she straddles the line between digital mind and true sapience, supporting the crew of the Dreamer… oftentimes whether they like it or not.
I’ve mentioned before, but I’ll say it again here: while every member of the crew has their own Approval score for how Rael’s appealing to them, only one member of the crew is not romancable. That crewmember is Obaa; as a disembodied digital mind, it didn’t really seem right to me to give her a romancable path through the story. You can certainly try at certain points if you’re feeling like it, but Obaa’s very nature makes such a thing a difficult proposition at best.
Finally, some of you who’ve been paying attention to the Bluesky account ( https://voiddreamingvn.bsky.social/ ) may be noticing a certain character missing from the crew here. Don’t worry. You’ll meet him soon enough!
Introvert? Extrovert? Perver-
Generally speaking, spending your free time aboard the Dreamer is a good way to get to know the crew. They all have their preferences as to where they like to spend their time, but they’ll also move about and can seldom be found in the same place multiple times on the same day. Sam’s an exception, of course; you can almost always be guaranteed to find the ship’s engineer down in the engineering bay. And why not? No one bugs them down there.
Starting on Day 2, the whole (or almost whole) of the Void Dreamer opens up for Rael to explore at his leisure. From the observation deck to the engineering bay, the remainder of the day is broken up into neat and tidy little time units that tick away in the background of the story and account for First, Second, and Third Shift aboard the ship. Each Shift roughly takes up two time units, so depending on the normalcy of the day, Rael might have access to anything from two to as many as five time units to spend with the crew of the ship. Do note that the crew don’t like it when you become too familiar; you’re generally limited to one social scene per crewmember per day. And given that those social interactions are different every day and differ across locations and depending on events in the story, picking who to see, where to see them, and when to see them can net you very different scenes!
Social scenes all follow a pretty similar pattern, but each one of them gives Rael the chance to spend a little time with the crew on a one-on-one (or sometimes one-on-two, or more!) basis. You might help out with whatever they’re working on, or you might just chill out and relax with them, or they might be having some particular thoughts about the circumstances that they find themselves in. Through spending time with them, Rael will gain a deeper understanding of what makes each of the crew tick, and may be able to even help them with any issues or anxieties that they might have. He’ll even earn their Approval (and sometimes even their Lust; ooh la la!) through their efforts, or maybe build his Skills if he’s doing the right things in the right places with the right people.
Given that these social scenes are the main way you build up your relationships with the crew, those relationships have to build to something. Once you’ve fulfilled the minimum Approval (and/or circumstantially Lust) ratings with a given crew member, you might find that one social scene in a day might not be enough.
Sometimes they’ll want you to stick around, and this is where Event scenes start.
Eventful Days
Event scenes are where you start to actually crack the shell on the crew of the Void Dreamer. If you’ve shown that you’re good enough company by raising their Approval, they might propose a more comfortable sit down to talk about themselves. And if you’ve managed to pique their interest by raising their Lust… well, they might have some very specific recreation in mind, and your help will be integral.
Event scenes can trigger any time, as long as there’s at least still some time left in the day to accommodate it and the crewmember in question is going to be in a position to actually follow through. Of course if they have specific plans, they might skip out before you can be offered some extra time. They’re busy people; they’ve all got their own things on!
But generally speaking, Event scenes are the mechanism where no matter where you are in the Dreamer’s tour, you can get to know the crew on a deeper level than just the surface. Event scenes don’t start showing up until Day 3; even if you’re focusing in hard on a specific member of Zuberi’s crew (or Zuberi himself!), the first couple of days are too soon for them to open up so much to you. Some open up later than others, some open up earlier, and some might be more down to fuck than discuss their feelings.
There’s a sure-fire way to give yourself the best chance to unlock the Event scenes of the cast, however! Just try Rael’s handy, dandy Three-Step-Event-Guarantee* plan!
Step 1) Socialize with the characters you like best as early as you can to build that Approval! Minimize your chances to upset them.
Step 2) Make sure the person whose Event scene you’re excited to experience is your first port of call on a given day, so there’s time after socializing to have that chat!
Step 3) Don’t blow them off! People aren’t really into being blown off!
With Rael’s Three-Step-Event-Guarantee* plan, you too can experience the deepest dreams, fears, and history of the crew of the Void Dreamer!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little look into the Dreamer and her crew, the social scenes where you get to know them, and the Event system set up to help you learn their deepest secrets! Starting from next time we’re going to be diving into the setting a little bit from here on out, to talk about its history, its people, some key terms and their definitions, and other little bits of worldbuilding as we run as fast as I can toward the initial launch! I’ll try not to make them too much longer than the rest, but no promises!
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
* - Rael’s Three-Step-Event-Guarantee plan is not guaranteed to succeed. Some crew have more important things to do at various times than indulge you. The only real sure-fire way is to try and find out!
Last time we took a look at the various choices in the game and how they impact the story, as well as the character Approval and Lust values that define how you interact with them. Today however, we’re going to get down and personal with the various members of the crew of the Void Dreamer, as well as talk a little about that special little Excelton-II surveyor herself. We’ll also dive into the special Event scenes you can unlock with different characters in the course of the story, and the more usual social scenes that come with each day. Let’s get started!
Or rather, let’s give a quick note first. In the interest of not ruining anyone’s discovery for when you get started in the story itself, we’re not going to be going too in-depth with the various characters you’re going to be associating with aboard the Void Dreamer. That’s for you all to discover as you play! Still, we’ll give you a little taste of what to expect from the crew when you do have the story in your paws, and some of you may already be familiar with them if you’ve been checking out the sprite sheets as they’ve been going online. So now let’s get started!
Cruisin’ Galaxy
The best place to begin would have to be the ship herself. Void Dreamer is a Sureshhan Dynamics Excelton-II Survey Ship. She’s one of a very limited run of ships that almost bankrupted Sureshhan Dynamics, after the model proved incredibly expensive to create, operate, and maintain. Seen most often in the paws of collectors who prefer to put such a rare piece on display, Zuberi’s not only happy to fly his Excelton-II about the galaxy, but modify her extensively as well.
You’ll have the chance over the course of the visual novel to become much more intimately familiar with the technology within the Dreamer, so we’ll keep things light for the moment. In addition to being able to traverse warpspace at significant distance and speed for a craft of its size, she’s also equipped with top of the line, milgrade hardware that wouldn’t be out of place on a warship. Indeed, she’s more than capable of standing up to the threats of fringe space and answering with a fiery retort of her own.
Inside, she’s been kitted out in such a way as to make her into a home. The upper level of the ship is home to the observation deck which, when not in a combat situation, evokes the feeling of walking onto the hull of the Dreamer herself. There’s no better place to sit and contemplate the infinite expanse of space than the observation deck.
A single, long corridor extends down the centre of the midships. At the bow is the bridge, followed by the crew quarters along the main corridor. On the port side of the ship is also the commissary (which connects up to the observation deck and features an adjoining conference room and lounge), and upper cargo bay access. On the starboard side is a well-appointed gym for maintaining crew fitness (and another connection to the observation deck) and the ship’s infirmary, as well as the ship’s rec room. In the centre of the deck, halfway down the corridor, is the embarkation platform usually used for receiving short-range displacement transport, though it can also lower through the ship like an elevator and deposit crew on the ground when the Dreamer’s landed. At the aft of the midships is the stairs down to the lower decks.
There you can find access to the engineering bay, as well as the secondary command centre in the event that the bridge is compromised. Along the way are various engineering and maintenance access points for working on the ship, as well as the main cargo bay access in the belly of the ship and the primary computer core.
As most of the story is set to take place aboard the Void Dreamer, I wanted to make certain I had a clear idea of her internal layout before I went and wrote a damn thing. My background artist was able to punch that layout up into something truly special, and I can’t wait to see how you all settle in and traverse her rooms and halls once you get into it!
PostHuman Resources
But no ship is complete without her crew, and as customisable as Rael is, the crew have their own backgrounds, natures, and stories. Here’s the crew that helps to keep the Dreamer flying safe through fringe space.
Name: Zuberi
Species: Wolf (Vilchaeran)
Gender: Masc
Physical Age: 186 Standard Years
Biolocked Age: 49 Standard Years
Homeworld: N/A - Spacer
Role: Captain
And where better to start than the captain himself? Zuberi’s owned the Void Dreamer for over two decades, and is a seasoned spacer. A long-time member of the Astrogation Guild, he leverages his starship’s capabilities in the name of charting unknown star systems and expanding the sphere of influence of the Galactic Authority. Hard when he needs to be and soft when he chooses to be, Zuberi’s warm and friendly when with those he trusts. Just be careful you don’t lose that trust, because those who put him or his crew in jeopardy are quick to discover just how vicious he can be. He also leads the first work shift each day.
Name: Caleia
Species: Fox (Palfrinian)
Physical Age: 202 Standard Years
Biolocked Age: 45 Standard Years
Gender: Femme
Homeworld: Kalabrand
Role: 2IC
The ship’s second-in-command, Caleia, is perhaps Zuberi’s complete opposite. Quick to anger, deeply mistrustful and willing to utilize her authority to the fullest, Caleia prizes order over chaos and runs her shift in an extremely no-nonsense fashion. Those who stand up to her walk a delicate line between piquing her curiosity and rousing her irritation. She’s been an on-again, off-again part of Zuberi’s crew for the better part of twenty years and, despite her hard demeanour, has the utmost confidence of her captain. Earning the same of her, however, is likely to be an uphill battle. She also leads the second work shift each day.
Name: Mizz
Species: Cheetah (Nartholan)
Physical Age: 23 Standard Years
Biolocked Age: 20 Standard Years
Gender: Masc
Homeworld: Torderra
Role: Junior Sensor Officer
The youngest member of the Void Dreamer’s crew, Mizz has only been aboard the Dreamer for the better part of six months. He’s a little guy with a lot of attitude and a chip on his shoulder larger than the ship he serves on, having come from a prominent upper-class family with all of the privilege and arrogance that comes with it. That stands in sharp contrast to the way that he presents himself, more than happy to flaunt his body at anyone willing to direct their eyes to it. He works as Sensor Officer on first shift with Zuberi.
Name: Bromm’ka
Species: Bear (Hevri)
Physical Age: 72 Standard Years
Biolocked Age: 37 Standard Years
Gender: Masc
Homeworld: Hevris
Role: Helmsmaster, Doctor
Easily the friendliest member of the crew you’ll meet, Bromm’ka’s only so big because he needs to be in order to contain all of his good vibes. In addition to being a fully-trained doctor and serving as the ship’s medic, he’s a fairly even paw on the flight console as well. He’s also the only person besides Zuberi who’s allowed to actually pilot the Dreamer, so you know he’s got to be good. If you need an ear to bend, you’d have a hard time finding someone more happy to do so than Bromm’ka. He works as the Helmsmaster on second shift with Caleia, and is always on call for medical emergencies.
Name: Sam
Species: Rabbit (Alchestan)
Physical Age: 158 Standard Years
Biolocked Age: 34 Standard Years
Gender: Non-Binary, Masc-Presenting
Homeworld: N/A - Spacer
Role: Chief Engineer
In another contrast, Sam serves as an opposite to Bromm’ka. As friendly as the bear is, Sam is very much not that. Much more content to spend all of their time in the engineering bay tinkering with the ship they love so much, Sam usually couldn’t care less about what crew is aboard. For them, they trust that Zuberi knows what they’re doing and keep to themself. Foul mouthed, foul tempered and antisocial by very deliberate choice, getting Sam to warm up to you might take a bit of effort… or a careful lack of one. They’re not active on any one shift, instead working as required.
Name: Tulemeni
Species: Cybe/Otter (Kesh’anun)
Physical Age: Unknown
Biolocked Age: Unknown
Gender: Femme
Homeworld: Vallis
Role: Chief Navigation Officer
Tulemeni is a mystery, to herself as much as to the crew of the Dreamer. The young-looking otter is a cybe; a majorly cybernetically-augmented individual, and this shows through in her highly mechanical appearance. Her mannerisms are more robotic than even some simulants, and she sometimes has a hard time relating to matters that seem mundane to ‘ordinary’ people. This also tends to make it harder for people to relate to her, unless they have a history of dealing with advanced tech and cybes. Make no mistake though: Tulemeni is a whole and complete person in her own right, and un-personing her is a good way to make an enemy of most all of Zuberi’s crew. Her extensive cybernetic augmentation makes her a fine choice as a Navigation Officer, and she spends most of the first and some of the second work shifts jacked into her interface chair on the bridge.
Name: Obaa
Species: Biomech Service Solutions Class III Simulant Mind (Generation 1)
Physical Age: 3 Standard Years
Gender: N/A, Femme-Presenting
First Initialization: Void Dreamer, docked at Rustou Station over Dyrabesh
Role: On-Board Artificial Assistant
Obaa is a simulant mind; the disembodied digital consciousness of a modern BSS Class III simulant. Such automatons are highly advanced androids capable of reliably passing for sapient, but even the most advanced Class III unit pales in comparison to Obaa. Caught in an ion storm barely a year after Zuberi purchased her, Obaa’s core matrix was fried. It was only by integrating her with the systems of the Dreamer that both she and the ship were able to be restored to functionality. She lost the nanomat shell that formed her body, and gained a starship… and a whole host of rewritten neural code. Now she straddles the line between digital mind and true sapience, supporting the crew of the Dreamer… oftentimes whether they like it or not.
I’ve mentioned before, but I’ll say it again here: while every member of the crew has their own Approval score for how Rael’s appealing to them, only one member of the crew is not romancable. That crewmember is Obaa; as a disembodied digital mind, it didn’t really seem right to me to give her a romancable path through the story. You can certainly try at certain points if you’re feeling like it, but Obaa’s very nature makes such a thing a difficult proposition at best.
Finally, some of you who’ve been paying attention to the Bluesky account ( https://voiddreamingvn.bsky.social/ ) may be noticing a certain character missing from the crew here. Don’t worry. You’ll meet him soon enough!
Introvert? Extrovert? Perver-
Generally speaking, spending your free time aboard the Dreamer is a good way to get to know the crew. They all have their preferences as to where they like to spend their time, but they’ll also move about and can seldom be found in the same place multiple times on the same day. Sam’s an exception, of course; you can almost always be guaranteed to find the ship’s engineer down in the engineering bay. And why not? No one bugs them down there.
Starting on Day 2, the whole (or almost whole) of the Void Dreamer opens up for Rael to explore at his leisure. From the observation deck to the engineering bay, the remainder of the day is broken up into neat and tidy little time units that tick away in the background of the story and account for First, Second, and Third Shift aboard the ship. Each Shift roughly takes up two time units, so depending on the normalcy of the day, Rael might have access to anything from two to as many as five time units to spend with the crew of the ship. Do note that the crew don’t like it when you become too familiar; you’re generally limited to one social scene per crewmember per day. And given that those social interactions are different every day and differ across locations and depending on events in the story, picking who to see, where to see them, and when to see them can net you very different scenes!
Social scenes all follow a pretty similar pattern, but each one of them gives Rael the chance to spend a little time with the crew on a one-on-one (or sometimes one-on-two, or more!) basis. You might help out with whatever they’re working on, or you might just chill out and relax with them, or they might be having some particular thoughts about the circumstances that they find themselves in. Through spending time with them, Rael will gain a deeper understanding of what makes each of the crew tick, and may be able to even help them with any issues or anxieties that they might have. He’ll even earn their Approval (and sometimes even their Lust; ooh la la!) through their efforts, or maybe build his Skills if he’s doing the right things in the right places with the right people.
Given that these social scenes are the main way you build up your relationships with the crew, those relationships have to build to something. Once you’ve fulfilled the minimum Approval (and/or circumstantially Lust) ratings with a given crew member, you might find that one social scene in a day might not be enough.
Sometimes they’ll want you to stick around, and this is where Event scenes start.
Eventful Days
Event scenes are where you start to actually crack the shell on the crew of the Void Dreamer. If you’ve shown that you’re good enough company by raising their Approval, they might propose a more comfortable sit down to talk about themselves. And if you’ve managed to pique their interest by raising their Lust… well, they might have some very specific recreation in mind, and your help will be integral.
Event scenes can trigger any time, as long as there’s at least still some time left in the day to accommodate it and the crewmember in question is going to be in a position to actually follow through. Of course if they have specific plans, they might skip out before you can be offered some extra time. They’re busy people; they’ve all got their own things on!
But generally speaking, Event scenes are the mechanism where no matter where you are in the Dreamer’s tour, you can get to know the crew on a deeper level than just the surface. Event scenes don’t start showing up until Day 3; even if you’re focusing in hard on a specific member of Zuberi’s crew (or Zuberi himself!), the first couple of days are too soon for them to open up so much to you. Some open up later than others, some open up earlier, and some might be more down to fuck than discuss their feelings.
There’s a sure-fire way to give yourself the best chance to unlock the Event scenes of the cast, however! Just try Rael’s handy, dandy Three-Step-Event-Guarantee* plan!
Step 1) Socialize with the characters you like best as early as you can to build that Approval! Minimize your chances to upset them.
Step 2) Make sure the person whose Event scene you’re excited to experience is your first port of call on a given day, so there’s time after socializing to have that chat!
Step 3) Don’t blow them off! People aren’t really into being blown off!
With Rael’s Three-Step-Event-Guarantee* plan, you too can experience the deepest dreams, fears, and history of the crew of the Void Dreamer!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this little look into the Dreamer and her crew, the social scenes where you get to know them, and the Event system set up to help you learn their deepest secrets! Starting from next time we’re going to be diving into the setting a little bit from here on out, to talk about its history, its people, some key terms and their definitions, and other little bits of worldbuilding as we run as fast as I can toward the initial launch! I’ll try not to make them too much longer than the rest, but no promises!
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
* - Rael’s Three-Step-Event-Guarantee plan is not guaranteed to succeed. Some crew have more important things to do at various times than indulge you. The only real sure-fire way is to try and find out!
Void Dreaming Blog IV - Choices, Approval, and Lust
Posted a year agoHey there! Fae back again with another Void Dreaming post!
Last time we had a look into what makes Skills tick, as well as the day by day structure of the VN itself. Today we’re going to be taking a step deeper into the mechanics behind the choices of the story, the sorts of things that they effect, and how those help you build the two relational stats hidden in the background of all the crewmembers of the Void Dreamer: Approval, and Lust. Saucy!
Friends, Not Food
And we’re going to do it backwards, too! We’ll start with the Approval and Lust stats, since they’re also key to how many choices in the story work. Just like in real life, people separate their like of someone from their lust for them. You can enjoy a person’s company just fine without feeling the overwhelming urge to bed them, after all. That’s just as true here as anywhere else. And yes, that means that you can absolutely choose to try to befriend the whole crew without expressing any sexual interest in them whatsoever. Every Origin for Rael allows you to play him as ace, if that’s the way you want to go. That doesn’t mean that all sexual content is removed from the story, of course; you’re not deciding how other characters behave, and Mizz isn’t going to dress more to Astrogation Guild uniform standards just to please you. It does change how Rael reacts to it though, and may take some individual choices out of your hands. It’ll put some different ones there instead as the story progresses though, and sexual relationships with any of the crew are not necessary to reach the resolutions of the story. They will, however, change said resolutions! More on that at a later time.
So let’s get into those two different relationship variables. Starting with Approval, it represents the amount that a character appreciates Rael’s presence on the ship and in their life. It’s your basic friendship bar, rising when you do things they approve of and lowering when you irritate them. Origin dialogue options are often a good vehicle for raising the Approval of a receptive character, once you get an idea of what sort of options they’ll respond to. They’re not the only way, of course; just because one character might see the appeal in the loose and free lifestyle of a Punk doesn’t mean that you’ll be unable to earn their friendship if your Rael wasn’t one. Think of Origin dialogue choices in this case as a shortcut for earning Approval with certain crewmembers; a nice bonus, but not necessary if the dialogue doesn’t fit your idea of who Rael is. Additionally, Origin dialogue choices that appeal to a character tend to give both Approval and Lust, but in different volumes of each depending on the character in question. If there’s an optimal path to get into Sam’s coveralls, you’ll have to work to find it!
Or code dive. Please don’t code dive. There’s spoilers in there!
Originally, all crewmembers started with different Approval ratings to depict their base opinion of Rael. This made things a bit messier than I liked, so I removed it and wound up neutralising the scores. Everyone starts with Rael at the same point, and this can be lifted or lowered as a result of the choices that you make. How much and how fast they can grow depends on individual character nature, and the choices you make with them. Zuberi and Bromm’ka are pretty friendly. Caleia and Sam? Less so. Your Approval with characters can dip below the starting point too, and they will react accordingly to your presence if you do.
High Approval is also how you unlock special social interaction scenes with the crew of the Dreamer. If you want to learn more about Mizz or Tulemeni or whomever, taking the time to earn their Approval by learning what they respond well to is integral. And the story does give you some hints; during Day One, Rael will be able to go over his history with the whole crew all at once. If you’re paying attention, you might notice that some crew are more interested at certain points than others; a fine and not-so-subtle hint that you’ve got a bit of a leg-up with earning their Approval. Which is good, because in addition to unlocking private social interaction with them, good Approval is in many cases necessary for the spicier content.
Bow Chikka Wow-Wow
The Lust statistic is the other component there. Flirtatious comments here and there, or the right suggestion at the right time, can signal to the various crewmembers that Rael’s into them. Whether or not they respond depends on their own nature and if you’ve read them right. The brash and bombastic Mizz might appreciate a forward approach, but the reclusive and antisocial Sam might bite your head off for the attempt. Does Caleia’s control kick extend beyond the ship’s bridge and into the bedroom? Is Zuberi just a dad, or is he also a daddy? Exploration and experimentation will help you find out.
Unlike Approval, all crewmembers start with a Lust value of zero, so there’s no getting a leg up on getting your leg over any of them. If you want to build their Lust, you’re going to have to actually put the effort in, Rael!
And as I mentioned above, the saucy situations in this visual novel are all entirely optional. No path through the story locks you into participating in any adult content if you don’t want to. Which isn’t to say that the crew won’t get up to their own shenanigans on their own, and there are definitely circumstances where you might catch an eyeful of some action somewhere on the ship. Even in those cases however, Rael will have the option to avert his eyes and avoid the circumstance (and an asexual Rael will do so without waiting to see if the omnipotent being on their shoulder has anything to say about it). If you’re here for the plot and the character interplay but you want to leave the sex at the door, we have options for you! The crew are their own people however, and whenever Rael’s not intruding on their lives they will absolutely be following their own imperatives… sometimes with sticky results.
And if you’re wondering, the absolute earliest you can get some spice in your life is actually on day one, if you follow a very specific set of choices. Which I suppose is a great lead in to the choice system in the VN!
But first, a quick note on something I’ve mentioned a few times just above. As suggested, you can set Rael as asexual relatively early in the piece. The default sexuality in the furry space future is to be pan, and a Rael who isn’t ace will fall neatly into this very broad view of sexuality. That said however, you’ll be prompted at the earliest chance to build the Lust of a character (or once you start progressing down the path of befriending them) if you want to be able to pursue eventual ugly-bumping with them. In this way, a Rael who isn’t explicitly asexual can go through the story and define on a case-by-case basis who he finds attractive. Not into masc characters? Lock their options when they come up; you won’t be bothered again. Dig a bit of everything, but can’t stand jerks? Well, lock out Mizz, Caleia and Sam and leave yourself open to friendlier crew!
Choice is sacred, and how you choose to define your Rael, his Origins, his Skills, and even his sexual interests, are up to you, dear reader.
Consequences
As I mentioned in the very first post introducing Void Dreaming and the concepts behind it (and again in the last entry about Skills), I think that VNs are at their best when you’re able to make meaningful choices. Simply picking your route isn’t what does it for me; I’m in it for the story. Limiting the writing to a handful of key routes makes the job so much easier for the writer, but it also prevents the reader from feeling like they can make a meaningful impact on their playthrough. After all, do the routes all happen simultaneously? Are they all equally valid? Is there a single canon one? I’m hoping that Void Dreaming, through a titanic wordcount, is going to be able to overcome that.
The solution that I mentioned was, in large part, constraining the major variables to early choices that then set the course for the whole story to follow on from. This sounds like routes with extra steps, but it’s actually not! You might remember from the first post that Void Dreaming has just one, single route. One story, starting with Rael aboard Yakeshi Station and heading to his rendezvous with Zuberi. No matter what Origin choices you make, the story always starts there. And it always proceeds, hitting the same story beats, on its way toward what I hope is a thrilling and satisfying conclusion.
Along the way though, the choices you make are going to have an impact on the characters around you. When it’s all dialogue options, your Origins will inform how Rael approaches building relationships with the different crewmembers. When it’s Skill checks, you’ll be deciding how Rael will attempt to solve problems that come up. You can fail at both of these, and yes, you can end the story prematurely by inducing a fail state. Failure, for anyone who knows my stories (or life), is always an option!
And those choices are going to have an impact beyond just the specific scene. Spent time building a friendship with Zuberi? The captain’s going to be more receptive to your suggestions later on. Been railing Mizz on the regular? Other crew will notice and comment on it. Pissed off Caleia? Well, she’s not going to make your life easy now, is she? Some of these examples, like the Mizz one, are there for flavour. They make the time you spend on the ship feel more organic; more real. But others, like how receptive Zuberi and Caleia are based on their Approval of you? That can have real, serious consequences for how you choose to proceed in the story.
And that leads to the last thing to touch on in this entry: the concept of routes.
A Wrong Turn At Albuquerque
It’s been said a few times in these entries that I’ve only prepared a single route for this story. This is true! I’ve also said that I want your choices to be meaningful. This is also true! So what’s the real truth? What’s the story behind these seemingly contradictory statements in what I want to do with Void Dreaming?
Well, the answer’s that they’re both true. In many VNs, you pick your route based on how you want to approach the story. You often select from a buffet of characters that you’d like to get hot and sticky with (in that kind of story) or that you find the most interesting (also in those kind of stories, but also also the others). Void Dreaming has a varied cast of befriendable and romanceable characters, but the story isn’t dependent on who you hang out with.
Not… completely, anyway. In Rael’s journey through fringe space, he’ll have to rely on the crew of the Void Dreamer not just to get through his duties, but his life will be in their paws more often than not. The inverse is also true! Consequently, the relationships that you build with the crew of the Dreamer will, during the ordinary operation of the vessel, perhaps seem like mere flavour for the story you’re experiencing. But those friendships you build and the trust you gain with the different members of the crew? That’s what’s going to matter in the end.
After all, when it all comes apart and all you have left are the people beside you, having that bond can mean the difference between failure and survival. The choices you make and the bonds you build are going to be what gives Rael what he needs to make it through what’s to come, and those choices run throughout the whole story from the smallest choice of who to spend time with, to the choice of who on the crew you’d trust with your life.
You also get to choose what kind of underwear Rael wears. You’re welcome.
All told, that’s all I’ve really got for this post! Next time we’re going to go into the Void Dreamer herself, and the crew that calls her home, and what some of these choices you make can lead to in the form of special Event scenes!
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Last time we had a look into what makes Skills tick, as well as the day by day structure of the VN itself. Today we’re going to be taking a step deeper into the mechanics behind the choices of the story, the sorts of things that they effect, and how those help you build the two relational stats hidden in the background of all the crewmembers of the Void Dreamer: Approval, and Lust. Saucy!
Friends, Not Food
And we’re going to do it backwards, too! We’ll start with the Approval and Lust stats, since they’re also key to how many choices in the story work. Just like in real life, people separate their like of someone from their lust for them. You can enjoy a person’s company just fine without feeling the overwhelming urge to bed them, after all. That’s just as true here as anywhere else. And yes, that means that you can absolutely choose to try to befriend the whole crew without expressing any sexual interest in them whatsoever. Every Origin for Rael allows you to play him as ace, if that’s the way you want to go. That doesn’t mean that all sexual content is removed from the story, of course; you’re not deciding how other characters behave, and Mizz isn’t going to dress more to Astrogation Guild uniform standards just to please you. It does change how Rael reacts to it though, and may take some individual choices out of your hands. It’ll put some different ones there instead as the story progresses though, and sexual relationships with any of the crew are not necessary to reach the resolutions of the story. They will, however, change said resolutions! More on that at a later time.
So let’s get into those two different relationship variables. Starting with Approval, it represents the amount that a character appreciates Rael’s presence on the ship and in their life. It’s your basic friendship bar, rising when you do things they approve of and lowering when you irritate them. Origin dialogue options are often a good vehicle for raising the Approval of a receptive character, once you get an idea of what sort of options they’ll respond to. They’re not the only way, of course; just because one character might see the appeal in the loose and free lifestyle of a Punk doesn’t mean that you’ll be unable to earn their friendship if your Rael wasn’t one. Think of Origin dialogue choices in this case as a shortcut for earning Approval with certain crewmembers; a nice bonus, but not necessary if the dialogue doesn’t fit your idea of who Rael is. Additionally, Origin dialogue choices that appeal to a character tend to give both Approval and Lust, but in different volumes of each depending on the character in question. If there’s an optimal path to get into Sam’s coveralls, you’ll have to work to find it!
Or code dive. Please don’t code dive. There’s spoilers in there!
Originally, all crewmembers started with different Approval ratings to depict their base opinion of Rael. This made things a bit messier than I liked, so I removed it and wound up neutralising the scores. Everyone starts with Rael at the same point, and this can be lifted or lowered as a result of the choices that you make. How much and how fast they can grow depends on individual character nature, and the choices you make with them. Zuberi and Bromm’ka are pretty friendly. Caleia and Sam? Less so. Your Approval with characters can dip below the starting point too, and they will react accordingly to your presence if you do.
High Approval is also how you unlock special social interaction scenes with the crew of the Dreamer. If you want to learn more about Mizz or Tulemeni or whomever, taking the time to earn their Approval by learning what they respond well to is integral. And the story does give you some hints; during Day One, Rael will be able to go over his history with the whole crew all at once. If you’re paying attention, you might notice that some crew are more interested at certain points than others; a fine and not-so-subtle hint that you’ve got a bit of a leg-up with earning their Approval. Which is good, because in addition to unlocking private social interaction with them, good Approval is in many cases necessary for the spicier content.
Bow Chikka Wow-Wow
The Lust statistic is the other component there. Flirtatious comments here and there, or the right suggestion at the right time, can signal to the various crewmembers that Rael’s into them. Whether or not they respond depends on their own nature and if you’ve read them right. The brash and bombastic Mizz might appreciate a forward approach, but the reclusive and antisocial Sam might bite your head off for the attempt. Does Caleia’s control kick extend beyond the ship’s bridge and into the bedroom? Is Zuberi just a dad, or is he also a daddy? Exploration and experimentation will help you find out.
Unlike Approval, all crewmembers start with a Lust value of zero, so there’s no getting a leg up on getting your leg over any of them. If you want to build their Lust, you’re going to have to actually put the effort in, Rael!
And as I mentioned above, the saucy situations in this visual novel are all entirely optional. No path through the story locks you into participating in any adult content if you don’t want to. Which isn’t to say that the crew won’t get up to their own shenanigans on their own, and there are definitely circumstances where you might catch an eyeful of some action somewhere on the ship. Even in those cases however, Rael will have the option to avert his eyes and avoid the circumstance (and an asexual Rael will do so without waiting to see if the omnipotent being on their shoulder has anything to say about it). If you’re here for the plot and the character interplay but you want to leave the sex at the door, we have options for you! The crew are their own people however, and whenever Rael’s not intruding on their lives they will absolutely be following their own imperatives… sometimes with sticky results.
And if you’re wondering, the absolute earliest you can get some spice in your life is actually on day one, if you follow a very specific set of choices. Which I suppose is a great lead in to the choice system in the VN!
But first, a quick note on something I’ve mentioned a few times just above. As suggested, you can set Rael as asexual relatively early in the piece. The default sexuality in the furry space future is to be pan, and a Rael who isn’t ace will fall neatly into this very broad view of sexuality. That said however, you’ll be prompted at the earliest chance to build the Lust of a character (or once you start progressing down the path of befriending them) if you want to be able to pursue eventual ugly-bumping with them. In this way, a Rael who isn’t explicitly asexual can go through the story and define on a case-by-case basis who he finds attractive. Not into masc characters? Lock their options when they come up; you won’t be bothered again. Dig a bit of everything, but can’t stand jerks? Well, lock out Mizz, Caleia and Sam and leave yourself open to friendlier crew!
Choice is sacred, and how you choose to define your Rael, his Origins, his Skills, and even his sexual interests, are up to you, dear reader.
Consequences
As I mentioned in the very first post introducing Void Dreaming and the concepts behind it (and again in the last entry about Skills), I think that VNs are at their best when you’re able to make meaningful choices. Simply picking your route isn’t what does it for me; I’m in it for the story. Limiting the writing to a handful of key routes makes the job so much easier for the writer, but it also prevents the reader from feeling like they can make a meaningful impact on their playthrough. After all, do the routes all happen simultaneously? Are they all equally valid? Is there a single canon one? I’m hoping that Void Dreaming, through a titanic wordcount, is going to be able to overcome that.
The solution that I mentioned was, in large part, constraining the major variables to early choices that then set the course for the whole story to follow on from. This sounds like routes with extra steps, but it’s actually not! You might remember from the first post that Void Dreaming has just one, single route. One story, starting with Rael aboard Yakeshi Station and heading to his rendezvous with Zuberi. No matter what Origin choices you make, the story always starts there. And it always proceeds, hitting the same story beats, on its way toward what I hope is a thrilling and satisfying conclusion.
Along the way though, the choices you make are going to have an impact on the characters around you. When it’s all dialogue options, your Origins will inform how Rael approaches building relationships with the different crewmembers. When it’s Skill checks, you’ll be deciding how Rael will attempt to solve problems that come up. You can fail at both of these, and yes, you can end the story prematurely by inducing a fail state. Failure, for anyone who knows my stories (or life), is always an option!
And those choices are going to have an impact beyond just the specific scene. Spent time building a friendship with Zuberi? The captain’s going to be more receptive to your suggestions later on. Been railing Mizz on the regular? Other crew will notice and comment on it. Pissed off Caleia? Well, she’s not going to make your life easy now, is she? Some of these examples, like the Mizz one, are there for flavour. They make the time you spend on the ship feel more organic; more real. But others, like how receptive Zuberi and Caleia are based on their Approval of you? That can have real, serious consequences for how you choose to proceed in the story.
And that leads to the last thing to touch on in this entry: the concept of routes.
A Wrong Turn At Albuquerque
It’s been said a few times in these entries that I’ve only prepared a single route for this story. This is true! I’ve also said that I want your choices to be meaningful. This is also true! So what’s the real truth? What’s the story behind these seemingly contradictory statements in what I want to do with Void Dreaming?
Well, the answer’s that they’re both true. In many VNs, you pick your route based on how you want to approach the story. You often select from a buffet of characters that you’d like to get hot and sticky with (in that kind of story) or that you find the most interesting (also in those kind of stories, but also also the others). Void Dreaming has a varied cast of befriendable and romanceable characters, but the story isn’t dependent on who you hang out with.
Not… completely, anyway. In Rael’s journey through fringe space, he’ll have to rely on the crew of the Void Dreamer not just to get through his duties, but his life will be in their paws more often than not. The inverse is also true! Consequently, the relationships that you build with the crew of the Dreamer will, during the ordinary operation of the vessel, perhaps seem like mere flavour for the story you’re experiencing. But those friendships you build and the trust you gain with the different members of the crew? That’s what’s going to matter in the end.
After all, when it all comes apart and all you have left are the people beside you, having that bond can mean the difference between failure and survival. The choices you make and the bonds you build are going to be what gives Rael what he needs to make it through what’s to come, and those choices run throughout the whole story from the smallest choice of who to spend time with, to the choice of who on the crew you’d trust with your life.
You also get to choose what kind of underwear Rael wears. You’re welcome.
All told, that’s all I’ve really got for this post! Next time we’re going to go into the Void Dreamer herself, and the crew that calls her home, and what some of these choices you make can lead to in the form of special Event scenes!
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Void Dreaming Blog III - Skills and Progress
Posted a year agoHey there! Fae back again with another Void Dreaming post!
Last time we touched on the Origins, one of the cornerstones of the Void Dreaming project. They’re important, and provide the bulk of the unique dialogue and narrative options that come about as you venture through the story of Void Dreaming. Sometimes though, Rael will need to take action. When that time comes, it’s not his Origins that define (directly) the outcome, but his Skills.
Visual novels are at their best, in my personal opinion, when they’re leaning into the interactive nature of them. It’s the whole reason why I’m going through the pain and expense of making one! The Skill system allows for Rael to have meaningful interaction with the story and shape how he approaches problems, which is a key goal of this project.
The Skills of the visual novel are split into six clear categories. Each one of them is useful in their own way in the course of the story, and there’s no wrong way to build out Rael. No matter what choices you make, you’ll always have opportunities to use your Skills to succeed! Or fail. We’ll cover that, too.
Skillful
The Physical Skill deals with Rael’s raw strength and physical attributes. A high Physical skill represents a fit and strong Rael who’s able to solve his problems through the application of good ol’ muscles. It’s also a nice Skill to have many points into if you’re going to be fighting paw-to-paw, which is always a risk when you’re on the fringe.
The Mind Skill stands as the opposite, representing Rael’s mental acuity and general intelligence. A high Mind Skill depicts a Rael with a high degree of critical thinking ability making him smarter than the average wolf and more capable of out-thinking his enemies and whatever situation he finds himself in.
The Technology Skill might seem at first blush to be the same, but this accounts for Rael’s knowledge of and aptitude for different technologies. High tech, low tech, retro tech and prototype tech all comes naturally to a Rael with high Technology Skill, and he’ll be able to find solutions to his problems through the application of his knowledge of systems.
The Starship Skill, perhaps predictably after that, deals with Rael’s knowledge not of general technology, but specifically that which relates to starships. With high Starship Skill, Rael’s knowledge of starships and their systems will grant him insights that he might otherwise not have.
The Social Skill is the quintessential Charisma check; bards need look no further! With a high Social Skill, Rael’s got the gift of gab and a thoroughly silvered tongue. If you need to convince someone of a course of action and you can’t rely on a relationship you’ve built with them, or if you need to deceive someone? This is the Skill you want.
Finally, the Weapons Skill relates to Rael’s proficiency with and knowledge of weapons. Whether it’s a pistol or a rifle, a starship weapons console or how best to repair, modify or optimise a weapon, a high Weapons Skill will let Rael make the most of almost anything and everything that shoots, stabs, burns, or blows up. Another surprisingly useful Skill on the fringe!
Whew! Hopefully those all make sense. I was tempted at one point to break it down to the six attributes you might be familiar with from something like your D&D character sheet, but I wanted things more specific to what I was doing. I feel like this setup is the right approach, but whether that’s the case or not will depend on what people think when they get their grubby little mitts on it.
Speaking of response, Skills will be defined pretty early (either in the prologue when you choose your Origins, or in the Quick-Start option when you choose your preset) but they don’t actually become a part of the visual novel properly until day two. I admit, this was a bit of a tough call to make, but it’s not without deliberate intent. The goal behind it is to make sure that you have time to get a handle on the Origin choices and making choices without Skills affecting them before easing the reader into them. It gives the Origin dialogue choices a time to shine before also adding the extra gamey mechanics of the Skill system on top of it. Don’t worry, though! Skills show up pretty early in the events of day two assuming you don’t mind going for a little trip…
Base Load
So now you might be wonder exactly what skills you earn from what Origins, and I’m happy to say they’re all right here for you to consider! Feel free to pre-plan your ideal Rael in advance; and I’d love if you shared your design and reasoning below!
- Spacer Rael gains a point of Technology and Starship. He loses a point of Social.
- Colonist Rael gains a point of Physical and Social. He loses a point of Starship.
- Core Rael gains a point of Mind and Social. He loses a point of Physical.
- Punk Rael gains a point of Physical and Weapons. He loses a point of Mind.
- Dreamer Rael gains a point of Social and Mind. He loses a point of Weapons.
- Tech Student Rael gains a point of Technology and Mind. He loses a point of Physical.
- Pirate Rael gains a point each in Physical, Starship, and Weapons.
- Administrator Rael gains a point each in Physical, Mind, and Social.
- Innovator Rael gains a point each in Mind, Technology, and Starship.
All Skills start at a base of five. This means that whatever Origin combination you choose, you’ll have seven positive points and two negative points going across all of your Skills. If we take the Starfire Rael preset as an example (which, for those who don’t remember from the last post is Spacer, Punk, and Ex-Pirate), we end up with a Rael who has only four points in his Social and Mind Skills, but six in Technology and a comfy seven in Physical, Weapons and Starship.
This also means that while most Skills max out at seven and drop only as low as four, it is possible to build a Rael who has certain Skills get as low as three, or even as high as eight. Whether you want to minmax your Rael to get the right spread of specific Skills or go for a one-size-fits-all approach for your Jack-Of-All-Trades Rael, it’s all up to you. Your Origin gives you the Skills you need to get through whatever he has to face.
At least at the start of the story.
Skill Issue
Rael’s starting Skills aren’t the ones he necessarily will have to rely on for the whole story. How you spend your time aboard the Dreamer is more than just interaction with the crew. You can also choose to spend some of Rael’s time developing his Skills and growing his abilities in these six fields, the better to shore up weaknesses, enhance strengths further, and prepare for the challenges yet to come.
Locations where Rael can develop his Skills vary, but the majority of Skills can be developed by spending time in Rael’s quarters aboard the ship. This does mean that you have to choose to sacrifice a chance to build your relationship with the crew in order to build those Skills, but in the long term that may also prove advantageous to Rael’s journey into fringe space. Sex is great, sure, but have you ever experienced a well-rounded set of skills foundational to your experience in a hostile envirom- hey where are you going? Come back!
Not every Skill requires you to sacrifice your socialization time. Some Skills are built through certain interactions! For example, spending some time in the gym is a good way to increase Rael’s Physical Skill over time, with or without a workout buddy. Maybe some challenging game soft in the rec room would help develop your Mind Skill, depending on who you play with (and how well you play). And your Weapon Skill? Well, let’s just say that if you want to get a peek at the ship’s arsenal, making sure you’re in Caleia’s good graces is probably a good start.
Building your Skills isn’t a one-and-done thing, though. It’s a constant balance of how you want to spend Rael’s limited time every day, and Skills take more than one study session or run on the treadmill to get you advancing your Skills to the point your checks are better.
It’s also worth noting that there’s a hard cap on Skill development; you’ll never be able to lift a Skill beyond ten points at the maximum, and in the course of the story you’ll only be able to lift an individual Skill by no more than three points. So a Rael with a high starting bonus to his Physical Skill, for example, isn’t going to be able to exceed the Skill cap! Nor is a Rael who starts with a low Physical Skill going to be able to max out his Physical abilities. It does mean a Rael who starts with high Physical Skill is going to be able to max it out quickly though, and then devote their time to other Skills, or social pursuits. The choice is yours!
(Skill) Check It Out
Building Rael’s Skills is important because the checks for Skills come in three distinct flavours: normal checks, difficult checks, and impossible checks. Sometimes you’ll even get different difficulty checks for the same Skills, giving you the chance to maybe take a safer route that doesn’t do you as many favours, or a harder check with significant bonuses… if you’re capable enough!
Checks are conveniently colour coded for you, and are also marked appropriately for those who perceive colour differently.
Normal checks are simply presented to you and are coloured blue, and as long as you don’t have less than average points in a certain Skill, you’re very likely to succeed in your use of that Skill.
Difficult checks marked and coloured *yellow* will definitely require Rael to have more than average Skill in a particular area than others if he wants to successfully use that Skill to complete a given task.
Impossible checks… well, those speak for themselves. Marked by <red text> when they show up, Rael’s Skills need to be extremely high or he’s going to have a hard time coming close to what they require of him!
Origins might help define the nature of Rael’s personality along with the other choices you make, but his Skills are what will allow him to solve the problems that come up day in, day out aboard the Void Dreamer. Picking the right Skill for the task is something that’ll only become more difficult the longer Rael’s on the fringe.
And that makes for a perfect segue into a brief note on the structure of the story: the days!
Days of our Lives
Void Dreaming will have its major public releases to correspond with the notable end points of each ‘day’ aboard the ship. Days aboard the Dreamer are broken up, as Zuberi explains it, into three distinct shifts. On the first and second shifts are work shifts, where the crew is busy doing crew things. This includes Rael; he doesn’t get a free ride, after all, but you get to choose which shift and which crew you want to work with at the start. Don’t worry; this isn’t a choice that’s going to lock you out of massive chunks of the story!
The third shift, however, is where the magic happens. While the crew work or sleep during the first and second shifts, everyone’s awake and relaxing on third shift. A time of recreation and personal development, this is the prime time for Rael to make friends, influence people, build Skills if he’s willing to put in the effort over time… and maybe even engage in a little romance, if he’s built up enough of a rapport with someone. Or several someones!
The story takes place over a number of these days (I hesitate to put a number on it because I’m still writing the whole thing and it might change!), with the prologue and Day 1 serving more as a sort of introduction to the characters, story, and galaxy of Void Dreaming. Which isn’t to say that these initial steps aren’t important and allow you to start your journey toward getting in good with different crewmembers, of course!
I expect to do major releases of the novel in line with those days, starting with the prologue to serve as a little tease and demo. There’ll be a way for you to get more than just the prologue when the launch comes though, so stay tuned for future details on that once we’re a little closer!
For now though, that’s about it for this one! Next time we’re going to talk a little more about the nature of the choice system in play in Void Dreaming, and how exactly that helps you on your path to build the stats that I bet a lot of you are really interested in: the Approval and Lust ratings for the crew. Hey, it’s the furry space future. There’s a lot less hangups about sex there!
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Last time we touched on the Origins, one of the cornerstones of the Void Dreaming project. They’re important, and provide the bulk of the unique dialogue and narrative options that come about as you venture through the story of Void Dreaming. Sometimes though, Rael will need to take action. When that time comes, it’s not his Origins that define (directly) the outcome, but his Skills.
Visual novels are at their best, in my personal opinion, when they’re leaning into the interactive nature of them. It’s the whole reason why I’m going through the pain and expense of making one! The Skill system allows for Rael to have meaningful interaction with the story and shape how he approaches problems, which is a key goal of this project.
The Skills of the visual novel are split into six clear categories. Each one of them is useful in their own way in the course of the story, and there’s no wrong way to build out Rael. No matter what choices you make, you’ll always have opportunities to use your Skills to succeed! Or fail. We’ll cover that, too.
Skillful
The Physical Skill deals with Rael’s raw strength and physical attributes. A high Physical skill represents a fit and strong Rael who’s able to solve his problems through the application of good ol’ muscles. It’s also a nice Skill to have many points into if you’re going to be fighting paw-to-paw, which is always a risk when you’re on the fringe.
The Mind Skill stands as the opposite, representing Rael’s mental acuity and general intelligence. A high Mind Skill depicts a Rael with a high degree of critical thinking ability making him smarter than the average wolf and more capable of out-thinking his enemies and whatever situation he finds himself in.
The Technology Skill might seem at first blush to be the same, but this accounts for Rael’s knowledge of and aptitude for different technologies. High tech, low tech, retro tech and prototype tech all comes naturally to a Rael with high Technology Skill, and he’ll be able to find solutions to his problems through the application of his knowledge of systems.
The Starship Skill, perhaps predictably after that, deals with Rael’s knowledge not of general technology, but specifically that which relates to starships. With high Starship Skill, Rael’s knowledge of starships and their systems will grant him insights that he might otherwise not have.
The Social Skill is the quintessential Charisma check; bards need look no further! With a high Social Skill, Rael’s got the gift of gab and a thoroughly silvered tongue. If you need to convince someone of a course of action and you can’t rely on a relationship you’ve built with them, or if you need to deceive someone? This is the Skill you want.
Finally, the Weapons Skill relates to Rael’s proficiency with and knowledge of weapons. Whether it’s a pistol or a rifle, a starship weapons console or how best to repair, modify or optimise a weapon, a high Weapons Skill will let Rael make the most of almost anything and everything that shoots, stabs, burns, or blows up. Another surprisingly useful Skill on the fringe!
Whew! Hopefully those all make sense. I was tempted at one point to break it down to the six attributes you might be familiar with from something like your D&D character sheet, but I wanted things more specific to what I was doing. I feel like this setup is the right approach, but whether that’s the case or not will depend on what people think when they get their grubby little mitts on it.
Speaking of response, Skills will be defined pretty early (either in the prologue when you choose your Origins, or in the Quick-Start option when you choose your preset) but they don’t actually become a part of the visual novel properly until day two. I admit, this was a bit of a tough call to make, but it’s not without deliberate intent. The goal behind it is to make sure that you have time to get a handle on the Origin choices and making choices without Skills affecting them before easing the reader into them. It gives the Origin dialogue choices a time to shine before also adding the extra gamey mechanics of the Skill system on top of it. Don’t worry, though! Skills show up pretty early in the events of day two assuming you don’t mind going for a little trip…
Base Load
So now you might be wonder exactly what skills you earn from what Origins, and I’m happy to say they’re all right here for you to consider! Feel free to pre-plan your ideal Rael in advance; and I’d love if you shared your design and reasoning below!
- Spacer Rael gains a point of Technology and Starship. He loses a point of Social.
- Colonist Rael gains a point of Physical and Social. He loses a point of Starship.
- Core Rael gains a point of Mind and Social. He loses a point of Physical.
- Punk Rael gains a point of Physical and Weapons. He loses a point of Mind.
- Dreamer Rael gains a point of Social and Mind. He loses a point of Weapons.
- Tech Student Rael gains a point of Technology and Mind. He loses a point of Physical.
- Pirate Rael gains a point each in Physical, Starship, and Weapons.
- Administrator Rael gains a point each in Physical, Mind, and Social.
- Innovator Rael gains a point each in Mind, Technology, and Starship.
All Skills start at a base of five. This means that whatever Origin combination you choose, you’ll have seven positive points and two negative points going across all of your Skills. If we take the Starfire Rael preset as an example (which, for those who don’t remember from the last post is Spacer, Punk, and Ex-Pirate), we end up with a Rael who has only four points in his Social and Mind Skills, but six in Technology and a comfy seven in Physical, Weapons and Starship.
This also means that while most Skills max out at seven and drop only as low as four, it is possible to build a Rael who has certain Skills get as low as three, or even as high as eight. Whether you want to minmax your Rael to get the right spread of specific Skills or go for a one-size-fits-all approach for your Jack-Of-All-Trades Rael, it’s all up to you. Your Origin gives you the Skills you need to get through whatever he has to face.
At least at the start of the story.
Skill Issue
Rael’s starting Skills aren’t the ones he necessarily will have to rely on for the whole story. How you spend your time aboard the Dreamer is more than just interaction with the crew. You can also choose to spend some of Rael’s time developing his Skills and growing his abilities in these six fields, the better to shore up weaknesses, enhance strengths further, and prepare for the challenges yet to come.
Locations where Rael can develop his Skills vary, but the majority of Skills can be developed by spending time in Rael’s quarters aboard the ship. This does mean that you have to choose to sacrifice a chance to build your relationship with the crew in order to build those Skills, but in the long term that may also prove advantageous to Rael’s journey into fringe space. Sex is great, sure, but have you ever experienced a well-rounded set of skills foundational to your experience in a hostile envirom- hey where are you going? Come back!
Not every Skill requires you to sacrifice your socialization time. Some Skills are built through certain interactions! For example, spending some time in the gym is a good way to increase Rael’s Physical Skill over time, with or without a workout buddy. Maybe some challenging game soft in the rec room would help develop your Mind Skill, depending on who you play with (and how well you play). And your Weapon Skill? Well, let’s just say that if you want to get a peek at the ship’s arsenal, making sure you’re in Caleia’s good graces is probably a good start.
Building your Skills isn’t a one-and-done thing, though. It’s a constant balance of how you want to spend Rael’s limited time every day, and Skills take more than one study session or run on the treadmill to get you advancing your Skills to the point your checks are better.
It’s also worth noting that there’s a hard cap on Skill development; you’ll never be able to lift a Skill beyond ten points at the maximum, and in the course of the story you’ll only be able to lift an individual Skill by no more than three points. So a Rael with a high starting bonus to his Physical Skill, for example, isn’t going to be able to exceed the Skill cap! Nor is a Rael who starts with a low Physical Skill going to be able to max out his Physical abilities. It does mean a Rael who starts with high Physical Skill is going to be able to max it out quickly though, and then devote their time to other Skills, or social pursuits. The choice is yours!
(Skill) Check It Out
Building Rael’s Skills is important because the checks for Skills come in three distinct flavours: normal checks, difficult checks, and impossible checks. Sometimes you’ll even get different difficulty checks for the same Skills, giving you the chance to maybe take a safer route that doesn’t do you as many favours, or a harder check with significant bonuses… if you’re capable enough!
Checks are conveniently colour coded for you, and are also marked appropriately for those who perceive colour differently.
Normal checks are simply presented to you and are coloured blue, and as long as you don’t have less than average points in a certain Skill, you’re very likely to succeed in your use of that Skill.
Difficult checks marked and coloured *yellow* will definitely require Rael to have more than average Skill in a particular area than others if he wants to successfully use that Skill to complete a given task.
Impossible checks… well, those speak for themselves. Marked by <red text> when they show up, Rael’s Skills need to be extremely high or he’s going to have a hard time coming close to what they require of him!
Origins might help define the nature of Rael’s personality along with the other choices you make, but his Skills are what will allow him to solve the problems that come up day in, day out aboard the Void Dreamer. Picking the right Skill for the task is something that’ll only become more difficult the longer Rael’s on the fringe.
And that makes for a perfect segue into a brief note on the structure of the story: the days!
Days of our Lives
Void Dreaming will have its major public releases to correspond with the notable end points of each ‘day’ aboard the ship. Days aboard the Dreamer are broken up, as Zuberi explains it, into three distinct shifts. On the first and second shifts are work shifts, where the crew is busy doing crew things. This includes Rael; he doesn’t get a free ride, after all, but you get to choose which shift and which crew you want to work with at the start. Don’t worry; this isn’t a choice that’s going to lock you out of massive chunks of the story!
The third shift, however, is where the magic happens. While the crew work or sleep during the first and second shifts, everyone’s awake and relaxing on third shift. A time of recreation and personal development, this is the prime time for Rael to make friends, influence people, build Skills if he’s willing to put in the effort over time… and maybe even engage in a little romance, if he’s built up enough of a rapport with someone. Or several someones!
The story takes place over a number of these days (I hesitate to put a number on it because I’m still writing the whole thing and it might change!), with the prologue and Day 1 serving more as a sort of introduction to the characters, story, and galaxy of Void Dreaming. Which isn’t to say that these initial steps aren’t important and allow you to start your journey toward getting in good with different crewmembers, of course!
I expect to do major releases of the novel in line with those days, starting with the prologue to serve as a little tease and demo. There’ll be a way for you to get more than just the prologue when the launch comes though, so stay tuned for future details on that once we’re a little closer!
For now though, that’s about it for this one! Next time we’re going to talk a little more about the nature of the choice system in play in Void Dreaming, and how exactly that helps you on your path to build the stats that I bet a lot of you are really interested in: the Approval and Lust ratings for the crew. Hey, it’s the furry space future. There’s a lot less hangups about sex there!
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Void Dreaming Blog II - Origins
Posted a year agoHey there! Fae back again with another (much smaller!) Void Dreaming post!
Last time we dove balls-deep into the concept that drove me, mechanically, to get this project underway in the first place. It’s a lot of theory and probably not the most interesting stuff, so if you want to call this post Entry 1 and the previous one a sort of Entry 0, I sure don’t think I could blame you. But don’t you worry, because today we’re talking a bit more about the core concept that drives what makes Void Dreaming, and Rael as a protagonist: Origins!
In The Beginning
Origins, as I mentioned last post, are one of the cornerstones to how I think I can actually pull this project off. They form the basis of Rael’s character in the story, and let you, the reader, have a bit more control in what elements make up your protagonist. It also lets me add a lot more flavour and variety in the story for you, while mitigating a lot of the complexity and keeping story branches from spinning off into infinity.
First though, it’s worth pointing out what it doesn’t change. You don’t get to change Rael’s name, his sex or gender, his species, or his physical appearance. Those are all locked in. Even if I just gave the player the chance to play Rael as a femme, or non-binary, I would have to create variables for every single pronoun usage in the whole game. I’d also have to have all the CGs involving Rael (which is most all of them) account for that. Because the project is already almost unworkably large in scale and cost (the latter of which is incredibly important to me since I’m self-funding so much of this from the start), these are statics. Rael is always a male, masculine wolf, twenty-eight years of age, with the same build and appearance every single time you play.
What Origins do however is serve two roles in Void Dreaming. The first and simplest is that they’ll define Rael’s base Skill values at the game’s start. We’re not going to be going into Skills in this post, so you’ll have to have a wait for the next one before you’re able to get a handle on how exactly they work. Suffice to say that your Origins will never let you build a bad Rael, but depending on the way you want to handle things some Origins will do you more good than others.
More importantly however, they affect key moments and aspects of Rael’s backstory. They shape how he approaches people and situations, and not only provide unique dialogue and narration during moments where his history informs his behaviour, but also allow you to make specific choices in dialogue with other characters that refer back to his lived experience. We’ll talk more about that in a moment!
Your choice of Origins comes up very early in the prologue, shortly after you meet Zuberi, the captain of the ship upon which you’re to embark upon your story. He’ll quiz you on your background, and give you a chance to get into some details with him. Some of them he’ll like. Some of them he may not. This is true of all the crew, in fact, and we’ll touch on that later. Also, after you’ve selected your Origin choices, you’ll be informed what Skill values you’ve gained from your choices, and you’ll have the chance to go back and choose them all again if you like. Feel free to experiment, but once you accept them, that’s it! They’ll be your Origin choices for the rest of the story.
Origins are split up into three categories, each with three options within them. If you’re counting or paid attention and remember from the last post, that means there are a total of twenty-seven different unique combinations of Origin choices for Rael. You can build a lot of different wolves this way!
The first category is where Rael was born and raised. Perhaps your Rael was born in the black of space and raised in a starship engineering bay as a Spacer, giving him an affinity for star travel, ship maintenance, and staying out of natural gravity wells. Or perhaps his parents raised him as a Colonist on a newly-settled world, flush with fresh air and all the wild fun that comes from a whole wide open planet to explore. He could also have been born and raised on Torderra as a Core-Worlder, the trade capital of the galaxy, rubbing elbows with high society even in his youth.
Whether a Spacer, a Colonist or a Core-Worlder, Rael’s early life informs the base of his personality. Spacers naturally know a lot more about ships and their tech than others, but a Colonist might be more physically adept for their youth, and a Core-Worlder might have received advantages that neither a scrapper nor a bumpkin might have.
Rael had a pretty interesting adolescence regardless of which Origin choices you give him. Maybe he got a bit rebellious and turned Punk, running with a crew of other gutterpunks in the capital city on the world of Ferelia and getting up to all sorts of trouble. Perhaps he was lured by education to Palfrini where he became a bit of a Dreamer, head in the clouds and more interested in drama, culture and a good story than math and science. Or he could have gone the other way and been such an excellent student that he was picked out by the prestigious Institute for Galactic Advancement to become a prized Tech Student on Avercys, only to find his hunger for knowledge getting him in all sorts of trouble.
You might be seeing a bit of a pattern here in how these Origins are lining up, like how Spacer might lend itself well to Punk, or how Colonist might naturally precede Dreamer. There’s a reason for that and we’ll touch on it at the end, but now we get into, as Zuberi calls it, the meat of the issue.
For all of Rael’s life, nothing compares to what he was getting up to in the period of time just before he arrived on a fringe station and met with Zuberi to get aboard an exploration ship. If the first Origin tier can be called Rael’s Youth and the second defines his Adolescence, then the final Origin tier of choices could best be coined Rael’s Shame.
In one instance, Rael wound up turning to a life of star piracy. Now an Ex-Pirate, he’s got some very nasty skeletons in his closet. In another, he stayed on the straight and narrow and found himself becoming a Colonial Administrator of no small repute. Unfortunately and in the wake of a tragedy, he’s on the outs and operating in exile. In the final option, Rael’s turned his experience and skills into becoming something of an Innovator, writing software for anyone and everyone and earning some pretty sweet creds for his efforts. Disaster strikes and turns his life upside down, and now he’s desperate to atone.
I don’t want to go into too much detail with these choices, because I want them to be something you discover more about in the course of the story. This is especially true of the third tier of Origins, as while the first two help to define Rael’s personality and a lot of his dialogue options (along with his interactions with the crew), each of the final tier of Origins directly impact the story in interesting ways by defining, among other things, what brings Rael to Zuberi in the first place.
Pre-Definition
Finally, very early on in the process I wanted to streamline somewhat the reader experience. The prologue isn’t long in the grand scheme of things, being a fraction of the length of the first day of the story. In thinking about how I could give a player a sort of quick-start option, a couple of choices occurred to me. The one that I went with for the quick-start was a skip of the prologue, two key choices made that define certain things Rael could have done that directly impact several other events that follow, and a choice of one of three Rael presets.
These correspond with the ‘natural fit’ options from the prologue; the ones that ‘make the most sense’ as it were:
- Starfire Rael is a Spacer, Punk, and Ex-Pirate
- Wordly Rael is a Colonist, Dreamer, and Colonial Administrator
- High-Tech Rael is a Core-Worlder, Tech Student, and Innovator
These choices allow you to have one of three Raels with good-fit Origin choices that interplay the most naturally. That’s not to say that a Core-Worlder who leaves Torderra to study as a Dreamer on Palfrini and goes on to become an Ex-Pirate isn’t viable; it absolutely is as viable as any other Origin combination you can imagine. These just seem like natural fits and work well, I think, for getting a player quickly into the game.
You might be wondering why I didn’t just allow the full customization suite for the quick-start, and that’s because it incentivises the player to actually go through the prologue. Between that fact, and the fact that the quick-start option doesn’t earn Rael any extra Approval from interactions with his crewmates (which we’ll be talking about in a couple posts or so!), the quick-start options give you a chance to get into the main part of the story nice and quick without losing too much, if you’re happy to settle for a preset Rael. And if not, hey! The prologue’s right there if you want the full customisation and all those chances to earn Approval!
And a final fun fact before we finish up for this entry: in testing, most of my alpha build readers always went through the prologue and defined Rael deliberately rather than going through the prologue-skipping quick start. However, among those testers, a not insignificant fraction of them would wind up, with their first runs through, effectively picking the High-Tech Rael choices without recognizing them as a pre-set. Seems Core-Worlder, Tech Student and Innovator aren’t just a natural fit, but appeal to quite a few people!
So… that’s it! That’s the Origin system that underpins most of the variability in this story. No two playthroughs will be identical if you change only the Origins you play with and alter as little else as possible. My hope is that between that, the Skill system, and the interplay between Rael and the crew, it’ll keep people coming back to Void Dreaming again and again.
Well, for more than the CGs, anyway.
Next time we’ll be diving into the Skill system, how they’re initially laid out in regards to your Origins, how you can build those Skills further over the course of the VN, and what they allow you to do… or fail at doing. Consequences! We’ll also touch briefly on the structure of the visual novel and what you can expect from the releases.
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Last time we dove balls-deep into the concept that drove me, mechanically, to get this project underway in the first place. It’s a lot of theory and probably not the most interesting stuff, so if you want to call this post Entry 1 and the previous one a sort of Entry 0, I sure don’t think I could blame you. But don’t you worry, because today we’re talking a bit more about the core concept that drives what makes Void Dreaming, and Rael as a protagonist: Origins!
In The Beginning
Origins, as I mentioned last post, are one of the cornerstones to how I think I can actually pull this project off. They form the basis of Rael’s character in the story, and let you, the reader, have a bit more control in what elements make up your protagonist. It also lets me add a lot more flavour and variety in the story for you, while mitigating a lot of the complexity and keeping story branches from spinning off into infinity.
First though, it’s worth pointing out what it doesn’t change. You don’t get to change Rael’s name, his sex or gender, his species, or his physical appearance. Those are all locked in. Even if I just gave the player the chance to play Rael as a femme, or non-binary, I would have to create variables for every single pronoun usage in the whole game. I’d also have to have all the CGs involving Rael (which is most all of them) account for that. Because the project is already almost unworkably large in scale and cost (the latter of which is incredibly important to me since I’m self-funding so much of this from the start), these are statics. Rael is always a male, masculine wolf, twenty-eight years of age, with the same build and appearance every single time you play.
What Origins do however is serve two roles in Void Dreaming. The first and simplest is that they’ll define Rael’s base Skill values at the game’s start. We’re not going to be going into Skills in this post, so you’ll have to have a wait for the next one before you’re able to get a handle on how exactly they work. Suffice to say that your Origins will never let you build a bad Rael, but depending on the way you want to handle things some Origins will do you more good than others.
More importantly however, they affect key moments and aspects of Rael’s backstory. They shape how he approaches people and situations, and not only provide unique dialogue and narration during moments where his history informs his behaviour, but also allow you to make specific choices in dialogue with other characters that refer back to his lived experience. We’ll talk more about that in a moment!
Your choice of Origins comes up very early in the prologue, shortly after you meet Zuberi, the captain of the ship upon which you’re to embark upon your story. He’ll quiz you on your background, and give you a chance to get into some details with him. Some of them he’ll like. Some of them he may not. This is true of all the crew, in fact, and we’ll touch on that later. Also, after you’ve selected your Origin choices, you’ll be informed what Skill values you’ve gained from your choices, and you’ll have the chance to go back and choose them all again if you like. Feel free to experiment, but once you accept them, that’s it! They’ll be your Origin choices for the rest of the story.
Origins are split up into three categories, each with three options within them. If you’re counting or paid attention and remember from the last post, that means there are a total of twenty-seven different unique combinations of Origin choices for Rael. You can build a lot of different wolves this way!
The first category is where Rael was born and raised. Perhaps your Rael was born in the black of space and raised in a starship engineering bay as a Spacer, giving him an affinity for star travel, ship maintenance, and staying out of natural gravity wells. Or perhaps his parents raised him as a Colonist on a newly-settled world, flush with fresh air and all the wild fun that comes from a whole wide open planet to explore. He could also have been born and raised on Torderra as a Core-Worlder, the trade capital of the galaxy, rubbing elbows with high society even in his youth.
Whether a Spacer, a Colonist or a Core-Worlder, Rael’s early life informs the base of his personality. Spacers naturally know a lot more about ships and their tech than others, but a Colonist might be more physically adept for their youth, and a Core-Worlder might have received advantages that neither a scrapper nor a bumpkin might have.
Rael had a pretty interesting adolescence regardless of which Origin choices you give him. Maybe he got a bit rebellious and turned Punk, running with a crew of other gutterpunks in the capital city on the world of Ferelia and getting up to all sorts of trouble. Perhaps he was lured by education to Palfrini where he became a bit of a Dreamer, head in the clouds and more interested in drama, culture and a good story than math and science. Or he could have gone the other way and been such an excellent student that he was picked out by the prestigious Institute for Galactic Advancement to become a prized Tech Student on Avercys, only to find his hunger for knowledge getting him in all sorts of trouble.
You might be seeing a bit of a pattern here in how these Origins are lining up, like how Spacer might lend itself well to Punk, or how Colonist might naturally precede Dreamer. There’s a reason for that and we’ll touch on it at the end, but now we get into, as Zuberi calls it, the meat of the issue.
For all of Rael’s life, nothing compares to what he was getting up to in the period of time just before he arrived on a fringe station and met with Zuberi to get aboard an exploration ship. If the first Origin tier can be called Rael’s Youth and the second defines his Adolescence, then the final Origin tier of choices could best be coined Rael’s Shame.
In one instance, Rael wound up turning to a life of star piracy. Now an Ex-Pirate, he’s got some very nasty skeletons in his closet. In another, he stayed on the straight and narrow and found himself becoming a Colonial Administrator of no small repute. Unfortunately and in the wake of a tragedy, he’s on the outs and operating in exile. In the final option, Rael’s turned his experience and skills into becoming something of an Innovator, writing software for anyone and everyone and earning some pretty sweet creds for his efforts. Disaster strikes and turns his life upside down, and now he’s desperate to atone.
I don’t want to go into too much detail with these choices, because I want them to be something you discover more about in the course of the story. This is especially true of the third tier of Origins, as while the first two help to define Rael’s personality and a lot of his dialogue options (along with his interactions with the crew), each of the final tier of Origins directly impact the story in interesting ways by defining, among other things, what brings Rael to Zuberi in the first place.
Pre-Definition
Finally, very early on in the process I wanted to streamline somewhat the reader experience. The prologue isn’t long in the grand scheme of things, being a fraction of the length of the first day of the story. In thinking about how I could give a player a sort of quick-start option, a couple of choices occurred to me. The one that I went with for the quick-start was a skip of the prologue, two key choices made that define certain things Rael could have done that directly impact several other events that follow, and a choice of one of three Rael presets.
These correspond with the ‘natural fit’ options from the prologue; the ones that ‘make the most sense’ as it were:
- Starfire Rael is a Spacer, Punk, and Ex-Pirate
- Wordly Rael is a Colonist, Dreamer, and Colonial Administrator
- High-Tech Rael is a Core-Worlder, Tech Student, and Innovator
These choices allow you to have one of three Raels with good-fit Origin choices that interplay the most naturally. That’s not to say that a Core-Worlder who leaves Torderra to study as a Dreamer on Palfrini and goes on to become an Ex-Pirate isn’t viable; it absolutely is as viable as any other Origin combination you can imagine. These just seem like natural fits and work well, I think, for getting a player quickly into the game.
You might be wondering why I didn’t just allow the full customization suite for the quick-start, and that’s because it incentivises the player to actually go through the prologue. Between that fact, and the fact that the quick-start option doesn’t earn Rael any extra Approval from interactions with his crewmates (which we’ll be talking about in a couple posts or so!), the quick-start options give you a chance to get into the main part of the story nice and quick without losing too much, if you’re happy to settle for a preset Rael. And if not, hey! The prologue’s right there if you want the full customisation and all those chances to earn Approval!
And a final fun fact before we finish up for this entry: in testing, most of my alpha build readers always went through the prologue and defined Rael deliberately rather than going through the prologue-skipping quick start. However, among those testers, a not insignificant fraction of them would wind up, with their first runs through, effectively picking the High-Tech Rael choices without recognizing them as a pre-set. Seems Core-Worlder, Tech Student and Innovator aren’t just a natural fit, but appeal to quite a few people!
So… that’s it! That’s the Origin system that underpins most of the variability in this story. No two playthroughs will be identical if you change only the Origins you play with and alter as little else as possible. My hope is that between that, the Skill system, and the interplay between Rael and the crew, it’ll keep people coming back to Void Dreaming again and again.
Well, for more than the CGs, anyway.
Next time we’ll be diving into the Skill system, how they’re initially laid out in regards to your Origins, how you can build those Skills further over the course of the VN, and what they allow you to do… or fail at doing. Consequences! We’ll also touch briefly on the structure of the visual novel and what you can expect from the releases.
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Void Dreaming Blog I - An Introduction
Posted a year agoHey there! Fae here, with the inaugural post regarding my visual novel project: Void Dreaming!
I plan to do a few of these to sort of clue people in as to what the point of the project is, what it’s all about, and some of the things that I think are going to make it not only stand out from the pack, but hopefully be a really interesting, and really replayable story going forward.
So before we get in, I want to say that the first few topics are all already laid out. After this post, we’re going to be diving straight into the Origin system that lets you detail Rael’s background, and how that affects the Skills that Rael starts the story with.
Which then segues nicely into the following post, where we’ll be going into precisely what those Skills are and how (and when!) they’ll be used in the VN.
After that, we’ll focus more on the choices in the VN, and why this project is such a massive undertaking. Hopefully to puts in perspective why this is going to take a while, and why exactly I’m working so hard on it.
Beyond that is all manner of hopefully-also-cool stuff like come information on the characters in the story, as well as plenty of worldbuilding information and further insight into the setting that, with any luck, will get you excited about what’s to come for Void Dreaming!
Introductions
But first, who in the shit am I? Hi there! I’m Faora. It’s pronounced Fae-or-ah, or you can just shorten it to Fae. Or Fao, as some people like to do. I’m not fussed!
I’m a gay Australian furry who’s been writing in the fandom for more than twenty years now, and I’ll thank you to never, ever bring that up with me at all, ever, lest I crumble into dust at the mere mention. I’ve been a pretty quiet, mostly background figure in the furry community over the years, though you may also have caught some of my work in print here and there. Venues such as Heat, Hot Dish, Fang, and a few others for good measure all have my fingerprints on them to some degree, some more than others!
Otherwise, you might know me for a few things. I used to yearly write Fae’s Christmas Music-Themed Special; five stories uploaded in the leadup to Christmas every year that were titled after and often inspired by pieces of music that I was very fond of. You could also know me from Interwoven, my 2023 writing project where I uploaded fifty-three instalments of a single contiguous series, usually once a week for the majority of the year. Or Blood and Water, my previous largest project, and a freely available series and novel sequel (and associated shorts). Or maybe just from any of my other work flitting about.
Or you might have heard about Void Dreaming from someone somewhere on the internet, or seen some of the spritework being released, and got curious. Nice to meet you! So now that you know a little about me, perhaps we should get to what you’re probably all here for: Void Dreaming itself.
Before we start that though, don’t worry! I don’t intend to spoil much of anything in these posts. Everything you’re going to hear (about the story, at least!), you’ll learn about in the prologue of the game itself. I’m also more going to be talking here about the process that led me to creating this project, so if you’re here for the actual meaty details of the VN itself, you may want to skip to the next entry as soon as it’s available. This here’s a lot of storytime about how I started the project, and some challenges with the concept that I had to work through. If that interests you, read on! Otherwise, I guess you can read something else! Meantime, let’s get started!
Inception
So.
I never really got into visual novels. I thought the idea, in my misbegotten youth, was silly. Choose-Your-Own-Adventures were cool, but I for some reason never really connected the dots to, “Hey, these visual and choice-based elements add a neat mechanic for the reader to interact with.” I thought the medium was something less than that of a book. Sometimes you never really grow out of an arrogant mindset… and sometimes you do.
Poking and prodding at a few noteworthy furry VNs began to enamour me with the idea of them as not just a legitimate storytelling medium, but possessed also of some not insignificant advantages over a standard novel. The same elements that I had quietly decried I came to acknowledge as an enhancement to the medium. I don’t think visual novels replace novels in the same way that TV and movies and theatre and video games don’t replace novels, but I do think that they’re a valid, valuable medium that I was very wrong and rather quite stupid to dismiss out of hand.
So cue me, mid-2023. I’m thinking about my next writing project, and I’ve got a couple of ideas on-deck. I’d started writing a bit of three different stories, in fact, to see if I had a feel for any of them. One was a modern, urban fantasy story featuring secret gods of old, shadow wars raged beneath modern civilization, and a protagonist out of his depth. This one I dismissed quickly because I didn’t really feel ready to do more fantasy, even urban fantasy, after Interwoven. Not for a little bit. Another was a dystopian cyberpunk story that would have been similar in scale to Interwoven, but focused on a devastated world run by powerful corporate interests from inside these self-enclosed arcology towers and the gutterpunks who wrote dirty soft and grafted rusttech to flesh, looking out for one another and avoiding the corpo patrols. I love me some cyberpunk and I wound up incorporating some of that into Void Dreaming, but I didn’t really have a plot in mind for this particular setting. Nothing that really spoke to me, anyway.
The third, however, focused around a lone wolf star explorer named Zuberi. Alongside his shipboard AI Obaa, herself full of just the kind of sass that I love to write, he sets out into the galaxy to chart new systems and winds up running into trouble out there in the black. The concept actually is older than 2023; it came about circa January 2020 while I was balls deep in Elite: Dangerous and absolutely enamoured with exploration in my dinky little Diamondback. The plot was more fleshed out, but it would go through about a dozen different iterations before I finally settled on the one that’s set to play out in Void Dreaming.
Some things had to change, obviously. The original plot, between Zuberi and another passenger he picks up in the course of the story, didn’t work for the VN. I mean… it could have done, but I didn’t want to do it that way. It would have been static, with very few choices. Zuberi would have been the point of view character, but he was a loner, antisocial… a bit of a blend between what the characters of Rael and Sam would wind up being. Definitely a far cry from what he turned into with this!
So I set Zuberi aside as the captain of the ship, and started to build a crew around him. We’ll talk more about the crew and characters in a later post, but he and all the crew were designed well before Rael came about. Once I figured out I was doing a visual novel and needed a PoV character to be the player insert, I toyed with giving the reader a chance to name him themselves, but I decided against it in the end. I wanted Rael to be a definable thing; to have some static elements that were all him. That was when it hit me.
Static elements are good, but what if - and hear me out - I just lost my fucking mind?
Getting to the Point
That’s what this project has taken, really. Losing my mind. So let’s get into a little bit of detail regarding exactly the visual novel is, what it’s about, and what I think is going to make it interesting!
In Void Dreaming, you are Rael; a young wolf down on his luck and just barely removed from a pretty awful circumstance. You’ve entered for various reasons the employ of the Astrogation Guild; a galaxy-charting organization that, among other things, dispatches deep-space survey ships beyond the edge of civilized space to chart new worlds and systems. You’ll meet an eclectic crew of characters, get to know and befriend them (or not!), and build up your relationship with them. And while you’re doing all of this, you’ll stumble into a mystery with consequences reaching far further than Rael or anyone else on the crew ever dared to imagine.
Sounds good? I think so, too! Don’t get me wrong, though; Void Dreaming isn’t designed to be a dating sim. Sure, you can get down and dirty with most of the cast (and sometimes more than one at a time), but the story of their journey into fringe space is what I’m most excited for. And I’m excited by it because your choices are designed to really matter through two key systems: Origins, and Skills.
Rael is not a self-insert protagonist; he’s a character in his own right, with his own history and feelings and thoughts on things. This is expressed through the Origin system, where early in the prologue you’re able to choose from a variety of options that help set who Rael was before he stepped aboard the Dreamer. You get to determine your Rael’s background, from where he was born to what brought him to the fringe. These Origin choices open up different dialogue, better opportunities to interact with the crew, and give you, the reader, the chance to really define your Rael your way. Well… your way within the parameters I’ve given you, anyway.
His Origin choices also affect his Skills! At certain points in the story, Rael will be required to solve various problems that he faces with the application of his Skills. These Skills, defined initially by your Origins but later built up by how you choose to spend your time, will be what helps Rael escape danger, deal with threats, overcome obstacles, and survive against the myriad dangers that prowl fringe space. While less important than the Origin system (at least early in the story), the right Skills and the right usage of them will be key to getting through the story intact.
Choices, as you might have guessed by now, are a pretty important factor when it comes to my design goals for Void Dreaming. They’re also a massive problem, and for good reason. VN writers who have teams of authors working together don’t usually do something like this, and for good reason. They limit significantly the amount of choices that a reader can take during them, like locking you into various routes and providing simple value checks for choices made. All of this is a practical solution to what I like to call the Mass Effect 3 Problem.
I Should Go.
The problem goes like this:
Say you have a story that’s interactive, playable media. You claim the player has choice; that their choices matter and have actual, serious weight and consequence behind them. You give them a binary choice. That means the writers have to write two meaningful outcomes. Then on each branch, you give another binary choice. That’s four outcomes. You do another two on each new branch, and suddenly you’re at eight. Sixteen. Thirty-two, sixty-four, on and on until you’ve backed yourself into such a corner that your choice is to write so many endings as to require insane man-hours to do, or you funnel the choices into a system that reduces them red, blue, green, and ritual sudoku.
Overworked writers, or displeased fans. Not a great binary choice to be backed into, is it? Back now to how I lost my mind.
Knowing the ME3P, I wondered if I could craft a VN that would have plenty of variables that mattered, had subtle threads wound through it from a literary point of view, made the choices the player selected matter for the most part, and through this system create a much more immersive, detailed and enticing tale for the reader. I think I settled on the solution, and this is what I came up with:
- First, be a psychopath who types at 100WPM with no regard for his personal well-being and a penchant for biting off far, far more than he can chew. I am crazy.
- Second, introduce very early on a narrow-ish selection of clear-cut variables that the whole story will revolve around. This is my Origin system!
- Third, build in a system around those variables that can be altered and grown as the reader does certain things, affecting how future events can play out. This is the Skill system!
- Fourth, use the combination of those early, reader-defined variables and the systems around them as the cornerstone for major decisions affecting outcomes, narrowing the writing requirement considerably. This caused me to become more crazy!
- Fifth, restrict the scope of the story to one route. No different routes for different character romances here. One story. One route. Clarity of story!
- And finally, feeding back into that last, have a clear idea of where I start, where I’m going, and where it ends before I even open visual studios to work. Ta-da!
I think this combination of elements puts me in the best position to tell this story this way. I write fast. Stupidly fast. I upset other writers when they see the output I’m capable of on a given day. Jury’s out on quality, but quantity has a quality all of it’s own. Narrowing the variable scope to the reader-defined Origins very early on — in this case, three sets of choices with three variables each — also results in a much more limited narrative scope. I still have to write a lot, don’t get me wrong, but it’s manageable. I only have to write options for twenty-seven different combinations at this point.
Oh.
Oh no.
Exponential Agony
It’s not actually that bad, and we’ll get into why it’s not when we start talking about Rael’s Origin choices in greater depth. That Origin system actually streamlines a lot of the variables and allows me a lot of flexibility in creating circumstances where it feels like those choices really do have meaningful impact. They make a Rael with one Origin feel very different to a Rael with different choices made.
For those familiar with most FVNs though, it’s the fifth point above that might stand out. Most of them, as I said, let your route be chosen early by virtue of (often) who you want to romantically pursue. While all of the crew (with one notable exception) are on the menu in that regard if you play your cards right with them, the routes aren’t tied to romances. Romances and relationship building are things that happen (or don’t happen) in the course of Rael’s journey through the story.
“But Fae!” I hear you cry, somehow through the medium of text and time travel, “You said you wanted the choices to matter! How can having only one route make any choices matter? Your whole story is set in stone the whole time!”
First of all, Tom, if that is your real name, stop abusing your temporal displacement powers to harass furry writers. We’re not fond of it, and it’s a waste.
Secondly, the end of a story is never the point you care about. It matters if it’s done badly, of course (see the ME3P above), but what matters far more than that is how you get there. The journey is the thing. The story will hit the same beats as you play through the VN, but the way you get to those beats will be different based on the choices you make. The relationships you build. The sacrifices made. And then, at the very end, the hope is that all of the major choices you’ve made from the very start come to the fore and give you the chance to experience something truly wonderful. Or horrifying.
Because failure states can definitely give you some meaningful variation in your endings, can’t they?
Outroductions
So, that’s it. I set out to create a furry VN that would have meaningful choices through one interesting story route, a cast of (hopefully) fun and/or hot characters getting into mischief and danger and then getting out of it again with your help, that would leverage my uniquely voluminous writing potential to overcome the fundamental reason why most stories in the medium don’t let you have this many choices.
I think I’m succeeding. I hope you agree! If you don’t… well, please don’t tell me. My little ego is ever so fragile.
Thanks for reading this longer-than-the-rest-really-I-promise inaugural post about Void Dreaming! I hope you’re now as excited as I am and are looking forward to next week, where we’ll have a post going into more detail about the Origins themselves and how you can use them to define the course of Rael’s life before the story even begins.
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
I plan to do a few of these to sort of clue people in as to what the point of the project is, what it’s all about, and some of the things that I think are going to make it not only stand out from the pack, but hopefully be a really interesting, and really replayable story going forward.
So before we get in, I want to say that the first few topics are all already laid out. After this post, we’re going to be diving straight into the Origin system that lets you detail Rael’s background, and how that affects the Skills that Rael starts the story with.
Which then segues nicely into the following post, where we’ll be going into precisely what those Skills are and how (and when!) they’ll be used in the VN.
After that, we’ll focus more on the choices in the VN, and why this project is such a massive undertaking. Hopefully to puts in perspective why this is going to take a while, and why exactly I’m working so hard on it.
Beyond that is all manner of hopefully-also-cool stuff like come information on the characters in the story, as well as plenty of worldbuilding information and further insight into the setting that, with any luck, will get you excited about what’s to come for Void Dreaming!
Introductions
But first, who in the shit am I? Hi there! I’m Faora. It’s pronounced Fae-or-ah, or you can just shorten it to Fae. Or Fao, as some people like to do. I’m not fussed!
I’m a gay Australian furry who’s been writing in the fandom for more than twenty years now, and I’ll thank you to never, ever bring that up with me at all, ever, lest I crumble into dust at the mere mention. I’ve been a pretty quiet, mostly background figure in the furry community over the years, though you may also have caught some of my work in print here and there. Venues such as Heat, Hot Dish, Fang, and a few others for good measure all have my fingerprints on them to some degree, some more than others!
Otherwise, you might know me for a few things. I used to yearly write Fae’s Christmas Music-Themed Special; five stories uploaded in the leadup to Christmas every year that were titled after and often inspired by pieces of music that I was very fond of. You could also know me from Interwoven, my 2023 writing project where I uploaded fifty-three instalments of a single contiguous series, usually once a week for the majority of the year. Or Blood and Water, my previous largest project, and a freely available series and novel sequel (and associated shorts). Or maybe just from any of my other work flitting about.
Or you might have heard about Void Dreaming from someone somewhere on the internet, or seen some of the spritework being released, and got curious. Nice to meet you! So now that you know a little about me, perhaps we should get to what you’re probably all here for: Void Dreaming itself.
Before we start that though, don’t worry! I don’t intend to spoil much of anything in these posts. Everything you’re going to hear (about the story, at least!), you’ll learn about in the prologue of the game itself. I’m also more going to be talking here about the process that led me to creating this project, so if you’re here for the actual meaty details of the VN itself, you may want to skip to the next entry as soon as it’s available. This here’s a lot of storytime about how I started the project, and some challenges with the concept that I had to work through. If that interests you, read on! Otherwise, I guess you can read something else! Meantime, let’s get started!
Inception
So.
I never really got into visual novels. I thought the idea, in my misbegotten youth, was silly. Choose-Your-Own-Adventures were cool, but I for some reason never really connected the dots to, “Hey, these visual and choice-based elements add a neat mechanic for the reader to interact with.” I thought the medium was something less than that of a book. Sometimes you never really grow out of an arrogant mindset… and sometimes you do.
Poking and prodding at a few noteworthy furry VNs began to enamour me with the idea of them as not just a legitimate storytelling medium, but possessed also of some not insignificant advantages over a standard novel. The same elements that I had quietly decried I came to acknowledge as an enhancement to the medium. I don’t think visual novels replace novels in the same way that TV and movies and theatre and video games don’t replace novels, but I do think that they’re a valid, valuable medium that I was very wrong and rather quite stupid to dismiss out of hand.
So cue me, mid-2023. I’m thinking about my next writing project, and I’ve got a couple of ideas on-deck. I’d started writing a bit of three different stories, in fact, to see if I had a feel for any of them. One was a modern, urban fantasy story featuring secret gods of old, shadow wars raged beneath modern civilization, and a protagonist out of his depth. This one I dismissed quickly because I didn’t really feel ready to do more fantasy, even urban fantasy, after Interwoven. Not for a little bit. Another was a dystopian cyberpunk story that would have been similar in scale to Interwoven, but focused on a devastated world run by powerful corporate interests from inside these self-enclosed arcology towers and the gutterpunks who wrote dirty soft and grafted rusttech to flesh, looking out for one another and avoiding the corpo patrols. I love me some cyberpunk and I wound up incorporating some of that into Void Dreaming, but I didn’t really have a plot in mind for this particular setting. Nothing that really spoke to me, anyway.
The third, however, focused around a lone wolf star explorer named Zuberi. Alongside his shipboard AI Obaa, herself full of just the kind of sass that I love to write, he sets out into the galaxy to chart new systems and winds up running into trouble out there in the black. The concept actually is older than 2023; it came about circa January 2020 while I was balls deep in Elite: Dangerous and absolutely enamoured with exploration in my dinky little Diamondback. The plot was more fleshed out, but it would go through about a dozen different iterations before I finally settled on the one that’s set to play out in Void Dreaming.
Some things had to change, obviously. The original plot, between Zuberi and another passenger he picks up in the course of the story, didn’t work for the VN. I mean… it could have done, but I didn’t want to do it that way. It would have been static, with very few choices. Zuberi would have been the point of view character, but he was a loner, antisocial… a bit of a blend between what the characters of Rael and Sam would wind up being. Definitely a far cry from what he turned into with this!
So I set Zuberi aside as the captain of the ship, and started to build a crew around him. We’ll talk more about the crew and characters in a later post, but he and all the crew were designed well before Rael came about. Once I figured out I was doing a visual novel and needed a PoV character to be the player insert, I toyed with giving the reader a chance to name him themselves, but I decided against it in the end. I wanted Rael to be a definable thing; to have some static elements that were all him. That was when it hit me.
Static elements are good, but what if - and hear me out - I just lost my fucking mind?
Getting to the Point
That’s what this project has taken, really. Losing my mind. So let’s get into a little bit of detail regarding exactly the visual novel is, what it’s about, and what I think is going to make it interesting!
In Void Dreaming, you are Rael; a young wolf down on his luck and just barely removed from a pretty awful circumstance. You’ve entered for various reasons the employ of the Astrogation Guild; a galaxy-charting organization that, among other things, dispatches deep-space survey ships beyond the edge of civilized space to chart new worlds and systems. You’ll meet an eclectic crew of characters, get to know and befriend them (or not!), and build up your relationship with them. And while you’re doing all of this, you’ll stumble into a mystery with consequences reaching far further than Rael or anyone else on the crew ever dared to imagine.
Sounds good? I think so, too! Don’t get me wrong, though; Void Dreaming isn’t designed to be a dating sim. Sure, you can get down and dirty with most of the cast (and sometimes more than one at a time), but the story of their journey into fringe space is what I’m most excited for. And I’m excited by it because your choices are designed to really matter through two key systems: Origins, and Skills.
Rael is not a self-insert protagonist; he’s a character in his own right, with his own history and feelings and thoughts on things. This is expressed through the Origin system, where early in the prologue you’re able to choose from a variety of options that help set who Rael was before he stepped aboard the Dreamer. You get to determine your Rael’s background, from where he was born to what brought him to the fringe. These Origin choices open up different dialogue, better opportunities to interact with the crew, and give you, the reader, the chance to really define your Rael your way. Well… your way within the parameters I’ve given you, anyway.
His Origin choices also affect his Skills! At certain points in the story, Rael will be required to solve various problems that he faces with the application of his Skills. These Skills, defined initially by your Origins but later built up by how you choose to spend your time, will be what helps Rael escape danger, deal with threats, overcome obstacles, and survive against the myriad dangers that prowl fringe space. While less important than the Origin system (at least early in the story), the right Skills and the right usage of them will be key to getting through the story intact.
Choices, as you might have guessed by now, are a pretty important factor when it comes to my design goals for Void Dreaming. They’re also a massive problem, and for good reason. VN writers who have teams of authors working together don’t usually do something like this, and for good reason. They limit significantly the amount of choices that a reader can take during them, like locking you into various routes and providing simple value checks for choices made. All of this is a practical solution to what I like to call the Mass Effect 3 Problem.
I Should Go.
The problem goes like this:
Say you have a story that’s interactive, playable media. You claim the player has choice; that their choices matter and have actual, serious weight and consequence behind them. You give them a binary choice. That means the writers have to write two meaningful outcomes. Then on each branch, you give another binary choice. That’s four outcomes. You do another two on each new branch, and suddenly you’re at eight. Sixteen. Thirty-two, sixty-four, on and on until you’ve backed yourself into such a corner that your choice is to write so many endings as to require insane man-hours to do, or you funnel the choices into a system that reduces them red, blue, green, and ritual sudoku.
Overworked writers, or displeased fans. Not a great binary choice to be backed into, is it? Back now to how I lost my mind.
Knowing the ME3P, I wondered if I could craft a VN that would have plenty of variables that mattered, had subtle threads wound through it from a literary point of view, made the choices the player selected matter for the most part, and through this system create a much more immersive, detailed and enticing tale for the reader. I think I settled on the solution, and this is what I came up with:
- First, be a psychopath who types at 100WPM with no regard for his personal well-being and a penchant for biting off far, far more than he can chew. I am crazy.
- Second, introduce very early on a narrow-ish selection of clear-cut variables that the whole story will revolve around. This is my Origin system!
- Third, build in a system around those variables that can be altered and grown as the reader does certain things, affecting how future events can play out. This is the Skill system!
- Fourth, use the combination of those early, reader-defined variables and the systems around them as the cornerstone for major decisions affecting outcomes, narrowing the writing requirement considerably. This caused me to become more crazy!
- Fifth, restrict the scope of the story to one route. No different routes for different character romances here. One story. One route. Clarity of story!
- And finally, feeding back into that last, have a clear idea of where I start, where I’m going, and where it ends before I even open visual studios to work. Ta-da!
I think this combination of elements puts me in the best position to tell this story this way. I write fast. Stupidly fast. I upset other writers when they see the output I’m capable of on a given day. Jury’s out on quality, but quantity has a quality all of it’s own. Narrowing the variable scope to the reader-defined Origins very early on — in this case, three sets of choices with three variables each — also results in a much more limited narrative scope. I still have to write a lot, don’t get me wrong, but it’s manageable. I only have to write options for twenty-seven different combinations at this point.
Oh.
Oh no.
Exponential Agony
It’s not actually that bad, and we’ll get into why it’s not when we start talking about Rael’s Origin choices in greater depth. That Origin system actually streamlines a lot of the variables and allows me a lot of flexibility in creating circumstances where it feels like those choices really do have meaningful impact. They make a Rael with one Origin feel very different to a Rael with different choices made.
For those familiar with most FVNs though, it’s the fifth point above that might stand out. Most of them, as I said, let your route be chosen early by virtue of (often) who you want to romantically pursue. While all of the crew (with one notable exception) are on the menu in that regard if you play your cards right with them, the routes aren’t tied to romances. Romances and relationship building are things that happen (or don’t happen) in the course of Rael’s journey through the story.
“But Fae!” I hear you cry, somehow through the medium of text and time travel, “You said you wanted the choices to matter! How can having only one route make any choices matter? Your whole story is set in stone the whole time!”
First of all, Tom, if that is your real name, stop abusing your temporal displacement powers to harass furry writers. We’re not fond of it, and it’s a waste.
Secondly, the end of a story is never the point you care about. It matters if it’s done badly, of course (see the ME3P above), but what matters far more than that is how you get there. The journey is the thing. The story will hit the same beats as you play through the VN, but the way you get to those beats will be different based on the choices you make. The relationships you build. The sacrifices made. And then, at the very end, the hope is that all of the major choices you’ve made from the very start come to the fore and give you the chance to experience something truly wonderful. Or horrifying.
Because failure states can definitely give you some meaningful variation in your endings, can’t they?
Outroductions
So, that’s it. I set out to create a furry VN that would have meaningful choices through one interesting story route, a cast of (hopefully) fun and/or hot characters getting into mischief and danger and then getting out of it again with your help, that would leverage my uniquely voluminous writing potential to overcome the fundamental reason why most stories in the medium don’t let you have this many choices.
I think I’m succeeding. I hope you agree! If you don’t… well, please don’t tell me. My little ego is ever so fragile.
Thanks for reading this longer-than-the-rest-really-I-promise inaugural post about Void Dreaming! I hope you’re now as excited as I am and are looking forward to next week, where we’ll have a post going into more detail about the Origins themselves and how you can use them to define the course of Rael’s life before the story even begins.
Until then, stars guide you.
- Faora
Void Dreaming Update: What's Fae Doing?
Posted a year agoOh, what the shit! It’s Fae, and he’s here with an update regarding Void Dreaming’s initial release!
I’m gonna come out and say it from the start without burying the lede: Void Dreaming won’t be coming this year. And that’s not a bad thing, so let’s get into why!
We’ll begin with what the project is, what it needs, and what I’m capable of doing. The project itself, as a visual novel, requires more than just my to write my arse off (which I’m doing daily!). It requires programming (which I’m doing), sprite art, CG art, background art, UI stuff… it’s a lot. And as you may have seen up there, I’m writing and programming. I also hate programming.
I hate programming so much.
But even that’s not the problem, because I’m learning and making do with what I have, and honestly the project doesn’t need complex programming. What I’m doing just requires tracking a lot of variables, which doesn’t require a lot of insanity. I’m not trying to reinvent the FVN wheel with Void Dreaming.
The problem also isn’t in the writing. I’ve been cranking out so much work over the last year (to the day!) that, inclusive of programming, the total wordcount of this project has easily cleared a million words. In fact, as of end of day today, it’s sitting at 1.073m words total including the programming.
If I extract just the dialogue and the narrative from the project however, the count comes out at a very respectable 959,450 words. Just shy of a million for actual workable dialogue and narrative. Just the stuff the reader sees.
I’d like to stress that once I finish the current segment that I’m working on, I will be maybe a third of the way through the writing for the whole project. Maybe. So that’s almost a million words to be almost a third of the way through. What could easily have been nine full-length novels is, instead, barely a third of the total wordcount of this project. I am crazy.
So Void Dreaming is big. It’s fucking massive and I’m pretty sure there’s not going to be a FVN that’s this big outside of mine for a good long while, owing to the massive number of variables (and thus lines and scenes that a reader won’t catch on a single read-through) and the fact that the team is, literally, just me. Shit, I’ll spend a day writing and get about ten thousand words down and lament that I couldn’t get twenty because this isn’t going fast enough. I’m proud of my output; don’t get me wrong! Doing this alone is just… it requires a lot of me, and I’ve been doing it for a year straight now. A WHOLE YEAR.
So what’s the problem then, you might ask?
I have a sprite/CG artist lined up. That’s good.
And I have nothing else.
This isn’t strictly true. I have alpha readers and testers who are worth their weights in gold. I may also have some help with the UI, if things go well. But the real delaying factor right now is the background art.
I have no one who can help me with this. I need, rather desperately, a background artist and I just haven’t found someone who is willing to help, able to help, and within my budget considerations. Said budget has already been increased dramatically to help cover the initial costs of the project because, as I’ve said, I don’t have a team. I have me, and the people I’m paying to help me. And I only have one person to pay! I’m giving him so much money already.
However, because of the fact that I have no background artist available to me and a lot of backgrounds that I need to have created, I can be reasonably sure that my launch intent of September/October isn’t gonna happen. Because we’re… already in that window.
So where does that leave the project? “Irritatingly in limbo,” would be the answer… at least insofar as how the release is going. I am still writing. I am writing a LOT, as you’ve seen above. I’m writing more than I ever have before, at a scale I never before thought myself capable of. I’ve blown Interwoven out of the water, if not in word density than in sheer fucking duration. Interwoven was a sprint that took me seventy-three-ish working days across four months. Void Dreaming is a marathon and has already eaten a whole year of my writing, and it’s set to eat at least two more. At least.
And that’s where we get into the good news. The more writing I get done before the actual initial launch, the better a buffer of work I’m going to have for the eventual release. I have the beginnings of a release schedule nailed down, and the more writing I can get done before that initial launch, the more of a safety net I have moving forward. I’m going to need it, because there are going to be periods of time where the whole project is going to be bogged down because I have to write literally a novel’s worth per release.
And the real good news is that I’m still writing. Hard.
Like, I’ll be honest with you. It’s a problem. This project has taken over my life; every waking moment is spent on it. I’m burning myself out, and I’m still writing despite the burnout. I need to stop, but I can’t stop if I want this to get out there and be the success I want it to be, so I just… don’t stop. There’s so much brilliant content in the FVN space that if I don’t work my balls off, I won’t be able to stand beside so many of the talented, skilful, amazing teams putting together the work they’re doing. They have so much to draw from, and I’m just one me.
I’m just one me, and I’m still putting up my gloves. I’m still throwing myself in the ring, because I really believe in this project. I think Void Dreaming, when the time comes to share it with the rest of you, is going to be something amazing. I think it’s going to blow your fucking minds, all the better when you remember that I had to do all this writing and programming alone. That all of this project is coming from one crazy dragon and the people he paid to help him.
I’m confident. The people who have read early builds of this with no art and just the programming and narrative in place have been universally glowing. Some have been especially helpful; they’re going to be singled out in the project itself for their exemplary contributions. There’s bugfixes, there’s typos, there’s testing being done, and the scale of this all makes it all insufferably hard to get all of that done. But it is getting done, the project is advancing, and I’m still putting in a physically painful amount of effort on the daily to make it happen. Void Dreaming will happen. You just fucking watch me; it will happen.
But you might be asking yourself, “Hey, I want this to happen! How can I help make this happen?”
Art! If you happen to know anyone (or happen to be anyone!) who might be willing to do a lot of sci-fi interior backgrounds (and some rare natural spaces), I would be very interested to hear from you! I desperately need the help. I need options. I do have specific needs and I don’t plan on revising out old art for new stuff down the line if I can help it. If I get me a good background artist at the start, I want to keep throwing money at them as the project continues.
Beyond that, though? There’s not a lot you can do right now; sweet of you to want to help, though! I can’t ask for money yet. I have nothing to show for any money. Eventually there will be a Patreon (I explored other options but alas, Patreon might have to be it for reasons) that I would greatly appreciate the support of readers through, but I’m not going to be putting that up until I have something to show.
What will that be? Well, hopefully there will in the months to come be an early public release that will include the prologue and Day 1. A subscriber-only build on Patreon will be available at the same time which will also include Day 2. So when the initial release comes about, that is when I would be gratefully accepting support through Patreon and the like to fund the project moving forward. I’d like that to be in January of the new year.
So right now, that’s it. I need background art. I could probably go without the UI stuff right now, if necessary; the project is playable right now, but a visual novel without the visual element isn’t going to be as engaging. I want the galaxy around the Void Dreamer to be as vibrant as the crew aboard her. And since the only gimmick my VN has is the scale and its very voluminous number of choices and variables, I need to make sure I execute on my writing perfectly to make sure I stand out. I can’t do that without the right art.
Fortunately, the sprite/CG artist is spectacular and I can’t wait to get the works I need made up so I can see the characters for myself. My initial batch of sprites should suffice for the initial release and up to about Day 5 (which I’m currently working on!), so as long as I have the sprites and CGs and backgrounds up to that, I’ll be in a good position to use any monetary support I can get from readers to add new sprites, get new CGs, add more backgrounds, further improve the artistic vision of the project, and help Void Dreaming get closer to completion.
I’m sorry that it won’t be in your paws sooner. I wish it was. I wish it was done now!
I miss sleep.
If you’ve got questions, please drop them below. I’d love to hear what you think of the situation and if you’ve got any suggestions or advice. Or artists! Drop one of them by me, too. I’ll treat them nicely, I promise.
And in the meantime, I’ll try to alert more about the project more regularly on my BlueSky. Eventually there’ll be an account for the project too, but that won’t be until much closer to release. I hope to have more news, and preferably good news, to share with you all soon.
Until then, stars guide you,
- Faora
I’m gonna come out and say it from the start without burying the lede: Void Dreaming won’t be coming this year. And that’s not a bad thing, so let’s get into why!
We’ll begin with what the project is, what it needs, and what I’m capable of doing. The project itself, as a visual novel, requires more than just my to write my arse off (which I’m doing daily!). It requires programming (which I’m doing), sprite art, CG art, background art, UI stuff… it’s a lot. And as you may have seen up there, I’m writing and programming. I also hate programming.
I hate programming so much.
But even that’s not the problem, because I’m learning and making do with what I have, and honestly the project doesn’t need complex programming. What I’m doing just requires tracking a lot of variables, which doesn’t require a lot of insanity. I’m not trying to reinvent the FVN wheel with Void Dreaming.
The problem also isn’t in the writing. I’ve been cranking out so much work over the last year (to the day!) that, inclusive of programming, the total wordcount of this project has easily cleared a million words. In fact, as of end of day today, it’s sitting at 1.073m words total including the programming.
If I extract just the dialogue and the narrative from the project however, the count comes out at a very respectable 959,450 words. Just shy of a million for actual workable dialogue and narrative. Just the stuff the reader sees.
I’d like to stress that once I finish the current segment that I’m working on, I will be maybe a third of the way through the writing for the whole project. Maybe. So that’s almost a million words to be almost a third of the way through. What could easily have been nine full-length novels is, instead, barely a third of the total wordcount of this project. I am crazy.
So Void Dreaming is big. It’s fucking massive and I’m pretty sure there’s not going to be a FVN that’s this big outside of mine for a good long while, owing to the massive number of variables (and thus lines and scenes that a reader won’t catch on a single read-through) and the fact that the team is, literally, just me. Shit, I’ll spend a day writing and get about ten thousand words down and lament that I couldn’t get twenty because this isn’t going fast enough. I’m proud of my output; don’t get me wrong! Doing this alone is just… it requires a lot of me, and I’ve been doing it for a year straight now. A WHOLE YEAR.
So what’s the problem then, you might ask?
I have a sprite/CG artist lined up. That’s good.
And I have nothing else.
This isn’t strictly true. I have alpha readers and testers who are worth their weights in gold. I may also have some help with the UI, if things go well. But the real delaying factor right now is the background art.
I have no one who can help me with this. I need, rather desperately, a background artist and I just haven’t found someone who is willing to help, able to help, and within my budget considerations. Said budget has already been increased dramatically to help cover the initial costs of the project because, as I’ve said, I don’t have a team. I have me, and the people I’m paying to help me. And I only have one person to pay! I’m giving him so much money already.
However, because of the fact that I have no background artist available to me and a lot of backgrounds that I need to have created, I can be reasonably sure that my launch intent of September/October isn’t gonna happen. Because we’re… already in that window.
So where does that leave the project? “Irritatingly in limbo,” would be the answer… at least insofar as how the release is going. I am still writing. I am writing a LOT, as you’ve seen above. I’m writing more than I ever have before, at a scale I never before thought myself capable of. I’ve blown Interwoven out of the water, if not in word density than in sheer fucking duration. Interwoven was a sprint that took me seventy-three-ish working days across four months. Void Dreaming is a marathon and has already eaten a whole year of my writing, and it’s set to eat at least two more. At least.
And that’s where we get into the good news. The more writing I get done before the actual initial launch, the better a buffer of work I’m going to have for the eventual release. I have the beginnings of a release schedule nailed down, and the more writing I can get done before that initial launch, the more of a safety net I have moving forward. I’m going to need it, because there are going to be periods of time where the whole project is going to be bogged down because I have to write literally a novel’s worth per release.
And the real good news is that I’m still writing. Hard.
Like, I’ll be honest with you. It’s a problem. This project has taken over my life; every waking moment is spent on it. I’m burning myself out, and I’m still writing despite the burnout. I need to stop, but I can’t stop if I want this to get out there and be the success I want it to be, so I just… don’t stop. There’s so much brilliant content in the FVN space that if I don’t work my balls off, I won’t be able to stand beside so many of the talented, skilful, amazing teams putting together the work they’re doing. They have so much to draw from, and I’m just one me.
I’m just one me, and I’m still putting up my gloves. I’m still throwing myself in the ring, because I really believe in this project. I think Void Dreaming, when the time comes to share it with the rest of you, is going to be something amazing. I think it’s going to blow your fucking minds, all the better when you remember that I had to do all this writing and programming alone. That all of this project is coming from one crazy dragon and the people he paid to help him.
I’m confident. The people who have read early builds of this with no art and just the programming and narrative in place have been universally glowing. Some have been especially helpful; they’re going to be singled out in the project itself for their exemplary contributions. There’s bugfixes, there’s typos, there’s testing being done, and the scale of this all makes it all insufferably hard to get all of that done. But it is getting done, the project is advancing, and I’m still putting in a physically painful amount of effort on the daily to make it happen. Void Dreaming will happen. You just fucking watch me; it will happen.
But you might be asking yourself, “Hey, I want this to happen! How can I help make this happen?”
Art! If you happen to know anyone (or happen to be anyone!) who might be willing to do a lot of sci-fi interior backgrounds (and some rare natural spaces), I would be very interested to hear from you! I desperately need the help. I need options. I do have specific needs and I don’t plan on revising out old art for new stuff down the line if I can help it. If I get me a good background artist at the start, I want to keep throwing money at them as the project continues.
Beyond that, though? There’s not a lot you can do right now; sweet of you to want to help, though! I can’t ask for money yet. I have nothing to show for any money. Eventually there will be a Patreon (I explored other options but alas, Patreon might have to be it for reasons) that I would greatly appreciate the support of readers through, but I’m not going to be putting that up until I have something to show.
What will that be? Well, hopefully there will in the months to come be an early public release that will include the prologue and Day 1. A subscriber-only build on Patreon will be available at the same time which will also include Day 2. So when the initial release comes about, that is when I would be gratefully accepting support through Patreon and the like to fund the project moving forward. I’d like that to be in January of the new year.
So right now, that’s it. I need background art. I could probably go without the UI stuff right now, if necessary; the project is playable right now, but a visual novel without the visual element isn’t going to be as engaging. I want the galaxy around the Void Dreamer to be as vibrant as the crew aboard her. And since the only gimmick my VN has is the scale and its very voluminous number of choices and variables, I need to make sure I execute on my writing perfectly to make sure I stand out. I can’t do that without the right art.
Fortunately, the sprite/CG artist is spectacular and I can’t wait to get the works I need made up so I can see the characters for myself. My initial batch of sprites should suffice for the initial release and up to about Day 5 (which I’m currently working on!), so as long as I have the sprites and CGs and backgrounds up to that, I’ll be in a good position to use any monetary support I can get from readers to add new sprites, get new CGs, add more backgrounds, further improve the artistic vision of the project, and help Void Dreaming get closer to completion.
I’m sorry that it won’t be in your paws sooner. I wish it was. I wish it was done now!
I miss sleep.
If you’ve got questions, please drop them below. I’d love to hear what you think of the situation and if you’ve got any suggestions or advice. Or artists! Drop one of them by me, too. I’ll treat them nicely, I promise.
And in the meantime, I’ll try to alert more about the project more regularly on my BlueSky. Eventually there’ll be an account for the project too, but that won’t be until much closer to release. I hope to have more news, and preferably good news, to share with you all soon.
Until then, stars guide you,
- Faora
Interwoven Post-Mortem (+ Void Dreaming Update!)
Posted a year agoHey there!
I figured that now would be a good time, a bit more than a quarter of a year removed from the end of Interwoven (and too late to have it suggested for any furry awards so no one can accuse me of pushing my work; ha!), to finally sit down and do a sort of post-mortem on the whole project. Talk a little about it to those who might be interested, suggest some of the things that I don’t think worked well, discuss with any fans of the series their thoughts (if you want to share them), and just reflect on what Interwoven is to me and how I’m moving forward after it as a writer.
And if you’re not interested in the Interwoven stuff but want the low-down on my visual novel project, Void Dreaming, there’ll be a TL;DR at the bottom of this journal entry. You can skip to the juicy new stuff there, if you like. For everyone else though, read on!
Bear in mind that the following will absolutely contain Interwoven spoilers. Don’t read on until you’ve finished the series if you don’t want anything spoiled for you!
To start at the beginning, Interwoven was conceived late in 2022. I wasn’t doing very well mentally and emotionally; I was struggling, among other things, with my sense of self as a writer. Ask any writer who’s been in the furry community for long enough and they’ll be able to tell you how engagement has really dropped off. It used to be that comments were everywhere, and encouragement was rife. Part of this was volume of content, I believe. There weren’t as many writers putting out good work twenty years ago (and no, I didn’t qualify back then either!) so you’d get more people actually expressing their appreciation for what they saw.
I had written a YA fantasy story early in the year, and I was viewing it as my last gasp; my last great effort for mainstream publication. I’d spring for a professional editor, I’d go all out, shop it around globally to avoid the anti-spec-fic bias in Australian agencies, and if it failed? So be it. I’d write for myself, since stopping wasn’t an option. The delays in beta readers getting back to me so I could polish it before sending it to said editor only compounded my frustrations, and I had the writing itch again. I developed a story that I’d write just for me, as a personal challenge: could I do a story upload every week for a whole year, with the same contiguous story and characters? And what would that even look like?
Back then the idea didn’t really have a name. Even in Scrivener now, the project is still titled “Servant Boy.scriv” because at the start I didn’t have a name for William, or Tobias, or any of it. I envisioned a sort of tragic meeting of fate at first; two people who could be together and could be happy, if not for things always getting in their way. At how fate kept throwing them together, only for themselves and the events around them to throw them apart again. A servant boy and the young prince he’d befriended turned into William and Tobias. Fun fact: the working title for the project was developed after I finished Innocence. I began calling it Fates Interwoven, until I wound up dropping the Fates part somewhere around writing the Reflection arc.
On the sliding scale of planning to pantsing, I’m a pretty robust planner (who’s happy to pants it if new ideas during the writing process make sense). I hammered out a very solid, fifty-three part outline that told their story in broad strokes, alternating in each chapter to ensure that neither William nor Tobias would end up hogging the spotlight. They would each have their own lives, their own trials, their own small victories and painful losses, but they would always be drawn back together again by hands not their own.
A quick aside: fate has always been a notion equally terrifying and romantic to me. The idea of a predestined path, or talent, or lover… it’s an enticing one indeed. Equally though, the prospect of choice being an illusion and all of your behaviour being pre-programmed by destiny is a horrifying subject to consider. I like, in much of my fantasy fiction, to present the idea that all people have a great and wonderful destiny to achieve, but to achieve it requires time, effort, and patience. That great figures are forged by their willingness to seize destiny, and that the paths below them are littered with broken dreams, bitter hearts, and forlorn souls. It makes destiny a choice, which I think is far more compelling.
In broad strokes, I actually kept to the outline pretty well for once with Interwoven. Some characters dropped off, others stepped in. Juni’s son (back when she was called Juli before I changed it for some reason) was going to be a recurring character, eventually killed by Fredrick in a bitter rage to get back at Tobias for one-upping him. Captain Samael of the city watch was actually originally one of the rebels, before I decided it would be both funny and ironic that a Carisi captain in the Sanwell city watch would be fiercely against them. Sarina originally played an outsized role in the story, but after a retooled Fredrick’s plans to consolidate power and magic her role shifted instead to new character Soren in what felt like a very natural progression. Lyle was meant to be far more recurring than he was, advancing through the ranks just a little slower than William. In fact, Lyle was meant to serve under William during the Herovir campaign and be the voice of dissent against the Carisi that the one-off character Robert wound up being, strictly because I really just… I didn’t like Lyle. At all. I think that’s why I gave him the name I did (apologies to any Lyles in my audience!). But hey, at least he comes back for a last hurrah in one of the endings!
But for all the changes to characters, the plot as a whole really didn’t end up changing all that much from the outline. There were always the seven arcs of the story, beginning with Innocence and ending with Flames (originally, Flames was titled Reckoning, but I felt it a bit on the nose and far too melodramatic… not that Flames is any less on the nose!). Likewise, the plots of the different arcs never really found themselves revised. I think I settled into the plot of Interwoven as a whole very early, and while it was still just in raw, broad-strokes conception, locked it in in my mind. Normally I do a lot of tinkering with my stories as they develop during the writing process, but not nearly as much of it happened with Interwoven. I did still make changes, but most of them had to do with specific characters like I noted above.
But that’s not to say that there weren’t aspects of the story that I was really worried about. One of the more fun ones was actually the tags for the first few stories. Interwoven’s first two arcs take place while William and Tobias are both pretty young, but tagging your work as containing cubs is opening a can of worms, especially when you’re tagging your content mature (at least) due to violent content. I think I managed to work the tagging out for those early stories well enough in the end, even if tagging in general isn’t something that I’m particularly good at.
In the same vein, I was worried about whether or not I was going to be able to convincingly write a child’s narrative for a mature audience. Writing for children isn’t difficult, of course; simplicity of words, clarity of visual, and breaking things down to their most basic (without patronizing them) is really the order of the day. But nailing the mindset of a young William and a young Tobias was something I, right up until the first comments came in, was terrified that I’d fucked up. I wanted them to be endearingly innocent, only for their ages to creep in along with all the complexity of thought and feeling that comes with it. To really chart their maturity. I still don’t know if I got it right, but I know that I absolutely adored writing their younger selves.
One thing I really struggled with was divesting the time between both William and Tobias. I knew from the outset that I wanted the two to be sharing the main character duties, but that also meant that both parties need to have something to do to justify the time spent on them for the split storytelling. This goes back even to the original outlines, where I wasn’t sure if William was just becoming the protagonist, and leaving Tobias behind. I tried to solve this with different arcs being more heavily focused on one than the other, but even so, much of the intrigue of the story revolves around William and his growth, or his learning about the rebels, or learning about his heritage.
Tobias’ part of the tale is just tragedy from start to finish; nothing goes right for the poor prince, no matter what he does (and his chronic foot-in-mouth condition doesn’t help). And therein lies the trouble that I don’t think I fully got away from. Tobias’ places in the various arcs never ends well for him. William gets to have his victories here and there, but Tobias perpetually loses. Even in the “best” ending of Interwoven, Tobias is left holding the bag (see: a kingdom he doesn’t want to rule) alone, while William rides off into the sunset with Daniel. The best he really gets is solace from Juni, then Sarina, and later Soren. As much as this was a deliberate choice on my part, I do still wonder if it was the right one. That said, Tobias being the one to kill Fredrick was absolutely the right call and I defy anyone to tell me different.
On a more mechanical level, I still shudder to think how people might critically consider the pacing of Interwoven now that it’s all finished. As a serial, distributed with one new story every week, the goal was to string people along and keep people guessing and excited for what happened next every week. To create a little excitement while waiting for what would befall William and Tobias in the next edition. Being able to read it all now, from start to finish without any breaks? I’m concerned that the split perspectives might contribute to the pacing feeling less than stellar.
Necessity is a good example of that, I feel. Of all the arcs it feels among the most contained and tight. It’s a specific story (William-focused but with strong Tobias elements) with a strong emotional core driven by Daniel and Zane, and with consequences that catalyze the events of the concluding arc, Flames. But if I step back for a second and look at the arc as a whole, I worry. I worry that Zane’s death feels cheep. I worry that the battle wasn’t foreshadowed the right amount. I worry that Daniel and William’s fight and reconciliation doesn’t hit right. I worry that despite my efforts, even the tightest arc of the story might seem sloppy. Pacing a story this long is always going to be fraught, and I can only hope that people looking back on it after the fact won’t see it as negatively as I almost do.
But enough grouching! There were a lot of things - and I mean a LOT of things - that I love about Interwoven, so permit me a moment’s pleasure as I gush over some of the things that I absolutely adored about the story.
Finding and being true to yourself are core themes I wanted to weave into it, and I feel like that’s something that I nailed. William is true to himself the whole story through and struggles to maintain it. Tobias struggles with figuring out who he is and who he needs to be and reconciling the two. Daniel’s got himself on lock. Zane’s torn between his love for his son and his duty to a corrupt crown. Hell, even Fredrick is absolutely true to himself from start to finish.
Fredrick, too, I absolutely love as a villain… by which I mean I loathe him with all of my being. I usually write more calculating villains, but creating someone who’s all blunt wrath was a true delight. I don’t know if I liked writing Fredrick or Oswell better in my stable of villains, but the fact that it’s close is a testament to how much fun it was writing such an utter fucking bastard.
And on the other side, Zane. Zane was amazing to write. A common thread in my stories seems to be absent and abusive father figures (and I got to have my cake and eat it too with William Snr.) and being able to write a genuinely loving, caring father (who is despised utterly by the mother of his son) who doesn’t care that they don’t come from the same blood? It was delightful. Zane is what every father should be, so far as I’m concerned. Hell, if every man aspired to being Zane, I think the world would be a much better place. Having him so full of love and pride in William, so unconditionally, was what made me also love (in a twisted way) his death. Character deaths, after all, should mean something. Zane’s end comes as a pure act of love, and I wanted it to carry the gravity and impact for you all as it did for me. I hope it did!
I also love the magic I built up for this world. Fun fact: the setting itself has been used before, but most readers probably haven’t seen it. The city of Kadara from my story Unraveled in FANG #11 is located on a continent to the north-west of Ratholarin, well past Skir and Yaroven territory. I actually have a new story that I want to set in Kadara, dealing with the magus-run Conclave and the order of Hunters tasked with protecting the common folk from the threat of magic. We’ll see when I get to write that, though; it’s going to be a while. More on that below!
And really, finally, I’m just proud of ME. Of being able to sit down, hammer out these words, and just throw them all up for everyone to enjoy. I was so sure I was done, and that I had no new good stories to offer. That I was bereft of literary purpose, and that despite all my ideas and my will to write, that people just didn’t care about what I had to say. And honestly? I’m still not convinced that people care about my work. That’s okay, though, because I do. More than ever.
Those of you who do take the time to comment or message me and let me know, thank you. Always, thank you. You’re the reason I do actually keep going. Why I can. Why I know I’m not just screaming into the void, offering up pieces of my soul in literary form. On the days I can’t motivate myself, it’s your comments and messages that I read to remind me that I can do this. That as much as I love to entertain people, I DO entertain them. That you value what I do as much as I do. It means everything to me.
And to those of you who don’t leave a mark, know that I appreciate you as well. I don’t ask you to say anything if you don’t want to. Go through as a ghost; take in my work and leave. I hope that it stays with you, and you take some of it with you. I hope that William and Tobias and their messy journey is a part of you now, and I hope that you have appreciated what I’ve created here. At the very least, I hope I was able to make you smile. Frown. Cry. Scream.
And yes, turn you on a little. The story did get pretty saucy.
So what now? What’s next?
Void Dreaming is next.
As mentioned in my previous journal, I’m working on a visual novel. I’m writing and programming it (both are equally challenging in different ways and I HATE the latter), commissioning art for it, and I currently have a small team of alpha testers who are pretty enthusiastic about helping me make it pretty good. It’s going to be a while before it sees the light of day, but I’m working on it hard. Too hard, honestly; I’m going to burn out at the pace I’m going, but this project demands it. If Interwoven didn’t kill me, this one might!
But that’s the price I pay. I don’t want to do small things. I don’t want to do easy things. I want to challenge myself, and Void Dreaming is a challenge unlike anything I’ve ever undertaken before. I don’t know how long it’ll be before I start going into details about it; I really want to put up regular blog post-style journal entries in all my usual writing places to give a bit of an idea of how things are coming along and what the visual novel’s all about, but I don’t want to start doing that until public releases are approaching.
And unfortunately, that’s not soon. And yet sooner than you might think.
A project this size requires me to consider more than just my writing, unfortunately. Getting the art together has proven a pain, even as I get more and more writing done. The artist for the spritework is lined up and just awaiting my throwing money at him to get started. I’m still, as of this moment, looking for artists to do the background images and for anyone who can help me with the UI. They’re just too far outside my skillset to deal with, but it’s actually worked out nicely for me to delay things.
I’ve been holding off on the sprite assets that I could get right now not because of a lack of funds. I’ve actually saved quite a war chest (that’s simultaneously sizable and yet somehow not close to enough) to spend on assets for Void Dreaming, to help make its eventual initial release as positive as possible. However, given the expense and the time of year, I figured that if I wanted to maybe be able to make back some of the money that I’m spending on this project, I need to make sure it gets an initial release after the middle of the year. With a new financial year starting, I can write off the expenses I incur on the project against any income that I generate from it via Patreon or whatever system I wind up using. It minimizes fiscal pain for me, and gives me a better chance to keep more of the project rolling along faster down the line.
That does mean that I can’t even pay artists until after June, so I can’t get those sprites done until then. Hopefully by then I’ll also have a background artist and some help with the UI, so that Void Dreaming can have an initial release that actually makes it look like the visual novel I want it to. And I need all the help I can get, because as excited as I am about this project, I can only hope that people are as enthusiastic about Rael’s story as I am. I won’t know until it’s in more people’s grubby little paws.
So then, what does that all actually mean for Void Dreaming? It means, quite simply, that the initial release of the visual novel won’t be until the latter half of the year, and definitely not before August. At present, this is what my plan is, assuming everything goes moderately well:
- Art assets secured, beginning July and probably in place by late August.
- Initial launch of the public build (prologue) and the private build on Patreon (Day 1) in September/October.
- Public Day 1 build and private Day 2 build in October/November.
- Public Day 2 build and private Day 3 build in December.
Hopefully, with that in place, I’ll be able to do some nice early updates and ensure a good bit of story to hook everyone in. The integration of Patreon (or whatever else I go with) lets me recover some of the cost of making this, while also funding further development on an ongoing basis. It will, however, ultimately be available to all, like almost all of my work, absolutely free. I’d love being able to support myself on my work, but that would require a level of support that I don’t know I’ll ever have. I’ll settle for the project paying for itself, if possible!
As an alternate plan, if I’ve got the writing in place that I’d like to by then, I might instead do the initial launch with a public prologue and Day 1 build, with Day 2 on the Patreon. And if I’m REALLY ahead, I might even lose my mind and do everything up to Day 2 publicly and Day 3 on the Patreon. It’ll depend on how confident I am on the cadence moving forward, but that would absolutely be preferable because of the sheer volume of story content that comes through Day 2.
I’d like to move eventually into a two-month cycle on public releases (it takes a lot of writing with all these variables!), with the private, Patreon build updates happening probably monthly. The days of the story are a wonderful metric for breaking builds up the way I’ve currently got them, but giving the people supporting me and the project the chance to get their updates a little quicker, even in shorter bursts of content, feels nice to me.
And that’s it, basically. Bi-monthly public release cadence, Patreon support so I can keep doing this (seriously, VNs are expensive if you want to put effort into making one!), and an initial release hopefully around the September/October mark. If I can pull that off, I’ll be a pretty happy little dragon. If I can’t, it’ll go up when it’s up. I just hope people like what I’ve done when it gets in their hands. Fingers crossed!
So! Here’s that promised Void Dreaming TL;DR I mentioned at the top:
- Alpha testing/reading is positive so far!
- More details will come closer to initial release with (hopefully) informative blog posts
- Writing is currently well ahead of art assets
- Hopeful initial release is September/October
- Public releases will be free, with advance versions available through Patreon or something.
- Public releases to be every two months, with private releases monthly
It’s not much of an update on Void Dreaming, but it’s already more of a dump on the subject than I intended to do on what’s essentially meant to be my thoughts on Interwoven. Still, can’t go into the end of one project without looking forward to the next, right?
Thanks again for everyone who read through this all, and for those who read and enjoyed Interwoven. I hope that you can look forward with me to Void Dreaming, and that it’s worth your wait and my effort.
Until then, stars guide you,
- Faora
I figured that now would be a good time, a bit more than a quarter of a year removed from the end of Interwoven (and too late to have it suggested for any furry awards so no one can accuse me of pushing my work; ha!), to finally sit down and do a sort of post-mortem on the whole project. Talk a little about it to those who might be interested, suggest some of the things that I don’t think worked well, discuss with any fans of the series their thoughts (if you want to share them), and just reflect on what Interwoven is to me and how I’m moving forward after it as a writer.
And if you’re not interested in the Interwoven stuff but want the low-down on my visual novel project, Void Dreaming, there’ll be a TL;DR at the bottom of this journal entry. You can skip to the juicy new stuff there, if you like. For everyone else though, read on!
Bear in mind that the following will absolutely contain Interwoven spoilers. Don’t read on until you’ve finished the series if you don’t want anything spoiled for you!
To start at the beginning, Interwoven was conceived late in 2022. I wasn’t doing very well mentally and emotionally; I was struggling, among other things, with my sense of self as a writer. Ask any writer who’s been in the furry community for long enough and they’ll be able to tell you how engagement has really dropped off. It used to be that comments were everywhere, and encouragement was rife. Part of this was volume of content, I believe. There weren’t as many writers putting out good work twenty years ago (and no, I didn’t qualify back then either!) so you’d get more people actually expressing their appreciation for what they saw.
I had written a YA fantasy story early in the year, and I was viewing it as my last gasp; my last great effort for mainstream publication. I’d spring for a professional editor, I’d go all out, shop it around globally to avoid the anti-spec-fic bias in Australian agencies, and if it failed? So be it. I’d write for myself, since stopping wasn’t an option. The delays in beta readers getting back to me so I could polish it before sending it to said editor only compounded my frustrations, and I had the writing itch again. I developed a story that I’d write just for me, as a personal challenge: could I do a story upload every week for a whole year, with the same contiguous story and characters? And what would that even look like?
Back then the idea didn’t really have a name. Even in Scrivener now, the project is still titled “Servant Boy.scriv” because at the start I didn’t have a name for William, or Tobias, or any of it. I envisioned a sort of tragic meeting of fate at first; two people who could be together and could be happy, if not for things always getting in their way. At how fate kept throwing them together, only for themselves and the events around them to throw them apart again. A servant boy and the young prince he’d befriended turned into William and Tobias. Fun fact: the working title for the project was developed after I finished Innocence. I began calling it Fates Interwoven, until I wound up dropping the Fates part somewhere around writing the Reflection arc.
On the sliding scale of planning to pantsing, I’m a pretty robust planner (who’s happy to pants it if new ideas during the writing process make sense). I hammered out a very solid, fifty-three part outline that told their story in broad strokes, alternating in each chapter to ensure that neither William nor Tobias would end up hogging the spotlight. They would each have their own lives, their own trials, their own small victories and painful losses, but they would always be drawn back together again by hands not their own.
A quick aside: fate has always been a notion equally terrifying and romantic to me. The idea of a predestined path, or talent, or lover… it’s an enticing one indeed. Equally though, the prospect of choice being an illusion and all of your behaviour being pre-programmed by destiny is a horrifying subject to consider. I like, in much of my fantasy fiction, to present the idea that all people have a great and wonderful destiny to achieve, but to achieve it requires time, effort, and patience. That great figures are forged by their willingness to seize destiny, and that the paths below them are littered with broken dreams, bitter hearts, and forlorn souls. It makes destiny a choice, which I think is far more compelling.
In broad strokes, I actually kept to the outline pretty well for once with Interwoven. Some characters dropped off, others stepped in. Juni’s son (back when she was called Juli before I changed it for some reason) was going to be a recurring character, eventually killed by Fredrick in a bitter rage to get back at Tobias for one-upping him. Captain Samael of the city watch was actually originally one of the rebels, before I decided it would be both funny and ironic that a Carisi captain in the Sanwell city watch would be fiercely against them. Sarina originally played an outsized role in the story, but after a retooled Fredrick’s plans to consolidate power and magic her role shifted instead to new character Soren in what felt like a very natural progression. Lyle was meant to be far more recurring than he was, advancing through the ranks just a little slower than William. In fact, Lyle was meant to serve under William during the Herovir campaign and be the voice of dissent against the Carisi that the one-off character Robert wound up being, strictly because I really just… I didn’t like Lyle. At all. I think that’s why I gave him the name I did (apologies to any Lyles in my audience!). But hey, at least he comes back for a last hurrah in one of the endings!
But for all the changes to characters, the plot as a whole really didn’t end up changing all that much from the outline. There were always the seven arcs of the story, beginning with Innocence and ending with Flames (originally, Flames was titled Reckoning, but I felt it a bit on the nose and far too melodramatic… not that Flames is any less on the nose!). Likewise, the plots of the different arcs never really found themselves revised. I think I settled into the plot of Interwoven as a whole very early, and while it was still just in raw, broad-strokes conception, locked it in in my mind. Normally I do a lot of tinkering with my stories as they develop during the writing process, but not nearly as much of it happened with Interwoven. I did still make changes, but most of them had to do with specific characters like I noted above.
But that’s not to say that there weren’t aspects of the story that I was really worried about. One of the more fun ones was actually the tags for the first few stories. Interwoven’s first two arcs take place while William and Tobias are both pretty young, but tagging your work as containing cubs is opening a can of worms, especially when you’re tagging your content mature (at least) due to violent content. I think I managed to work the tagging out for those early stories well enough in the end, even if tagging in general isn’t something that I’m particularly good at.
In the same vein, I was worried about whether or not I was going to be able to convincingly write a child’s narrative for a mature audience. Writing for children isn’t difficult, of course; simplicity of words, clarity of visual, and breaking things down to their most basic (without patronizing them) is really the order of the day. But nailing the mindset of a young William and a young Tobias was something I, right up until the first comments came in, was terrified that I’d fucked up. I wanted them to be endearingly innocent, only for their ages to creep in along with all the complexity of thought and feeling that comes with it. To really chart their maturity. I still don’t know if I got it right, but I know that I absolutely adored writing their younger selves.
One thing I really struggled with was divesting the time between both William and Tobias. I knew from the outset that I wanted the two to be sharing the main character duties, but that also meant that both parties need to have something to do to justify the time spent on them for the split storytelling. This goes back even to the original outlines, where I wasn’t sure if William was just becoming the protagonist, and leaving Tobias behind. I tried to solve this with different arcs being more heavily focused on one than the other, but even so, much of the intrigue of the story revolves around William and his growth, or his learning about the rebels, or learning about his heritage.
Tobias’ part of the tale is just tragedy from start to finish; nothing goes right for the poor prince, no matter what he does (and his chronic foot-in-mouth condition doesn’t help). And therein lies the trouble that I don’t think I fully got away from. Tobias’ places in the various arcs never ends well for him. William gets to have his victories here and there, but Tobias perpetually loses. Even in the “best” ending of Interwoven, Tobias is left holding the bag (see: a kingdom he doesn’t want to rule) alone, while William rides off into the sunset with Daniel. The best he really gets is solace from Juni, then Sarina, and later Soren. As much as this was a deliberate choice on my part, I do still wonder if it was the right one. That said, Tobias being the one to kill Fredrick was absolutely the right call and I defy anyone to tell me different.
On a more mechanical level, I still shudder to think how people might critically consider the pacing of Interwoven now that it’s all finished. As a serial, distributed with one new story every week, the goal was to string people along and keep people guessing and excited for what happened next every week. To create a little excitement while waiting for what would befall William and Tobias in the next edition. Being able to read it all now, from start to finish without any breaks? I’m concerned that the split perspectives might contribute to the pacing feeling less than stellar.
Necessity is a good example of that, I feel. Of all the arcs it feels among the most contained and tight. It’s a specific story (William-focused but with strong Tobias elements) with a strong emotional core driven by Daniel and Zane, and with consequences that catalyze the events of the concluding arc, Flames. But if I step back for a second and look at the arc as a whole, I worry. I worry that Zane’s death feels cheep. I worry that the battle wasn’t foreshadowed the right amount. I worry that Daniel and William’s fight and reconciliation doesn’t hit right. I worry that despite my efforts, even the tightest arc of the story might seem sloppy. Pacing a story this long is always going to be fraught, and I can only hope that people looking back on it after the fact won’t see it as negatively as I almost do.
But enough grouching! There were a lot of things - and I mean a LOT of things - that I love about Interwoven, so permit me a moment’s pleasure as I gush over some of the things that I absolutely adored about the story.
Finding and being true to yourself are core themes I wanted to weave into it, and I feel like that’s something that I nailed. William is true to himself the whole story through and struggles to maintain it. Tobias struggles with figuring out who he is and who he needs to be and reconciling the two. Daniel’s got himself on lock. Zane’s torn between his love for his son and his duty to a corrupt crown. Hell, even Fredrick is absolutely true to himself from start to finish.
Fredrick, too, I absolutely love as a villain… by which I mean I loathe him with all of my being. I usually write more calculating villains, but creating someone who’s all blunt wrath was a true delight. I don’t know if I liked writing Fredrick or Oswell better in my stable of villains, but the fact that it’s close is a testament to how much fun it was writing such an utter fucking bastard.
And on the other side, Zane. Zane was amazing to write. A common thread in my stories seems to be absent and abusive father figures (and I got to have my cake and eat it too with William Snr.) and being able to write a genuinely loving, caring father (who is despised utterly by the mother of his son) who doesn’t care that they don’t come from the same blood? It was delightful. Zane is what every father should be, so far as I’m concerned. Hell, if every man aspired to being Zane, I think the world would be a much better place. Having him so full of love and pride in William, so unconditionally, was what made me also love (in a twisted way) his death. Character deaths, after all, should mean something. Zane’s end comes as a pure act of love, and I wanted it to carry the gravity and impact for you all as it did for me. I hope it did!
I also love the magic I built up for this world. Fun fact: the setting itself has been used before, but most readers probably haven’t seen it. The city of Kadara from my story Unraveled in FANG #11 is located on a continent to the north-west of Ratholarin, well past Skir and Yaroven territory. I actually have a new story that I want to set in Kadara, dealing with the magus-run Conclave and the order of Hunters tasked with protecting the common folk from the threat of magic. We’ll see when I get to write that, though; it’s going to be a while. More on that below!
And really, finally, I’m just proud of ME. Of being able to sit down, hammer out these words, and just throw them all up for everyone to enjoy. I was so sure I was done, and that I had no new good stories to offer. That I was bereft of literary purpose, and that despite all my ideas and my will to write, that people just didn’t care about what I had to say. And honestly? I’m still not convinced that people care about my work. That’s okay, though, because I do. More than ever.
Those of you who do take the time to comment or message me and let me know, thank you. Always, thank you. You’re the reason I do actually keep going. Why I can. Why I know I’m not just screaming into the void, offering up pieces of my soul in literary form. On the days I can’t motivate myself, it’s your comments and messages that I read to remind me that I can do this. That as much as I love to entertain people, I DO entertain them. That you value what I do as much as I do. It means everything to me.
And to those of you who don’t leave a mark, know that I appreciate you as well. I don’t ask you to say anything if you don’t want to. Go through as a ghost; take in my work and leave. I hope that it stays with you, and you take some of it with you. I hope that William and Tobias and their messy journey is a part of you now, and I hope that you have appreciated what I’ve created here. At the very least, I hope I was able to make you smile. Frown. Cry. Scream.
And yes, turn you on a little. The story did get pretty saucy.
So what now? What’s next?
Void Dreaming is next.
As mentioned in my previous journal, I’m working on a visual novel. I’m writing and programming it (both are equally challenging in different ways and I HATE the latter), commissioning art for it, and I currently have a small team of alpha testers who are pretty enthusiastic about helping me make it pretty good. It’s going to be a while before it sees the light of day, but I’m working on it hard. Too hard, honestly; I’m going to burn out at the pace I’m going, but this project demands it. If Interwoven didn’t kill me, this one might!
But that’s the price I pay. I don’t want to do small things. I don’t want to do easy things. I want to challenge myself, and Void Dreaming is a challenge unlike anything I’ve ever undertaken before. I don’t know how long it’ll be before I start going into details about it; I really want to put up regular blog post-style journal entries in all my usual writing places to give a bit of an idea of how things are coming along and what the visual novel’s all about, but I don’t want to start doing that until public releases are approaching.
And unfortunately, that’s not soon. And yet sooner than you might think.
A project this size requires me to consider more than just my writing, unfortunately. Getting the art together has proven a pain, even as I get more and more writing done. The artist for the spritework is lined up and just awaiting my throwing money at him to get started. I’m still, as of this moment, looking for artists to do the background images and for anyone who can help me with the UI. They’re just too far outside my skillset to deal with, but it’s actually worked out nicely for me to delay things.
I’ve been holding off on the sprite assets that I could get right now not because of a lack of funds. I’ve actually saved quite a war chest (that’s simultaneously sizable and yet somehow not close to enough) to spend on assets for Void Dreaming, to help make its eventual initial release as positive as possible. However, given the expense and the time of year, I figured that if I wanted to maybe be able to make back some of the money that I’m spending on this project, I need to make sure it gets an initial release after the middle of the year. With a new financial year starting, I can write off the expenses I incur on the project against any income that I generate from it via Patreon or whatever system I wind up using. It minimizes fiscal pain for me, and gives me a better chance to keep more of the project rolling along faster down the line.
That does mean that I can’t even pay artists until after June, so I can’t get those sprites done until then. Hopefully by then I’ll also have a background artist and some help with the UI, so that Void Dreaming can have an initial release that actually makes it look like the visual novel I want it to. And I need all the help I can get, because as excited as I am about this project, I can only hope that people are as enthusiastic about Rael’s story as I am. I won’t know until it’s in more people’s grubby little paws.
So then, what does that all actually mean for Void Dreaming? It means, quite simply, that the initial release of the visual novel won’t be until the latter half of the year, and definitely not before August. At present, this is what my plan is, assuming everything goes moderately well:
- Art assets secured, beginning July and probably in place by late August.
- Initial launch of the public build (prologue) and the private build on Patreon (Day 1) in September/October.
- Public Day 1 build and private Day 2 build in October/November.
- Public Day 2 build and private Day 3 build in December.
Hopefully, with that in place, I’ll be able to do some nice early updates and ensure a good bit of story to hook everyone in. The integration of Patreon (or whatever else I go with) lets me recover some of the cost of making this, while also funding further development on an ongoing basis. It will, however, ultimately be available to all, like almost all of my work, absolutely free. I’d love being able to support myself on my work, but that would require a level of support that I don’t know I’ll ever have. I’ll settle for the project paying for itself, if possible!
As an alternate plan, if I’ve got the writing in place that I’d like to by then, I might instead do the initial launch with a public prologue and Day 1 build, with Day 2 on the Patreon. And if I’m REALLY ahead, I might even lose my mind and do everything up to Day 2 publicly and Day 3 on the Patreon. It’ll depend on how confident I am on the cadence moving forward, but that would absolutely be preferable because of the sheer volume of story content that comes through Day 2.
I’d like to move eventually into a two-month cycle on public releases (it takes a lot of writing with all these variables!), with the private, Patreon build updates happening probably monthly. The days of the story are a wonderful metric for breaking builds up the way I’ve currently got them, but giving the people supporting me and the project the chance to get their updates a little quicker, even in shorter bursts of content, feels nice to me.
And that’s it, basically. Bi-monthly public release cadence, Patreon support so I can keep doing this (seriously, VNs are expensive if you want to put effort into making one!), and an initial release hopefully around the September/October mark. If I can pull that off, I’ll be a pretty happy little dragon. If I can’t, it’ll go up when it’s up. I just hope people like what I’ve done when it gets in their hands. Fingers crossed!
So! Here’s that promised Void Dreaming TL;DR I mentioned at the top:
- Alpha testing/reading is positive so far!
- More details will come closer to initial release with (hopefully) informative blog posts
- Writing is currently well ahead of art assets
- Hopeful initial release is September/October
- Public releases will be free, with advance versions available through Patreon or something.
- Public releases to be every two months, with private releases monthly
It’s not much of an update on Void Dreaming, but it’s already more of a dump on the subject than I intended to do on what’s essentially meant to be my thoughts on Interwoven. Still, can’t go into the end of one project without looking forward to the next, right?
Thanks again for everyone who read through this all, and for those who read and enjoyed Interwoven. I hope that you can look forward with me to Void Dreaming, and that it’s worth your wait and my effort.
Until then, stars guide you,
- Faora
The End, and New Beginnings
Posted 2 years agoAnd so ends the tale of William and Tobias. Interwoven stands complete, more or less! Scroll to the very bottom if you just want the TL;DR because this got LONG.
This has been a wild experiment, and I first want to say thank you to those who've been with me on this journey all of 2023 with the gradual rollout of Interwoven. It's been insane. Overwhelming. Every word of response has been gratefully received, and every bit of appreciation has been felt. I hope that this has been a story that you've grown fond of... and I only say that because it's my work, and with my work 'fun' and 'enjoyment' aren't always the emotions that I elicit.
I'm not going to talk at length about Interwoven here, not in a post-mortem sense anyway. That'll be something for down the road, and it'll be a conversation that I happily invite anyone who would be so inclined to join me for. Goodness knows that I love to talk shop about writing, and I (like any artist in the history of art) love to talk about my own work. Especially with people who have enjoyed it.
No, this is just to express my gratitude to those of you who have spent the year with me, reading Interwoven, getting to know William and Tobias as we take this walk through their lives. I'm writing this journal specifically to be vague and unclear on details, so in the service of that I'm also going to sit back and say with just the smallest of smug smiles that if you weren't happy with your ending, then that's okay. You have options. Only one of the four endings I've written is canon, but I'm also not going to tell you just yet which one it is.
For those that don't know, Interwoven's final chapter (and the following epilogue) all end differently depending on which of the four endings you've read. The outcome for William, Tobias, and Ratholarin is starkly different in each ending, so I definitely encourage people to hunt them down and compare notes. Maybe one ending will feel more true to your expectations or desires than another!
This also isn't the end for the setting. I'm done with Ratholarin for the moment, but I've got plans in the works. I have a novella, currently written that I'm contemplating what I want to do with, set several hundred years earlier in a little shack on the Marovan side of the Lenkis border during the reign of the Apex over the Imperium. I've also got a second novella, not quite as complete, set almost three hundred years AFTER Interwoven, which takes place... sort of in Ratholarin. Sort of elsewhere. Once I get a solid draft of that I might share more details. Or shop it around; I don't know.
But if those are all just in the background percolating, what does that mean for me now? Well... a lot, actually. I intended to do a lot more writing this year than I did (and for those who know how many words I've written this year, that should be terrifying), but there was a pretty big gap between the end of the writing on Interwoven and me picking up new stuff. That second novella project came after Interwoven (the first novella project actually preceded it), but otherwise I took a pretty long break from writing. Earned it, I would say, after pounding out Interwoven in four months real-time and seventy three days of actual work over those four months.
I am now, however, hard at work again. On what, though? Well, it's probably the worst kept secret about me for now, but I'm working on something big. Something bigger than Interwoven which, as I've said before, is already the single largest project I've ever worked on. Seeing Interwoven come to completion has been amazing, but the nearly 380k words in total I've put down for it PALES in comparison to what I'm doing now.
I am writing a visual novel, tentatively titled Void Dreaming.
"No one travels the fringes of space unless they're running from something. So... what's your story?"
Stars preserve me.
Void Dreaming is a sci-fi drama set aboard an advanced exploration vessel, where the reader takes the helm (figuratively speaking) as Rael; a young male wolf who's just come out of a really nasty circumstance. He's trying to find his footing again, and that comes with the help of Captain Zuberi, commander of the Astrogation Guild starship that's taken him on. He'll meet the crew of the ship, strike up friendships (or enemyships, if you play your cards... right?), and perhaps even more with them as he and the crew of Zuberi's ship chart new star systems on the fringes of an expansive furry galaxy. Fun! Excitement! Romance, perhaps... and in a departure for me, gay and straight options both; you can play Rael as bi if you want. Looking for a polycule? It's possible! Want to romance NONE of the crew? Viable!
But what's that nasty circumstance in Rael's past that I mentioned above? Well... that's the trick to the whole project.
You see, it'd be too easy to just write a visual novel (Editor's Note: IT IS NOT FUCKING EASY TO WRITE A VISUAL NOVEL) and I don't do anything easy. I don't do anything without pushing myself to the limits... or as my roommate suggested, working myself to the point of unaliving myself. No, every visual novel has its own draw; that unique thing that makes it special. Well, what I'm hoping to do with Void Dreaming is something that I've not seen another visual novel do: you get to customize Rael's background.
The choices you make aren't just about sending you down a route. You don't play your prologue and then choose if you want to date Sam or Tulemeni or Bromm'ka or whomever to get their saucy art. No, your choices in the prologue determine Rael's history (his Origin choices, as they're called in-game), and that in turn determines his Skills. Dialogue options come up only for specific Origins... or even combinations of them! Skills will change how Rael approaches certain problems. Some characters might respond better or worse, depending on how they relate to who Rael is and how he came to be there. You'll have to learn what the crew respond to, and how to appeal to them. Different skills give Rael the ability to handle (or not handle) situations differently. Throughout all of it, the VN even now in SUPER bare-bones form) tracks so many variables as to make my head spin. Did you watch the hyperlaunch? Do you know Caleia's surname? Were you stupid enough to actually sleep in on the morning of your first shift?
Yeah. Those variables exist. And they all affect everything that comes after them. I have lost my mind.
See, most VNs minimise the choices you make to distinct routes because that's easier to write for. That's not taking a swipe at other VN authors; it's a legitimate problem. The more variables you have, the more effort it takes to make them feel meaningful. By keeping meaningful variables to a minimum, you get a handful of options that you can write well and not overwork yourself. It's economical on time and words, and almost always the best option.
Well, guess what, my dudes? The best quality I have as a writer is that I can write a lot of words really fast, so I can overcome that! I can afford, in a manner of speaking, to devote a stupid amount of words and time to creating a story where the player's choices (and there are a LOT of them) actually meaningfully impact the way the story unfolds. I can write ten thousand word long scenes that the player might never ever stumble across. I daresay by the end of the project, a single playthrough is only going to see... maybe fifteen percent of what I've written. Twenty, perhaps. The rest would be stuff you never see because it never comes up. Your Origins were different. Your Skills were different. The choices your Rael makes are different.
If this sounds like a lot of work even for me, and something that doesn't get done in he VN space much for good reason... well, you're right. But that's just me; I can't do anything small. I want to push myself to my limits, and I want to make things that stand out. I was hoping Interwoven would do that... it actually didn't. This is going to be orders of magnitude more work and, if I pull it off right, I hope it'll reach a wide audience. I love to entertain. I hope that Rael's journey -- YOUR Rael's journey -- will entertain.
In much the same way as the post-mortem for Interwoven, I'm going to have a lot more to say about Void Dreaming in the future. I'd love to do some blog-style posts about the project's development, about the Origin and Skill systems, about the characters and the plot, and everything that goes along with it. That is not, however, going to be soon. And you might have guessed, but that's also exactly what I've got to say in answer to the obvious question of, "So when can I read it?"
Void Dreaming is a long ways off. I hate programming, and I've had to learn basic Python for this. I'm going to need art assets which, at the time of writing, I have... none of. I do have an alpha tester who's whipping up out of the goodness of their heart some stand-in sprites for the characters, but they're doing that for free and I want them to work on their own stuff as a priority. Finding an artist who's got the look I want, with the cost that I can manage, an interest in working on a VN, and who's content to handle the content itself... it's been surprisingly hard, though I do think I've got just the one nailed down. And that's just the sprites; it doesn't take into consideration backgrounds or more complex elements. I'm a team of one doing this project, and as such a timeframe will depend on me able to commission the right work to see it done.
This project will not be done in 2024. If I'm lucky, we'll be gearing up for a public release with early content before the middle of 2024, but no promises.
What I will say however is that even before any of the art assets are done, I'm working my arse off on the writing and the basic programming. I've been at it for two months or so as of the time of typing this (Interwoven IX goes up in roughly 24 hours from when I'm writing all this!) and I've put together the prologue and the first day aboard the ship. It's sitting at 287k words in length for just that much, and about 250k is just day one. That may not sound like a lot until you realize that my current outline for this project sees it going for SEVENTEEN DAYS. This... is going to be big.
Still though, I'm excited. It's great to jump back into sci-fi again; my furry start was writing sci-fi and I've not had a chance to do much in a while. It's going to be a labour of love for ages to get this done though, and there'll definitely be some things I want to do with this that'll be new to me beyond just the medium. It'll be the first writing project that's going to cost me money (and a lot of it), so I'm contemplating ways to recover some of that. A Patreon is on my mind, but it's way down the road for right now. And don't worry! I'll still be making public releases of the VN regularly once it's ready to go, however the Patreon thing (or whatever I do) goes down. If I could do it for free like Interwoven, I absolutely would.
Still, this sort of thing is more stuff that I'll be happy to discuss at further length in the future. I don't know when or how yet and I really, really need to figure out exactly what I'm going to do with getting the art assets sorted. But when I have something to share, hoo boy. I'm gonna have a lot to share.
So! This got super long, so let's do the recap:
- Interwoven complete! Yay!
- See if you can find all four endings!
- Post-mortem post about Interwoven coming soon-ish
- At least two more novellas in the setting coming some time down the line
- I'M WRITING A SCI-FI FURRY VISUAL NOVEL HOLY SHIT
- Stupidly massive complexity
- Custom background Origin choices
- MEANINGFUL character dialogue/action choices
- Integrated Skill system
- Insane creator
- No ETA
- 287k may be less than a tenth of the story's expected length
- Prologue and Day 1 writing complete
- Zero art done yet
- No, seriously; no ETA. This shit's hard, yo
If you read the whole thing, thanks! If you read the whole of Interwoven, especially great thanks to you. I hope that you enjoyed the story, and I look forward to bringing you back to the kingdoms of the South Sea (and beyond) again in the future.
And I hope you're excited about Void Dreaming. I can't wait to share it with you... just as soon as I can get it into a state worthy of sharing.
Stars save me,
- Faora
This has been a wild experiment, and I first want to say thank you to those who've been with me on this journey all of 2023 with the gradual rollout of Interwoven. It's been insane. Overwhelming. Every word of response has been gratefully received, and every bit of appreciation has been felt. I hope that this has been a story that you've grown fond of... and I only say that because it's my work, and with my work 'fun' and 'enjoyment' aren't always the emotions that I elicit.
I'm not going to talk at length about Interwoven here, not in a post-mortem sense anyway. That'll be something for down the road, and it'll be a conversation that I happily invite anyone who would be so inclined to join me for. Goodness knows that I love to talk shop about writing, and I (like any artist in the history of art) love to talk about my own work. Especially with people who have enjoyed it.
No, this is just to express my gratitude to those of you who have spent the year with me, reading Interwoven, getting to know William and Tobias as we take this walk through their lives. I'm writing this journal specifically to be vague and unclear on details, so in the service of that I'm also going to sit back and say with just the smallest of smug smiles that if you weren't happy with your ending, then that's okay. You have options. Only one of the four endings I've written is canon, but I'm also not going to tell you just yet which one it is.
For those that don't know, Interwoven's final chapter (and the following epilogue) all end differently depending on which of the four endings you've read. The outcome for William, Tobias, and Ratholarin is starkly different in each ending, so I definitely encourage people to hunt them down and compare notes. Maybe one ending will feel more true to your expectations or desires than another!
This also isn't the end for the setting. I'm done with Ratholarin for the moment, but I've got plans in the works. I have a novella, currently written that I'm contemplating what I want to do with, set several hundred years earlier in a little shack on the Marovan side of the Lenkis border during the reign of the Apex over the Imperium. I've also got a second novella, not quite as complete, set almost three hundred years AFTER Interwoven, which takes place... sort of in Ratholarin. Sort of elsewhere. Once I get a solid draft of that I might share more details. Or shop it around; I don't know.
But if those are all just in the background percolating, what does that mean for me now? Well... a lot, actually. I intended to do a lot more writing this year than I did (and for those who know how many words I've written this year, that should be terrifying), but there was a pretty big gap between the end of the writing on Interwoven and me picking up new stuff. That second novella project came after Interwoven (the first novella project actually preceded it), but otherwise I took a pretty long break from writing. Earned it, I would say, after pounding out Interwoven in four months real-time and seventy three days of actual work over those four months.
I am now, however, hard at work again. On what, though? Well, it's probably the worst kept secret about me for now, but I'm working on something big. Something bigger than Interwoven which, as I've said before, is already the single largest project I've ever worked on. Seeing Interwoven come to completion has been amazing, but the nearly 380k words in total I've put down for it PALES in comparison to what I'm doing now.
I am writing a visual novel, tentatively titled Void Dreaming.
"No one travels the fringes of space unless they're running from something. So... what's your story?"
Stars preserve me.
Void Dreaming is a sci-fi drama set aboard an advanced exploration vessel, where the reader takes the helm (figuratively speaking) as Rael; a young male wolf who's just come out of a really nasty circumstance. He's trying to find his footing again, and that comes with the help of Captain Zuberi, commander of the Astrogation Guild starship that's taken him on. He'll meet the crew of the ship, strike up friendships (or enemyships, if you play your cards... right?), and perhaps even more with them as he and the crew of Zuberi's ship chart new star systems on the fringes of an expansive furry galaxy. Fun! Excitement! Romance, perhaps... and in a departure for me, gay and straight options both; you can play Rael as bi if you want. Looking for a polycule? It's possible! Want to romance NONE of the crew? Viable!
But what's that nasty circumstance in Rael's past that I mentioned above? Well... that's the trick to the whole project.
You see, it'd be too easy to just write a visual novel (Editor's Note: IT IS NOT FUCKING EASY TO WRITE A VISUAL NOVEL) and I don't do anything easy. I don't do anything without pushing myself to the limits... or as my roommate suggested, working myself to the point of unaliving myself. No, every visual novel has its own draw; that unique thing that makes it special. Well, what I'm hoping to do with Void Dreaming is something that I've not seen another visual novel do: you get to customize Rael's background.
The choices you make aren't just about sending you down a route. You don't play your prologue and then choose if you want to date Sam or Tulemeni or Bromm'ka or whomever to get their saucy art. No, your choices in the prologue determine Rael's history (his Origin choices, as they're called in-game), and that in turn determines his Skills. Dialogue options come up only for specific Origins... or even combinations of them! Skills will change how Rael approaches certain problems. Some characters might respond better or worse, depending on how they relate to who Rael is and how he came to be there. You'll have to learn what the crew respond to, and how to appeal to them. Different skills give Rael the ability to handle (or not handle) situations differently. Throughout all of it, the VN even now in SUPER bare-bones form) tracks so many variables as to make my head spin. Did you watch the hyperlaunch? Do you know Caleia's surname? Were you stupid enough to actually sleep in on the morning of your first shift?
Yeah. Those variables exist. And they all affect everything that comes after them. I have lost my mind.
See, most VNs minimise the choices you make to distinct routes because that's easier to write for. That's not taking a swipe at other VN authors; it's a legitimate problem. The more variables you have, the more effort it takes to make them feel meaningful. By keeping meaningful variables to a minimum, you get a handful of options that you can write well and not overwork yourself. It's economical on time and words, and almost always the best option.
Well, guess what, my dudes? The best quality I have as a writer is that I can write a lot of words really fast, so I can overcome that! I can afford, in a manner of speaking, to devote a stupid amount of words and time to creating a story where the player's choices (and there are a LOT of them) actually meaningfully impact the way the story unfolds. I can write ten thousand word long scenes that the player might never ever stumble across. I daresay by the end of the project, a single playthrough is only going to see... maybe fifteen percent of what I've written. Twenty, perhaps. The rest would be stuff you never see because it never comes up. Your Origins were different. Your Skills were different. The choices your Rael makes are different.
If this sounds like a lot of work even for me, and something that doesn't get done in he VN space much for good reason... well, you're right. But that's just me; I can't do anything small. I want to push myself to my limits, and I want to make things that stand out. I was hoping Interwoven would do that... it actually didn't. This is going to be orders of magnitude more work and, if I pull it off right, I hope it'll reach a wide audience. I love to entertain. I hope that Rael's journey -- YOUR Rael's journey -- will entertain.
In much the same way as the post-mortem for Interwoven, I'm going to have a lot more to say about Void Dreaming in the future. I'd love to do some blog-style posts about the project's development, about the Origin and Skill systems, about the characters and the plot, and everything that goes along with it. That is not, however, going to be soon. And you might have guessed, but that's also exactly what I've got to say in answer to the obvious question of, "So when can I read it?"
Void Dreaming is a long ways off. I hate programming, and I've had to learn basic Python for this. I'm going to need art assets which, at the time of writing, I have... none of. I do have an alpha tester who's whipping up out of the goodness of their heart some stand-in sprites for the characters, but they're doing that for free and I want them to work on their own stuff as a priority. Finding an artist who's got the look I want, with the cost that I can manage, an interest in working on a VN, and who's content to handle the content itself... it's been surprisingly hard, though I do think I've got just the one nailed down. And that's just the sprites; it doesn't take into consideration backgrounds or more complex elements. I'm a team of one doing this project, and as such a timeframe will depend on me able to commission the right work to see it done.
This project will not be done in 2024. If I'm lucky, we'll be gearing up for a public release with early content before the middle of 2024, but no promises.
What I will say however is that even before any of the art assets are done, I'm working my arse off on the writing and the basic programming. I've been at it for two months or so as of the time of typing this (Interwoven IX goes up in roughly 24 hours from when I'm writing all this!) and I've put together the prologue and the first day aboard the ship. It's sitting at 287k words in length for just that much, and about 250k is just day one. That may not sound like a lot until you realize that my current outline for this project sees it going for SEVENTEEN DAYS. This... is going to be big.
Still though, I'm excited. It's great to jump back into sci-fi again; my furry start was writing sci-fi and I've not had a chance to do much in a while. It's going to be a labour of love for ages to get this done though, and there'll definitely be some things I want to do with this that'll be new to me beyond just the medium. It'll be the first writing project that's going to cost me money (and a lot of it), so I'm contemplating ways to recover some of that. A Patreon is on my mind, but it's way down the road for right now. And don't worry! I'll still be making public releases of the VN regularly once it's ready to go, however the Patreon thing (or whatever I do) goes down. If I could do it for free like Interwoven, I absolutely would.
Still, this sort of thing is more stuff that I'll be happy to discuss at further length in the future. I don't know when or how yet and I really, really need to figure out exactly what I'm going to do with getting the art assets sorted. But when I have something to share, hoo boy. I'm gonna have a lot to share.
So! This got super long, so let's do the recap:
- Interwoven complete! Yay!
- See if you can find all four endings!
- Post-mortem post about Interwoven coming soon-ish
- At least two more novellas in the setting coming some time down the line
- I'M WRITING A SCI-FI FURRY VISUAL NOVEL HOLY SHIT
- Stupidly massive complexity
- Custom background Origin choices
- MEANINGFUL character dialogue/action choices
- Integrated Skill system
- Insane creator
- No ETA
- 287k may be less than a tenth of the story's expected length
- Prologue and Day 1 writing complete
- Zero art done yet
- No, seriously; no ETA. This shit's hard, yo
If you read the whole thing, thanks! If you read the whole of Interwoven, especially great thanks to you. I hope that you enjoyed the story, and I look forward to bringing you back to the kingdoms of the South Sea (and beyond) again in the future.
And I hope you're excited about Void Dreaming. I can't wait to share it with you... just as soon as I can get it into a state worthy of sharing.
Stars save me,
- Faora
Passing Interwoven's Half-Way Mark
Posted 2 years agoWe've officially crossed the halfway point now! Interwoven is halfway toward completion! *pops party poppers*
Okay, so that's not entirely true. Interwoven's been done since around early-March. Every week, as I prepare the uploads across the various sites I stick Interwoven up at, I've taken care to give a read-through that chapter, correct some small mistakes that slipped past my earlier editing, and then marvel post-upload at the ones I missed AGAIN. Fun fact for all you improving writers out there: the fastest way to discover the typos and mistakes left in your work is to publish it. I guarantee you, you'll spot every single mistake right after.
Slippery typos notwithstanding, I hope that anyone reading this is having a good time with Interwoven. This project has been an amazing experience to write, and I've thoroughly looked forward every week to sharing another piece of William and Tobias' story with you. The reception, I admit, has not been what I'd hoped; view numbers are far below what I'd like, feedback is extremely limited (but gratefully appreciated nonetheless), and I'm not exactly great at selling myself so I don't really know how to change that. But then, that's not really the point of Interwoven as a project. This was always something for me.
When I started writing it, I was just struck by a very simple idea. It grew in size and scope until it ballooned into a 400k+ project that would absolutely put to shame the workload of any project I'd attempted up until this point, and I'd written the whole first draft of it in the space of less than a hundred days. I think it wound up being something like seventy-four working days that I wrote Interwoven, start to finish. If that makes you insecure about your output, know I've barely written a thing since... and hadn't written anything of note in about a year before it. I didn't know I'd find a spark with this story, these characters, and this world, but I've absolutely fallen in love with them in a way I haven't in a long time. That's probably why the lack of response on it kinda stings.
Still, to those who've been reading and following along on this journey with William and Tobias, I just want to say thank you and that I hope you're enjoying the ride (and it's only going to get bumpier from here on out!). And also, to those few who have been leaving favourites and comments and what-not, I would like to say an especially great thank you; writers seldom get the same feedback in the furry fandom that other artists do (though not as little as some; I see you, musicians!), but it is always an absolute delight for us to know that our work has been enjoyed by someone. Never underestimate the value of even just a couple words in the comments on a story you liked. Those few words are worth a lot to any artist.
Finally, I don't really know if this is the sort of thing that'll get any traction with people, or if they're going to want to engage with it given the relatively limited response that Interwoven's received so far, but I'd like to open the floor in this journal entry to anyone who has any particular questions about Interwoven up until this point (that's part 27: Need Part V) to please hit me up here! Ask me! I'd love to hear what you think, and if you're curious about certain aspects of the characters or the world, or even just the writing process of the series. I'll be keeping my responses spoiler free for anything past Need Part V, but I'll do another one of these after the conclusion of the series... though at that point I'll have to keep my responses limited to the specific endings you get.
... what endings? Oh, sorry. You'll have to wait and see. Spoilers!
So again, thank you for reading and enjoying Interwoven! Please comment below and let me know any questions you have about the series so far!
Stars guide your way,
- Faora
Okay, so that's not entirely true. Interwoven's been done since around early-March. Every week, as I prepare the uploads across the various sites I stick Interwoven up at, I've taken care to give a read-through that chapter, correct some small mistakes that slipped past my earlier editing, and then marvel post-upload at the ones I missed AGAIN. Fun fact for all you improving writers out there: the fastest way to discover the typos and mistakes left in your work is to publish it. I guarantee you, you'll spot every single mistake right after.
Slippery typos notwithstanding, I hope that anyone reading this is having a good time with Interwoven. This project has been an amazing experience to write, and I've thoroughly looked forward every week to sharing another piece of William and Tobias' story with you. The reception, I admit, has not been what I'd hoped; view numbers are far below what I'd like, feedback is extremely limited (but gratefully appreciated nonetheless), and I'm not exactly great at selling myself so I don't really know how to change that. But then, that's not really the point of Interwoven as a project. This was always something for me.
When I started writing it, I was just struck by a very simple idea. It grew in size and scope until it ballooned into a 400k+ project that would absolutely put to shame the workload of any project I'd attempted up until this point, and I'd written the whole first draft of it in the space of less than a hundred days. I think it wound up being something like seventy-four working days that I wrote Interwoven, start to finish. If that makes you insecure about your output, know I've barely written a thing since... and hadn't written anything of note in about a year before it. I didn't know I'd find a spark with this story, these characters, and this world, but I've absolutely fallen in love with them in a way I haven't in a long time. That's probably why the lack of response on it kinda stings.
Still, to those who've been reading and following along on this journey with William and Tobias, I just want to say thank you and that I hope you're enjoying the ride (and it's only going to get bumpier from here on out!). And also, to those few who have been leaving favourites and comments and what-not, I would like to say an especially great thank you; writers seldom get the same feedback in the furry fandom that other artists do (though not as little as some; I see you, musicians!), but it is always an absolute delight for us to know that our work has been enjoyed by someone. Never underestimate the value of even just a couple words in the comments on a story you liked. Those few words are worth a lot to any artist.
Finally, I don't really know if this is the sort of thing that'll get any traction with people, or if they're going to want to engage with it given the relatively limited response that Interwoven's received so far, but I'd like to open the floor in this journal entry to anyone who has any particular questions about Interwoven up until this point (that's part 27: Need Part V) to please hit me up here! Ask me! I'd love to hear what you think, and if you're curious about certain aspects of the characters or the world, or even just the writing process of the series. I'll be keeping my responses spoiler free for anything past Need Part V, but I'll do another one of these after the conclusion of the series... though at that point I'll have to keep my responses limited to the specific endings you get.
... what endings? Oh, sorry. You'll have to wait and see. Spoilers!
So again, thank you for reading and enjoying Interwoven! Please comment below and let me know any questions you have about the series so far!
Stars guide your way,
- Faora
New Series Announcement! Also Yes I Am Alive, Thank You!
Posted 3 years agoSo. Uh, hi.
Been a while. How've you been? Yeah, I know; the title. We'll get to that. I just wanted to check in first. You good? You doing well? I know I've not been around a lot, but I hope you've been having a good time. Or... uh, as good a time as you can. Times've been pretty shit, 'tis true.
Life these last few years has been a lot for me. Vast swaths of the last four could die in a fire and I'd be much better off, but the reality is that the way things have shaken out has left me in a better position than I ever thought I'd find myself in. I'm really enjoying my streaming, and it's thankfully staying pretty small so I don't get tempted to start leaning hard into it and losing the fun. I've got work. Real work, full-time and everything. And after a period of basically just... you know, NOT, I'm writing again. Not just that, but I'm actually enjoying it. It's been great, to the point that a couple months ago I started thinking what I could do to get back into the saddle in front of people, as it were.
Which sounds more exciting than it is, now that I think about it. Calm down. The bridle is staying under lock and key for now.
Basically, I had two ideas. One was to finally finish Alisha/Alan's story that I started (and then abandoned due to a combination of lack of readership and the ensuing self-worth issues) in my FCMTS stories several years ago. I ultimately decided against it because, while I do want to tell that story eventually and give some closure to it for all ten of you interested, it'd be relatively quick. Honestly, if I'd dedicated myself to that, it'd have been done within the first weeks of November. I fucking POWERED that month. I wanted something bigger. Something to really push myself. Something to maybe burn out on if I miscalculate for a second because I'm a masochist that way.
Around the same time though, I was tinkering with the idea of a serial story in the vein of what I'd once done way back when I first joined the fandom circa 2003. It would have been a fitting return to where I started twenty years earl- JESUS FUCKING CHRIST THAT WAS TWENTY YEARS AGO.
WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK WHO THE HELL IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE LINEAR FLOW OF TIME I NEED TO HAVE FUCKING WORDS.
*ahem*
As I was saying, it would have been a nice return to my original writing patterns from twe-*hurk* twenty y-*huurrrrf* twenty FUCKING years ago. The old days of yore. The Tales of Sol days. Gosh, that takes me back. Did you know a fan actually made a whole tabletop roleplaying system based around that setting and those characters? Late-teens/early-20's Fae could scarcely believe that. Of course, late-teens/early 20's Fae was also going through some shit. And causing some shit. Shit in general ensued.
I promise I'm getting to the point. And here it is:
The point is called Interwoven.
Interwoven is the story of William, the son of a conquered people trying to find his place in the world he was never meant to be a part of.
Interwoven is the story of Tobias, a prince well down the line of succession wrapped up in the schemes of nobility and the powergames they play.
Interwoven is the story of Ratholarin, a kingdom of logic and reason that has cast off the superstitions of their past.
Interwoven is the story of old gods and new nations. Of war and pain. Joy and magic. Sorrow. Joy. Hatred. Love.
Interwoven is the story of people drawn together by the whims of fate... or perhaps something more powerful even than that.
Interwoven is the story of their lives' pivotal moments, and of the tragedy of their deaths.
... Interwoven is clearly also the story of me being a touch pretentious with my announcements. Let's lay it out better.
Interwoven is an adult (and occasionally sexual) serial series of stories that will be uploaded here and... other places. Every week, starting on the very first day of 2023 and every Sunday to follow, a new story in the serial will be uploaded. Each one alternates between the experiences of William and Tobias, starting as cubs and teens and developing into their lives as adulthood takes hold. Some stories will take place close together. Some will be years apart. All will be in chronological order, and it will always alternate between these two characters and their points of view as they learn and grow, making their way through pivotal points in their lives and making decisions, good and bad, that affect themselves, each other, and the world around them.
Much like my original Blood and Water series, these stories won't be edited to great precision but should be of (hopefully) decent enough quality. Unlike Blood and Water however, this is an entirely new world for my furry stories, and one that I've been tinkering at behind the scenes so far for the last year and a bit. Beyond Interwoven I have a story set roughly a thousand years earlier in a time before Ratholarin even exists that currently lacks a title. I also have an in-progress story set about a hundred years later that is operating under the working title of Big-Dicked Gay Rat Furry Porn so, you know. Look forward to that sometime, too. Both of these however are on the backburner until Interwoven is complete. Speaking of, back to that.
Fifty-one parts across seven arcs are planned for this project which, if the current wordcounts are any indication, will mean that Interwoven will ultimately stand as the longest single project I have ever worked on (and hopefully completed). Given that I started this on October 31st, you can see how I don't have the greatest turnaround time for editing. This is me pantsing upwards of three fantasy novels in the space of half a year, in order to upload a chapter once a week for practically the entirety of 2023.
I may have gone slightly mad in my time away. Anyway, when do you get your paws on it?
As I said earlier, the first part of Interwoven will be uploaded on the 1st of January 2023 just after midnight PST (this winds up being 6pm for me at this point in the year, and allows the story to go live for most of the world on Sundays). This first one will not be a single upload, however; instead, it will be the prologue, the first part, and the second part. This gets you started with William and Tobias both, along with introducing other important characters like Zane, Catherine, Eric, Fredrick and Brett. It also shows William and Tobias at their youngest. As someone who doesn't write child characters often, they are a DELIGHT. I never knew how much fun could be had with their dialogue! Anyway, the next part will be going live on the 8th of January, and will proceed once a week from there.
So they're not too far away now. I do hope you look forward to exploring the lives of William and Tobias with me in the months to come.
Stars guide your way,
- Faora
Been a while. How've you been? Yeah, I know; the title. We'll get to that. I just wanted to check in first. You good? You doing well? I know I've not been around a lot, but I hope you've been having a good time. Or... uh, as good a time as you can. Times've been pretty shit, 'tis true.
Life these last few years has been a lot for me. Vast swaths of the last four could die in a fire and I'd be much better off, but the reality is that the way things have shaken out has left me in a better position than I ever thought I'd find myself in. I'm really enjoying my streaming, and it's thankfully staying pretty small so I don't get tempted to start leaning hard into it and losing the fun. I've got work. Real work, full-time and everything. And after a period of basically just... you know, NOT, I'm writing again. Not just that, but I'm actually enjoying it. It's been great, to the point that a couple months ago I started thinking what I could do to get back into the saddle in front of people, as it were.
Which sounds more exciting than it is, now that I think about it. Calm down. The bridle is staying under lock and key for now.
Basically, I had two ideas. One was to finally finish Alisha/Alan's story that I started (and then abandoned due to a combination of lack of readership and the ensuing self-worth issues) in my FCMTS stories several years ago. I ultimately decided against it because, while I do want to tell that story eventually and give some closure to it for all ten of you interested, it'd be relatively quick. Honestly, if I'd dedicated myself to that, it'd have been done within the first weeks of November. I fucking POWERED that month. I wanted something bigger. Something to really push myself. Something to maybe burn out on if I miscalculate for a second because I'm a masochist that way.
Around the same time though, I was tinkering with the idea of a serial story in the vein of what I'd once done way back when I first joined the fandom circa 2003. It would have been a fitting return to where I started twenty years earl- JESUS FUCKING CHRIST THAT WAS TWENTY YEARS AGO.
WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK WHO THE HELL IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE LINEAR FLOW OF TIME I NEED TO HAVE FUCKING WORDS.
*ahem*
As I was saying, it would have been a nice return to my original writing patterns from twe-*hurk* twenty y-*huurrrrf* twenty FUCKING years ago. The old days of yore. The Tales of Sol days. Gosh, that takes me back. Did you know a fan actually made a whole tabletop roleplaying system based around that setting and those characters? Late-teens/early-20's Fae could scarcely believe that. Of course, late-teens/early 20's Fae was also going through some shit. And causing some shit. Shit in general ensued.
I promise I'm getting to the point. And here it is:
The point is called Interwoven.
Interwoven is the story of William, the son of a conquered people trying to find his place in the world he was never meant to be a part of.
Interwoven is the story of Tobias, a prince well down the line of succession wrapped up in the schemes of nobility and the powergames they play.
Interwoven is the story of Ratholarin, a kingdom of logic and reason that has cast off the superstitions of their past.
Interwoven is the story of old gods and new nations. Of war and pain. Joy and magic. Sorrow. Joy. Hatred. Love.
Interwoven is the story of people drawn together by the whims of fate... or perhaps something more powerful even than that.
Interwoven is the story of their lives' pivotal moments, and of the tragedy of their deaths.
... Interwoven is clearly also the story of me being a touch pretentious with my announcements. Let's lay it out better.
Interwoven is an adult (and occasionally sexual) serial series of stories that will be uploaded here and... other places. Every week, starting on the very first day of 2023 and every Sunday to follow, a new story in the serial will be uploaded. Each one alternates between the experiences of William and Tobias, starting as cubs and teens and developing into their lives as adulthood takes hold. Some stories will take place close together. Some will be years apart. All will be in chronological order, and it will always alternate between these two characters and their points of view as they learn and grow, making their way through pivotal points in their lives and making decisions, good and bad, that affect themselves, each other, and the world around them.
Much like my original Blood and Water series, these stories won't be edited to great precision but should be of (hopefully) decent enough quality. Unlike Blood and Water however, this is an entirely new world for my furry stories, and one that I've been tinkering at behind the scenes so far for the last year and a bit. Beyond Interwoven I have a story set roughly a thousand years earlier in a time before Ratholarin even exists that currently lacks a title. I also have an in-progress story set about a hundred years later that is operating under the working title of Big-Dicked Gay Rat Furry Porn so, you know. Look forward to that sometime, too. Both of these however are on the backburner until Interwoven is complete. Speaking of, back to that.
Fifty-one parts across seven arcs are planned for this project which, if the current wordcounts are any indication, will mean that Interwoven will ultimately stand as the longest single project I have ever worked on (and hopefully completed). Given that I started this on October 31st, you can see how I don't have the greatest turnaround time for editing. This is me pantsing upwards of three fantasy novels in the space of half a year, in order to upload a chapter once a week for practically the entirety of 2023.
I may have gone slightly mad in my time away. Anyway, when do you get your paws on it?
As I said earlier, the first part of Interwoven will be uploaded on the 1st of January 2023 just after midnight PST (this winds up being 6pm for me at this point in the year, and allows the story to go live for most of the world on Sundays). This first one will not be a single upload, however; instead, it will be the prologue, the first part, and the second part. This gets you started with William and Tobias both, along with introducing other important characters like Zane, Catherine, Eric, Fredrick and Brett. It also shows William and Tobias at their youngest. As someone who doesn't write child characters often, they are a DELIGHT. I never knew how much fun could be had with their dialogue! Anyway, the next part will be going live on the 8th of January, and will proceed once a week from there.
So they're not too far away now. I do hope you look forward to exploring the lives of William and Tobias with me in the months to come.
Stars guide your way,
- Faora
So Where's Fae Gone This Time?
Posted 7 years agoSo life hates me.
I don’t mean that in a, “Poor little Fae, pity me,” sort of manner. I’m also not asking for help; a combination of pride and lack of necessity prevent me from doing so. The purpose of this journal is to simply explain a couple of things that have been happening to me in the barest detail possible, so that people who might otherwise do so aren’t simply left scratching their heads.
The first and perhaps biggest question people might have been asking is, “Where the hell did Fae go?” After all, I just practically disappeared after I uploaded the third story of the 2017 edition of Fae’s Christmas Music-Themed Special. You’ve barely heard hide nor hair of me since then, and that’s due to a number of factors. The simple answer is the one I offered above: life hates me. I’ve been enduring a string of really shitty luck for just the longest time now, and life has found a way to screw me over at every possible turn. I am, at this point, a viable subject for studies in statistical improbability. My silence over the last few months has honestly just been a matter of me struggling through… well, everything. Doing the best I can and I’m still alive, but those who know my situation can barely believe the bullshit I’ve had to weather. Those of you who don’t wouldn’t believe it if I listed it all off. Reality, truly, is stranger than fiction.
So before we continue on what the above means, let’s drop briefly into an associated question number two: “What happened to FCMTS 2017?” The answer there is simple: I was running up against the deadlines for the stories and I couldn’t get them done in time. I could have pushed harder and cranked SOMETHING out, but this series of five stories was meant to be monumental. It was meant to be focused on a fixture of these oft-unconnected stories I do every year for Christmas time in the form of Alisha. And I knew from the outset that no matter what I wanted to do with him, I’d disappoint people. This is because what I decided to do with Alisha was turn this crossdressing, gold-digging grifter of a fox who had hot sex and stole masses of money in the process… into a character with a history and personality.
I started this with the 2016/17 stories that involved Alisha; this process of gradually turning him into a real, breathing person of a character rather than a two-dimensional cutout for the masses to grind on. I realized that I had a great opportunity to tell a cool story about Alisha and the struggle between the dichotomy of the assumed persona of Alisha and his subsumed original self, Alan. This would really break the mold, because I’d never done a single FCMTS story to date that hadn’t been a sexy gay romp of a tale. Two of the five stories were planned to be completely sexless (one of which was the last story to go up last year), and it was hoped that it would be well-enough received that sometime this year I could write a sort of novella followup that detailed the continuation of Alisha’s story.
Unfortunately, the reception received was less than stellar, and I don’t quite know what to chalk it up to. Maybe the story wasn’t clicking, or the characters involved weren’t working, or maybe there’s an audience problem or something, or maybe I just didn’t do a good enough job. I know the timing isn’t really much of a problem, since my Christmas stories often wind up being moderately well viewed at the time (and they also trickle in a lot of views and favourites as time goes on and people catch up with what they missed over the holiday). For some reason, these Alisha stories that had done so well in the past were just… not getting anyone’s attention. At a time where I was planning a lot of stuff I thought would be really cool for the character and was really excited about, this took the wind right out of my sails. If not for the absolute deconstruction of my outside enthusiasm at the time due to life being shitty, I could have struggled through. Seeing the lack of response just put the nail in the coffin. I stopped working on the stories to come. Their half-finished state has been gathering digital cobwebs in a Scrivener document ever since December.
That’s not to say they won’t be finished, of course. What would have been the set of five stories from the 2017 FCMTS will be completed. Whether I dump them when I finish them or save them for Christmas time this year I’m not sure of just yet, but they will certainly be finished. The trouble is that I just don’t care presently. My apathy toward putting stories up online can’t be understated, and that’s got nothing to do with views or favourites or star ratings or anything on your end, and everything to do with my end of things. I’ve still got big plans and big projects (both of which have been getting equally little actual literary attention lately), but my writing is just in a holding pattern right now. It’s not going anywhere. I’m not writing. I’m not working on things. This, as you might expect, vexes me somewhat.
So let’s bring things around to where I’ve gone, and more importantly, “What’s happening to Fae now?” The simple answer to that question is that I’m moving. Again. Some people might remember I had five different places of residence in 2015, which is a record I hope never to break again in my life. I had also hoped that the next move I made would be the last for a long-ass time, but this too is a temporary measure. It’s frustratingly interstate, forcing me to leave behind the city I love and want to stay in to go back to a city that I long-since abandoned. There are plusses to this arrangement that could see good things happening for me in the immediate future, but the frustration of the moving itself can’t be understated. I hate everything about this. You have no idea.
Honestly, the question of what comes after that is… really hard to answer, honestly. I don’t really think I’m capable of planning ahead at this point. I used to, years and years ago, plot out my writing timelines months and even years in advance. “If I write this much here, I can have this project done by then,” sorta thing. Going through an old laptop yesterday, I saw a plan that would have seen a furry novel project I’ve long since abandoned would have been written and finished by the end of March 2013. I’ve stopped doing those plans because I never really do account for my poor fortune (just exactly what did I do in a past life that I’m still paying off the bad karma this time around?). That I want to write more is not in question. What, however, is.
I have the sequel novel for Blood And Water sitting here in Scrivener, awaiting its next editing pass. I have an outline document for a five novel series that begins literally a day after the end of the B&W novel. I’ve got a couple of Hot Dish reject stories also sitting here (one set in the B&W world just before Oswell was even born) that I’ll be figuring out what to do with. I’ve thought about putting a book together set in the B&W world across all four of its continents with a selection of four or five Hot Dish-length pieces that could flesh things out a bit (and show more than ample flesh at the same time). I still have an urban fantasy series (the document is titled ‘Nexus’ in Scrivener presently) that I wanted to write a few years ago and upload in the same manner that I did with Blood and Water. There’s that Alisha novella I want to write. And this is all just the furry stuff, for the record; I have three in-progress non-furry novels that I want to finish up, edit, and shop around once I have them in a viable state, to say nothing of the literally three dozen outlined novels I want to write in my fantasy and sci-fi continuities. That I have enough to write is not even remotely in question. I wish my brain would stop giving me new ideas, honestly. I already have enough for a lifetime.
So that’s why I’ve been so quiet for the last… five months. Fuck, it has been that long. I don’t really know what to say. I have had a LOT going down in my life. I have had a lot of my life going down, too. In flames. Bright and vibrant. I’m still here though, and I’m not done kicking about just yet. I have shit to do. I have a lot to write. And hell, you’re even going to see me in print again later this year, as a part of Dissident Signals, edited by Slip Wolf and Nighteyes and published through Furplanet. It should be a great anthology centered on the theme of dystopia, so I wholeheartedly encourage you all to check it out for more than just me! Pretty sure it’s aiming for an Anthrocon release, so if you’re there, go check out the Furplanet table and buy it! Don’t worry if you forget; I will remind you via twitter once it’s available for purchase.
Otherwise, there’s not going to be much you catch from me anytime soon, really. One of those Hot Dish reject stories might wind up being tossed up online to tease your heartstrings while I keep the other for different, considerably more nefarious purposes. It’s possible that the next story you see online might well be another Alisha story, to conclude the pieces from last year’s FCMTS, and that might not be until Christmas. Life’s chaotic as fuck right now, so I hope you won’t begrudge me that. Once things start to stabilize, you may well start seeing more from me both in a for-free-online space, and also in the published space. Who knows? Maybe there’ll be a whole lot of the latter. Wouldn’t that be fun?
For now, I’m sorry for the absence. Be well, all, and take care. Thank you for enjoying my work, and I hope I can keep you entertained for a long time to come.
- Faora
I don’t mean that in a, “Poor little Fae, pity me,” sort of manner. I’m also not asking for help; a combination of pride and lack of necessity prevent me from doing so. The purpose of this journal is to simply explain a couple of things that have been happening to me in the barest detail possible, so that people who might otherwise do so aren’t simply left scratching their heads.
The first and perhaps biggest question people might have been asking is, “Where the hell did Fae go?” After all, I just practically disappeared after I uploaded the third story of the 2017 edition of Fae’s Christmas Music-Themed Special. You’ve barely heard hide nor hair of me since then, and that’s due to a number of factors. The simple answer is the one I offered above: life hates me. I’ve been enduring a string of really shitty luck for just the longest time now, and life has found a way to screw me over at every possible turn. I am, at this point, a viable subject for studies in statistical improbability. My silence over the last few months has honestly just been a matter of me struggling through… well, everything. Doing the best I can and I’m still alive, but those who know my situation can barely believe the bullshit I’ve had to weather. Those of you who don’t wouldn’t believe it if I listed it all off. Reality, truly, is stranger than fiction.
So before we continue on what the above means, let’s drop briefly into an associated question number two: “What happened to FCMTS 2017?” The answer there is simple: I was running up against the deadlines for the stories and I couldn’t get them done in time. I could have pushed harder and cranked SOMETHING out, but this series of five stories was meant to be monumental. It was meant to be focused on a fixture of these oft-unconnected stories I do every year for Christmas time in the form of Alisha. And I knew from the outset that no matter what I wanted to do with him, I’d disappoint people. This is because what I decided to do with Alisha was turn this crossdressing, gold-digging grifter of a fox who had hot sex and stole masses of money in the process… into a character with a history and personality.
I started this with the 2016/17 stories that involved Alisha; this process of gradually turning him into a real, breathing person of a character rather than a two-dimensional cutout for the masses to grind on. I realized that I had a great opportunity to tell a cool story about Alisha and the struggle between the dichotomy of the assumed persona of Alisha and his subsumed original self, Alan. This would really break the mold, because I’d never done a single FCMTS story to date that hadn’t been a sexy gay romp of a tale. Two of the five stories were planned to be completely sexless (one of which was the last story to go up last year), and it was hoped that it would be well-enough received that sometime this year I could write a sort of novella followup that detailed the continuation of Alisha’s story.
Unfortunately, the reception received was less than stellar, and I don’t quite know what to chalk it up to. Maybe the story wasn’t clicking, or the characters involved weren’t working, or maybe there’s an audience problem or something, or maybe I just didn’t do a good enough job. I know the timing isn’t really much of a problem, since my Christmas stories often wind up being moderately well viewed at the time (and they also trickle in a lot of views and favourites as time goes on and people catch up with what they missed over the holiday). For some reason, these Alisha stories that had done so well in the past were just… not getting anyone’s attention. At a time where I was planning a lot of stuff I thought would be really cool for the character and was really excited about, this took the wind right out of my sails. If not for the absolute deconstruction of my outside enthusiasm at the time due to life being shitty, I could have struggled through. Seeing the lack of response just put the nail in the coffin. I stopped working on the stories to come. Their half-finished state has been gathering digital cobwebs in a Scrivener document ever since December.
That’s not to say they won’t be finished, of course. What would have been the set of five stories from the 2017 FCMTS will be completed. Whether I dump them when I finish them or save them for Christmas time this year I’m not sure of just yet, but they will certainly be finished. The trouble is that I just don’t care presently. My apathy toward putting stories up online can’t be understated, and that’s got nothing to do with views or favourites or star ratings or anything on your end, and everything to do with my end of things. I’ve still got big plans and big projects (both of which have been getting equally little actual literary attention lately), but my writing is just in a holding pattern right now. It’s not going anywhere. I’m not writing. I’m not working on things. This, as you might expect, vexes me somewhat.
So let’s bring things around to where I’ve gone, and more importantly, “What’s happening to Fae now?” The simple answer to that question is that I’m moving. Again. Some people might remember I had five different places of residence in 2015, which is a record I hope never to break again in my life. I had also hoped that the next move I made would be the last for a long-ass time, but this too is a temporary measure. It’s frustratingly interstate, forcing me to leave behind the city I love and want to stay in to go back to a city that I long-since abandoned. There are plusses to this arrangement that could see good things happening for me in the immediate future, but the frustration of the moving itself can’t be understated. I hate everything about this. You have no idea.
Honestly, the question of what comes after that is… really hard to answer, honestly. I don’t really think I’m capable of planning ahead at this point. I used to, years and years ago, plot out my writing timelines months and even years in advance. “If I write this much here, I can have this project done by then,” sorta thing. Going through an old laptop yesterday, I saw a plan that would have seen a furry novel project I’ve long since abandoned would have been written and finished by the end of March 2013. I’ve stopped doing those plans because I never really do account for my poor fortune (just exactly what did I do in a past life that I’m still paying off the bad karma this time around?). That I want to write more is not in question. What, however, is.
I have the sequel novel for Blood And Water sitting here in Scrivener, awaiting its next editing pass. I have an outline document for a five novel series that begins literally a day after the end of the B&W novel. I’ve got a couple of Hot Dish reject stories also sitting here (one set in the B&W world just before Oswell was even born) that I’ll be figuring out what to do with. I’ve thought about putting a book together set in the B&W world across all four of its continents with a selection of four or five Hot Dish-length pieces that could flesh things out a bit (and show more than ample flesh at the same time). I still have an urban fantasy series (the document is titled ‘Nexus’ in Scrivener presently) that I wanted to write a few years ago and upload in the same manner that I did with Blood and Water. There’s that Alisha novella I want to write. And this is all just the furry stuff, for the record; I have three in-progress non-furry novels that I want to finish up, edit, and shop around once I have them in a viable state, to say nothing of the literally three dozen outlined novels I want to write in my fantasy and sci-fi continuities. That I have enough to write is not even remotely in question. I wish my brain would stop giving me new ideas, honestly. I already have enough for a lifetime.
So that’s why I’ve been so quiet for the last… five months. Fuck, it has been that long. I don’t really know what to say. I have had a LOT going down in my life. I have had a lot of my life going down, too. In flames. Bright and vibrant. I’m still here though, and I’m not done kicking about just yet. I have shit to do. I have a lot to write. And hell, you’re even going to see me in print again later this year, as a part of Dissident Signals, edited by Slip Wolf and Nighteyes and published through Furplanet. It should be a great anthology centered on the theme of dystopia, so I wholeheartedly encourage you all to check it out for more than just me! Pretty sure it’s aiming for an Anthrocon release, so if you’re there, go check out the Furplanet table and buy it! Don’t worry if you forget; I will remind you via twitter once it’s available for purchase.
Otherwise, there’s not going to be much you catch from me anytime soon, really. One of those Hot Dish reject stories might wind up being tossed up online to tease your heartstrings while I keep the other for different, considerably more nefarious purposes. It’s possible that the next story you see online might well be another Alisha story, to conclude the pieces from last year’s FCMTS, and that might not be until Christmas. Life’s chaotic as fuck right now, so I hope you won’t begrudge me that. Once things start to stabilize, you may well start seeing more from me both in a for-free-online space, and also in the published space. Who knows? Maybe there’ll be a whole lot of the latter. Wouldn’t that be fun?
For now, I’m sorry for the absence. Be well, all, and take care. Thank you for enjoying my work, and I hope I can keep you entertained for a long time to come.
- Faora
Why Is Fae So Mean To His Characters?
Posted 9 years agoBecause it makes for a better story.
Uh, maybe that’s not good enough. Maybe that doesn’t actually help anyone understand, or even properly answer the question. Maybe I should actually put some thought into this, since more than a few people seem to wonder (or have outright asked me) exactly why I’m so god-damn cruel to my characters in so many of my stories. This journal should go into addressing exactly that!
Before I go any further, I’d like to point out that this journal will include spoilers for both my Blood And Water series/upcoming book version of the series, as well as several of my Fae’s Christmas Music-Themed Special stories, including the ones that went up very recently. You’ve been warned!
So, let’s take it from the top… literally, of this journal post. I said that it makes a better story. That’s not… strictly true. I believe it, but it’s not an unequivocal truth of writing that being a complete arsehole to your characters is the means by which you make your story better. The old saying about killing your darlings certainly rings true and has a not inconsiderable volume of relevance and truth to it, but I dump onto my characters a level of cruelty that’s usually reserved for tax collection agencies and George R.R. Martin.
At its core, a story is about conflict. Something in the protagonist’s life is wrong, and it’s up to them to go and sort out the wrong thing and set the world around them right. Protagonist wakes up groggy and needs caffeine. They’re out of coffee. CONFLICT! Now they have to go out and obtain the coffee. PLOT! They buy the coffee and… learn something about themselves on the way, I guess? RESOLUTION! These three aspects of a story are pretty damn immutable, but this journal is mostly focused on the first and last of those three. Sure, the plot does contain a lot of my being mean, but it’s for the conflict and for the resolution that most people wince at the things I do to my characters.
Let’s start with the conflict. Every story has it, and every story needs it. Without it, there’s literally no reason to go out and have whatever adventure the story is centered around. The more the conflict affects the protagonist, either directly or through what they care about, the powerful that conflict is and the more powerful the story is as a whole. This, right here, is where I look at conflict as a means by which to torment a character.
Let’s divert for a second and talk about themes as well, while we’re here. Let’s be honest, there are just some themes that you can’t tell unless you’re willing to paint your story with darker strokes. You can’t tell a story of war, I feel, if you’re unwilling to dip your brush in the red. You can’t tell a story of heartache without shattering something. Dipping into the darker spectrum of human emotion tells a very different story than one that is inherently uplifting and joyful. Telling a story of oppression, or pain, or suffering, or even something as simple as loneliness, is impossible to do with the proper gravity (in my personal opinion, that is) without allowing your characters, and readers by extension, to feel the weight of it.
Stories, as a medium, are brilliant. I love them. They take you to far off places, and they show you magnificent things. Above and beyond those, they can make you feel. They can make you feel so many things. We thrill at the success of a hero, and we gasp at the revelations that shock them. We bond to our characters, and feel with them. So many stories however (and this I feel is particularly true of the fandom itself) shy away from the darker emotions. They don’t want to make a reader feel sad, or angry, or hateful. They don’t want to explore those tones, because let’s be honest, who wants to feel sad? Who enjoys feeling angry? No one in their right mind, I imagine.
Darker conflict and darker themes may not bring a reader to an emotionally pleasing place, but that does not mean that they are brought to a place that they are averse to. How we deal with, feel and channel our emotions are some of the most human-defining traits we have. It hurts when I read a story and a character I love is tortured. I cry a LOT when characters I’ve grown attached to are killed off. This includes my own. But these feelings that I feel – that WE feel – are part of what it means to be alive. I don’t want to shy away from them, because I want to embrace them. I want to accept them as a part of me, and I love the chance to explore those feelings both in myself and in my readers through the telling of a story that cannot be told without their evocation.
Being willing to tell a story with darker tones and darker feelings at the fore is not being a darker person. It is acceptance of the greater emotional whole, and I think it’s perfectly valid as a means of storytelling, if only more had the courage to step up to the plate and give it a go. A story does not have to have a ‘happy ending’ to be a good story, and a ‘bad’ ending does not make something a bad story. This, however, is perhaps a journal entry for another time. I would definitely like to get into that at some point, because it’s intricately tied into my philosophy with regards to storytelling. For now though, let’s get back to conflict in stories. We’ll even look at some examples in my work.
Consider Deacon and his situation from Blood And Water. The whole story centers around his conflict between his duty to his father, and his budding relationship with Bain… and by extension his free will and sense of independence. I take every opportunity to strain both of those issues. I turn Deacon’s world upside down and throw everything but the kitchen sink at him by the end. That says nothing of the physical torment I put Bain through under Oswell’s knife. Or knives.
Let’s also look at Lucas, one of the recurring characters from my Fae’s Christmas Music-Themed Special stories. Lucas is in a shitty situation in the first few stories, but let’s be honest, he’s a flawed hero in the extreme. He’s in a bad way, but he’s also done it to himself. He’s made some bad decisions that have led him to a bad place, but he’s starting to dig himself out of it, with not inconsiderable effort and suffering. The conflicts he faces – living with his shame, adjusting to making his own decisions and standing up for himself again, facing a person he’s wronged terribly every single day of his life – are not pleasant things, but they help to make this fox who would otherwise be condemned for the choices he’s made be more sympathetic.
This is where we run into trouble being kind (or at least not being a total arsehole) to your characters. Being nice to these characters is all well and good, but being nice to them simply doesn’t invest the audience. You don’t want to know what happens next if everything’s alright, except perhaps to wonder how it’s all gonna turn to shit. That’s sort of the unspoken covenant between author and reader. When a story starts with everything nice and neat and fine, the reader knows (by virtue that it’s a story) that things are about to get fucked up so that the plot can send the main character on their way.
That covenant is also something that I loathe about the resolution of stories, and particularly in-fandom stories.
I almost always hate the happy ending.
That is to say, I don’t find it satisfying anymore in the vast majority of cases. If there exists the promise that a story that starts off calm and idyllic only to have everything turned upside down by the plot, there also exists the promise that a story will be resolved by the end… and that resolution usually sees the heroes come out on top. I say usually. I mean in roughly ninety-nine percent of cases, the hero triumphs. I call bullshit.
You can open up almost any book and, no matter what story is being told, the end of that story will see the hero triumphant. I don’t mind this, so long as the toils they have undergone match the triumph that they enjoy at the end. I’m very, VERY picky when it comes to resolutions of the hero’s journey, because nearly every author chooses to forget that the hero’s journey can end with the hero FAILING in their quest.
I just cannot feel that there are stakes for a hero if I know with reasonable certainty that they are going to succeed in their journey. If it is a foregone conclusion that the hero is going to pull through against all odds and save the day, why read the story in the first place? Ostensibly to see how they reached that point, of course. The journey is why we read for the most part, not the destination.
Success however, as a foregone conclusion, relieves tension. It breaks conflict. How can there be conflict – how can you FEAR for the protagonist – if on some level you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are going to pull through in the end no matter what they have to face?
In those rare cases where I find myself in a situation wondering if a particular author is going to actually have the balls to off their main character, or see one of the heroic party succumb to darkness (perhaps echoes of their past, like a drug addiction resurfacing under stress or a death in the party taking away sufficient hope to make them quit altogether) rather than continue their heroic quest? In those stories, I’m absolutely fine with the happy ending. I’ve already accepted that there are high stakes for the heroes of the tale. I’ve also been shown by the author that the obstacles the heroes must surpass might also be insurmountable. The uncertainty there makes the story more real to me. The journey holds more power over me, because the destination is less certain.
“But Fae,” you howl with increasing frustration with my view to story-writing, “we’re talking about your furry porn here! Why the fuck do you need to torment your characters in furry porn? We just wanna get off!”
Well… you can. I mean, I’ve written plenty of stories that have minimal plot and conflict and a maximised focus on getting my reader off with hot word-sex. You can also go elsewhere; it’s not like the furry fandom has a lack of erotica writers. But let’s be honest for a second. If you’re here and reading this, it’s because you know what sort of things I like to write. I like to do plot heavy, character development pieces that see those characters pitted against severe odds. Stories where I set them against something that seems literally insurmountable, so that you honestly wonder if the character is going to succeed. And this, now, is finally where we get to the core of it all.
I write stories where the protagonists don’t always succeed. I’ve written stories that have ended badly and painfully, and I’ve written stories where everything works out and people live happily ever after. Or at least live happily morning after. I mean… geez, look at my 2015 Fae’s Christmas Music-Themed Special pieces. Of the three that went up (before the ones that recently went up to finish up the five-set), one of them ended with a broken heart and one of them ended with both lovers winding up dead. This is fucking porn, and they both fucking died. That shit wasn’t kind, either; the way I did it was fucking awful. I’m very good at finding horrible ways to kill my characters, and that one was no exception to the rule.
And it was still a story that people appreciated and enjoyed. Moreso, the story that saw the broken heart (but everyone more or less physically intact) saw an appreciation and empathy for the broken relationship there. Empathy and emotion come into play when the conflict hits the right mark. More than that, they set the stage for the stories that followed, and are still yet to follow. Now, my readers have learned a valuable lesson about reading my stories. They’ve seen my work and come away with one piece of super-important information about me.
THIS author does not promise a happy resolution.
By the time the last chapter of Blood And Water rolled around, I think nearly every reader there wondered what sort of ending I was actually going to visit upon Deacon and Bain. From people I asked, the question wasn’t if they were going to stop Oswell, but instead if either of them would even survive facing Oswell. The stakes were so high, and I had been so cruel to my characters, that my readers began to question that sacred promise between myself and them. They started to question if the hero would win in the end. The turning point for most? The way I tortured Bain so graphically in Oswell’s lab. Faced with his power and his overwhelming cruelty and intelligence, I set him up as an almost insurmountable, terrible challenge for the pair to eventually be forced to face off against. The stakes were high, and my readers had no way to know if I would allow both, or either, of the main characters to survive.
In the penultimate story of Lucas’ story arc from the Christmas Special stories, Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This), Lucas is confronted again by the abusive ex-boyfriend who was responsible for single-handedly ruining his life. The character development that Lucas has gone through is threatened. The life he’s trying to build back up for himself is threatened. Lucas’ well-being is threatened. The comments I got for that story were full of fear for Lucas. One person said that they didn’t care about the porn anymore, as long as Lucas was okay. They were invested, because they could not be sure that the story would end well. They were uncertain. They were invested.
That, right there, is why I do it. And that right there is why, on several occasions, my characters have to endure failure in the journeys they are set on. My readers know that a story by me will challenge the characters in it, and that it will challenge them. My readers know that I am unafraid to make them confront some pretty dark shit in a story of mine. And of course, most importantly, they can’t be sure of how the story ends. My readers know that when they read my work, there’s no way to know for sure. The heroes might prevail. MIGHT. And they might fail.
And this is great, because the reader does not know. They have to read and see.
It’s a careful balancing act, to make your reader fear for the character they should be rooting for without giving up hope. I don’t think anyone truly gave up hope for Deacon and Bain in Blood And Water. I don’t think anyone’s given up hope for Lucas, come the resolution of his story in Pleasure And Pain. More importantly, the strain that they had to endure – that conflict being so dark and so cruel and so tough to overcome – calls into doubt that just because it’s a story it has to end with the protagonist safe and well and happy. That meta thinking is broken before they read the first page, because they recognize the name of the author. They understand that the covenant that I make with my readers isn’t that everything will be resolved neatly, but that they have to read right until the last page to know how it ends for sure.
The cruelty and the pain that I subject my characters to is carefully considered and applied quite deliberately. I do it because it is all part of a carefully orchestrated plan with one devilishly simple goal in mind. I do it because I want my readers to be uncertain. I want my readers to be challenged in every single story, from the simplest fap piece to an involved short to a deep novella to the grandest novel series. I want them to start every single one of my stories knowing that at some point, no matter how hard the hero works and tries or how right and good their cause is, they might fail. I want my readers to click on a story of mine, ready to enjoy the journey, and ready to enjoy it all the more because they cannot possibly know the destination. I do it because my cruelty invests you all the more in the characters and, though you might hate me for being so cruel, because you will love the characters (that succeed) for having the strength to do so.
And that, right there, is why I am so mean to my characters. You should try it.
Uh, maybe that’s not good enough. Maybe that doesn’t actually help anyone understand, or even properly answer the question. Maybe I should actually put some thought into this, since more than a few people seem to wonder (or have outright asked me) exactly why I’m so god-damn cruel to my characters in so many of my stories. This journal should go into addressing exactly that!
Before I go any further, I’d like to point out that this journal will include spoilers for both my Blood And Water series/upcoming book version of the series, as well as several of my Fae’s Christmas Music-Themed Special stories, including the ones that went up very recently. You’ve been warned!
So, let’s take it from the top… literally, of this journal post. I said that it makes a better story. That’s not… strictly true. I believe it, but it’s not an unequivocal truth of writing that being a complete arsehole to your characters is the means by which you make your story better. The old saying about killing your darlings certainly rings true and has a not inconsiderable volume of relevance and truth to it, but I dump onto my characters a level of cruelty that’s usually reserved for tax collection agencies and George R.R. Martin.
At its core, a story is about conflict. Something in the protagonist’s life is wrong, and it’s up to them to go and sort out the wrong thing and set the world around them right. Protagonist wakes up groggy and needs caffeine. They’re out of coffee. CONFLICT! Now they have to go out and obtain the coffee. PLOT! They buy the coffee and… learn something about themselves on the way, I guess? RESOLUTION! These three aspects of a story are pretty damn immutable, but this journal is mostly focused on the first and last of those three. Sure, the plot does contain a lot of my being mean, but it’s for the conflict and for the resolution that most people wince at the things I do to my characters.
Let’s start with the conflict. Every story has it, and every story needs it. Without it, there’s literally no reason to go out and have whatever adventure the story is centered around. The more the conflict affects the protagonist, either directly or through what they care about, the powerful that conflict is and the more powerful the story is as a whole. This, right here, is where I look at conflict as a means by which to torment a character.
Let’s divert for a second and talk about themes as well, while we’re here. Let’s be honest, there are just some themes that you can’t tell unless you’re willing to paint your story with darker strokes. You can’t tell a story of war, I feel, if you’re unwilling to dip your brush in the red. You can’t tell a story of heartache without shattering something. Dipping into the darker spectrum of human emotion tells a very different story than one that is inherently uplifting and joyful. Telling a story of oppression, or pain, or suffering, or even something as simple as loneliness, is impossible to do with the proper gravity (in my personal opinion, that is) without allowing your characters, and readers by extension, to feel the weight of it.
Stories, as a medium, are brilliant. I love them. They take you to far off places, and they show you magnificent things. Above and beyond those, they can make you feel. They can make you feel so many things. We thrill at the success of a hero, and we gasp at the revelations that shock them. We bond to our characters, and feel with them. So many stories however (and this I feel is particularly true of the fandom itself) shy away from the darker emotions. They don’t want to make a reader feel sad, or angry, or hateful. They don’t want to explore those tones, because let’s be honest, who wants to feel sad? Who enjoys feeling angry? No one in their right mind, I imagine.
Darker conflict and darker themes may not bring a reader to an emotionally pleasing place, but that does not mean that they are brought to a place that they are averse to. How we deal with, feel and channel our emotions are some of the most human-defining traits we have. It hurts when I read a story and a character I love is tortured. I cry a LOT when characters I’ve grown attached to are killed off. This includes my own. But these feelings that I feel – that WE feel – are part of what it means to be alive. I don’t want to shy away from them, because I want to embrace them. I want to accept them as a part of me, and I love the chance to explore those feelings both in myself and in my readers through the telling of a story that cannot be told without their evocation.
Being willing to tell a story with darker tones and darker feelings at the fore is not being a darker person. It is acceptance of the greater emotional whole, and I think it’s perfectly valid as a means of storytelling, if only more had the courage to step up to the plate and give it a go. A story does not have to have a ‘happy ending’ to be a good story, and a ‘bad’ ending does not make something a bad story. This, however, is perhaps a journal entry for another time. I would definitely like to get into that at some point, because it’s intricately tied into my philosophy with regards to storytelling. For now though, let’s get back to conflict in stories. We’ll even look at some examples in my work.
Consider Deacon and his situation from Blood And Water. The whole story centers around his conflict between his duty to his father, and his budding relationship with Bain… and by extension his free will and sense of independence. I take every opportunity to strain both of those issues. I turn Deacon’s world upside down and throw everything but the kitchen sink at him by the end. That says nothing of the physical torment I put Bain through under Oswell’s knife. Or knives.
Let’s also look at Lucas, one of the recurring characters from my Fae’s Christmas Music-Themed Special stories. Lucas is in a shitty situation in the first few stories, but let’s be honest, he’s a flawed hero in the extreme. He’s in a bad way, but he’s also done it to himself. He’s made some bad decisions that have led him to a bad place, but he’s starting to dig himself out of it, with not inconsiderable effort and suffering. The conflicts he faces – living with his shame, adjusting to making his own decisions and standing up for himself again, facing a person he’s wronged terribly every single day of his life – are not pleasant things, but they help to make this fox who would otherwise be condemned for the choices he’s made be more sympathetic.
This is where we run into trouble being kind (or at least not being a total arsehole) to your characters. Being nice to these characters is all well and good, but being nice to them simply doesn’t invest the audience. You don’t want to know what happens next if everything’s alright, except perhaps to wonder how it’s all gonna turn to shit. That’s sort of the unspoken covenant between author and reader. When a story starts with everything nice and neat and fine, the reader knows (by virtue that it’s a story) that things are about to get fucked up so that the plot can send the main character on their way.
That covenant is also something that I loathe about the resolution of stories, and particularly in-fandom stories.
I almost always hate the happy ending.
That is to say, I don’t find it satisfying anymore in the vast majority of cases. If there exists the promise that a story that starts off calm and idyllic only to have everything turned upside down by the plot, there also exists the promise that a story will be resolved by the end… and that resolution usually sees the heroes come out on top. I say usually. I mean in roughly ninety-nine percent of cases, the hero triumphs. I call bullshit.
You can open up almost any book and, no matter what story is being told, the end of that story will see the hero triumphant. I don’t mind this, so long as the toils they have undergone match the triumph that they enjoy at the end. I’m very, VERY picky when it comes to resolutions of the hero’s journey, because nearly every author chooses to forget that the hero’s journey can end with the hero FAILING in their quest.
I just cannot feel that there are stakes for a hero if I know with reasonable certainty that they are going to succeed in their journey. If it is a foregone conclusion that the hero is going to pull through against all odds and save the day, why read the story in the first place? Ostensibly to see how they reached that point, of course. The journey is why we read for the most part, not the destination.
Success however, as a foregone conclusion, relieves tension. It breaks conflict. How can there be conflict – how can you FEAR for the protagonist – if on some level you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are going to pull through in the end no matter what they have to face?
In those rare cases where I find myself in a situation wondering if a particular author is going to actually have the balls to off their main character, or see one of the heroic party succumb to darkness (perhaps echoes of their past, like a drug addiction resurfacing under stress or a death in the party taking away sufficient hope to make them quit altogether) rather than continue their heroic quest? In those stories, I’m absolutely fine with the happy ending. I’ve already accepted that there are high stakes for the heroes of the tale. I’ve also been shown by the author that the obstacles the heroes must surpass might also be insurmountable. The uncertainty there makes the story more real to me. The journey holds more power over me, because the destination is less certain.
“But Fae,” you howl with increasing frustration with my view to story-writing, “we’re talking about your furry porn here! Why the fuck do you need to torment your characters in furry porn? We just wanna get off!”
Well… you can. I mean, I’ve written plenty of stories that have minimal plot and conflict and a maximised focus on getting my reader off with hot word-sex. You can also go elsewhere; it’s not like the furry fandom has a lack of erotica writers. But let’s be honest for a second. If you’re here and reading this, it’s because you know what sort of things I like to write. I like to do plot heavy, character development pieces that see those characters pitted against severe odds. Stories where I set them against something that seems literally insurmountable, so that you honestly wonder if the character is going to succeed. And this, now, is finally where we get to the core of it all.
I write stories where the protagonists don’t always succeed. I’ve written stories that have ended badly and painfully, and I’ve written stories where everything works out and people live happily ever after. Or at least live happily morning after. I mean… geez, look at my 2015 Fae’s Christmas Music-Themed Special pieces. Of the three that went up (before the ones that recently went up to finish up the five-set), one of them ended with a broken heart and one of them ended with both lovers winding up dead. This is fucking porn, and they both fucking died. That shit wasn’t kind, either; the way I did it was fucking awful. I’m very good at finding horrible ways to kill my characters, and that one was no exception to the rule.
And it was still a story that people appreciated and enjoyed. Moreso, the story that saw the broken heart (but everyone more or less physically intact) saw an appreciation and empathy for the broken relationship there. Empathy and emotion come into play when the conflict hits the right mark. More than that, they set the stage for the stories that followed, and are still yet to follow. Now, my readers have learned a valuable lesson about reading my stories. They’ve seen my work and come away with one piece of super-important information about me.
THIS author does not promise a happy resolution.
By the time the last chapter of Blood And Water rolled around, I think nearly every reader there wondered what sort of ending I was actually going to visit upon Deacon and Bain. From people I asked, the question wasn’t if they were going to stop Oswell, but instead if either of them would even survive facing Oswell. The stakes were so high, and I had been so cruel to my characters, that my readers began to question that sacred promise between myself and them. They started to question if the hero would win in the end. The turning point for most? The way I tortured Bain so graphically in Oswell’s lab. Faced with his power and his overwhelming cruelty and intelligence, I set him up as an almost insurmountable, terrible challenge for the pair to eventually be forced to face off against. The stakes were high, and my readers had no way to know if I would allow both, or either, of the main characters to survive.
In the penultimate story of Lucas’ story arc from the Christmas Special stories, Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This), Lucas is confronted again by the abusive ex-boyfriend who was responsible for single-handedly ruining his life. The character development that Lucas has gone through is threatened. The life he’s trying to build back up for himself is threatened. Lucas’ well-being is threatened. The comments I got for that story were full of fear for Lucas. One person said that they didn’t care about the porn anymore, as long as Lucas was okay. They were invested, because they could not be sure that the story would end well. They were uncertain. They were invested.
That, right there, is why I do it. And that right there is why, on several occasions, my characters have to endure failure in the journeys they are set on. My readers know that a story by me will challenge the characters in it, and that it will challenge them. My readers know that I am unafraid to make them confront some pretty dark shit in a story of mine. And of course, most importantly, they can’t be sure of how the story ends. My readers know that when they read my work, there’s no way to know for sure. The heroes might prevail. MIGHT. And they might fail.
And this is great, because the reader does not know. They have to read and see.
It’s a careful balancing act, to make your reader fear for the character they should be rooting for without giving up hope. I don’t think anyone truly gave up hope for Deacon and Bain in Blood And Water. I don’t think anyone’s given up hope for Lucas, come the resolution of his story in Pleasure And Pain. More importantly, the strain that they had to endure – that conflict being so dark and so cruel and so tough to overcome – calls into doubt that just because it’s a story it has to end with the protagonist safe and well and happy. That meta thinking is broken before they read the first page, because they recognize the name of the author. They understand that the covenant that I make with my readers isn’t that everything will be resolved neatly, but that they have to read right until the last page to know how it ends for sure.
The cruelty and the pain that I subject my characters to is carefully considered and applied quite deliberately. I do it because it is all part of a carefully orchestrated plan with one devilishly simple goal in mind. I do it because I want my readers to be uncertain. I want my readers to be challenged in every single story, from the simplest fap piece to an involved short to a deep novella to the grandest novel series. I want them to start every single one of my stories knowing that at some point, no matter how hard the hero works and tries or how right and good their cause is, they might fail. I want my readers to click on a story of mine, ready to enjoy the journey, and ready to enjoy it all the more because they cannot possibly know the destination. I do it because my cruelty invests you all the more in the characters and, though you might hate me for being so cruel, because you will love the characters (that succeed) for having the strength to do so.
And that, right there, is why I am so mean to my characters. You should try it.
FCMTS and 2016 - What The Fae?
Posted 9 years agoSo, let’s get the obvious out of the way.
It’s been a quieter year than you might have thought was coming from me. I had a lot of big plans for the year, but the vast majority of them were superseded by even bigger things that wound up snapping up my time. Let’s first run down what I wanted to have done for the year, so we can then work back through it and see what I actually did!
First, early in the year, I teased my work on a sequel to Blood And Water. This novel, Insurrection, has completed its initial drafting and is just being cleaned up at this point. I’m still looking for particular people (I’d have asked you already if I was going to; I’m very picky about my beta readers!) to finish reading it over and critiquing it so that I can make sure that it’s a worthy sequel to a series that a lot of people seemed to have enjoyed considerably. I had honestly wanted it out a little after September at the latest, but a lack of feedback and stuff we’ll get to later conspired to keep me from it all. Don’t worry, though. It’s still coming!
Secondly, I had two more non-furry novels I wanted to finish up and publish this year as well. Unfortunately, both of those would have been worked on in the second half of the year, and that is what turned out to have been stolen away entirely by other, more pressing things. No further progress was made on those projects, but I plan to pick them up again very swiftly in the new year. They will see the light of day!
EDIT: Let's insert something awesome here I forgot when I quickly slapped this together and posted it. I was published just recently as a part of Hot Dish #2 by Sofawolf Press! My story, Cold Sleep, is (in my opinion) some of my best work. Pick it up! It's got a lot of other, better writers, but also some of my good stuff! It's good! I promise!
Finally, as is my yearly custom, Fae’s Christmas Music-Themed Special was always going to be the last hurrah of what has been a shitty year (and let’s be honest, did we really think 2016 was going to be this bad after the shitshow that was 2015? What the actual fuck, 2016? It’s not a fucking contest, and you win anyway; just don’t give 2017 the same ideas!). Five stories modeled after or inspired by songs I enjoy, for Christmas day and the four days leading up to it. In this case it was going to wind up as seven, to make up for the two that I never completed in time for last year’s Special. And… yeah. So now we get to the bad news and the reason why.
I recently went back to taking classes in an active attempt to better myself in the form of certification required for particular employment. It took up the full second half of this year, and it took my full and complete focus through the entire period. I think I literally wrote something on the order of two thousand words across all of my various projects in that period. I probably wrote more regarding my D&D campaigns than I did any of my actual writing projects. I wanted — indeed, needed — to make sure that my studies could be completed, if only so that I could ensure that I would have a future which would allow me to write. Now that I’ve done that, I may well do. It’s just a shitty time to job hunt, what with the holiday period sapping away all the jobs I just completed training for.
The obvious conclusion is that there won’t be any Fae’s Christmas Music-Themed Special this year.
BUT YOU WOULD BE FUCKING WRONG, YOU ARSEHOLE; GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HEAD.
Ahem.
It’s true that I won’t be able to put out the seven stories I had intended to at the start of the year, but that doesn’t mean that I have nothing to add. Fuck no. The least that I can do is finish the two from the 2015 series and provide them on the days they would have gone up. Or try. These stories (or rather, one of them) require a more deft hand than the others last year did, which is part of why they were never completed in time. I’ve made slight (but growing) progress on them both leading up to this period, but here we are. Day one of the Special, and there’s no story up.
That’s the real reason for this journal entry. To explain why there’s no story up right now (at the time of posting) and what to expect. I’m sure I’ve disappointed a lot of people that enjoy my work, but that’s just the way it goes. If nothing else, I’m also going to let you know a little more of what to expect from the stories you ARE getting, so let’s see what’s worth waiting a year for!
The first story of the pair is titled I Know You’re Out There Somewhere, another Moody Blues song. This is your mandatory, scheduled Alisha story of the Special, and I’m sure some people missed Alisha’s exploits last year. Here you’ll get to see him in attendance at a political fundraiser, getting up to all the usual mischief you’d expect from our crossdressing little con artist. Unfortunately for Alisha however, there’s a little more going on in attendance than he might have been ready for…
The second, of course, is the continuation of Lucas’ story. The tale of this poor fox, first begun in Luka, will reach its explosive conclusion here (hopefully on Christmas Day as scheduled), in the story Pleasure And Pain, named for the Divinyls song. When we last saw Lucas, his past had caught up to him in a big way. In Pleasure And Pain, Lucas and Taylor’s story will be resolved. I… honestly don’t know what more I can say right now that won’t spoil it. I do hope it’s worth the wait. I’ve been agonizing over this story for a year.
I hope the holiday period is going well for everyone, and that you’re all happy and healthy little critters. With any luck, 2017 will be a vast improvement over 2016 (admittedly not a great feat), and we’ll see things on the up for everyone. I’ll be back to writing plenty, uploading more often, and with any luck there’ll be more than just Blood And Water books to talk about next year too. More information will come later, but for now?
For now, have a lovely holiday period and watch this space; Fae’s Christmas Music-Themed Special has been reduced in scope this year, but it WILL come!
… and so will you. Hopefully. Maybe.
- Fae
It’s been a quieter year than you might have thought was coming from me. I had a lot of big plans for the year, but the vast majority of them were superseded by even bigger things that wound up snapping up my time. Let’s first run down what I wanted to have done for the year, so we can then work back through it and see what I actually did!
First, early in the year, I teased my work on a sequel to Blood And Water. This novel, Insurrection, has completed its initial drafting and is just being cleaned up at this point. I’m still looking for particular people (I’d have asked you already if I was going to; I’m very picky about my beta readers!) to finish reading it over and critiquing it so that I can make sure that it’s a worthy sequel to a series that a lot of people seemed to have enjoyed considerably. I had honestly wanted it out a little after September at the latest, but a lack of feedback and stuff we’ll get to later conspired to keep me from it all. Don’t worry, though. It’s still coming!
Secondly, I had two more non-furry novels I wanted to finish up and publish this year as well. Unfortunately, both of those would have been worked on in the second half of the year, and that is what turned out to have been stolen away entirely by other, more pressing things. No further progress was made on those projects, but I plan to pick them up again very swiftly in the new year. They will see the light of day!
EDIT: Let's insert something awesome here I forgot when I quickly slapped this together and posted it. I was published just recently as a part of Hot Dish #2 by Sofawolf Press! My story, Cold Sleep, is (in my opinion) some of my best work. Pick it up! It's got a lot of other, better writers, but also some of my good stuff! It's good! I promise!
Finally, as is my yearly custom, Fae’s Christmas Music-Themed Special was always going to be the last hurrah of what has been a shitty year (and let’s be honest, did we really think 2016 was going to be this bad after the shitshow that was 2015? What the actual fuck, 2016? It’s not a fucking contest, and you win anyway; just don’t give 2017 the same ideas!). Five stories modeled after or inspired by songs I enjoy, for Christmas day and the four days leading up to it. In this case it was going to wind up as seven, to make up for the two that I never completed in time for last year’s Special. And… yeah. So now we get to the bad news and the reason why.
I recently went back to taking classes in an active attempt to better myself in the form of certification required for particular employment. It took up the full second half of this year, and it took my full and complete focus through the entire period. I think I literally wrote something on the order of two thousand words across all of my various projects in that period. I probably wrote more regarding my D&D campaigns than I did any of my actual writing projects. I wanted — indeed, needed — to make sure that my studies could be completed, if only so that I could ensure that I would have a future which would allow me to write. Now that I’ve done that, I may well do. It’s just a shitty time to job hunt, what with the holiday period sapping away all the jobs I just completed training for.
The obvious conclusion is that there won’t be any Fae’s Christmas Music-Themed Special this year.
BUT YOU WOULD BE FUCKING WRONG, YOU ARSEHOLE; GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HEAD.
Ahem.
It’s true that I won’t be able to put out the seven stories I had intended to at the start of the year, but that doesn’t mean that I have nothing to add. Fuck no. The least that I can do is finish the two from the 2015 series and provide them on the days they would have gone up. Or try. These stories (or rather, one of them) require a more deft hand than the others last year did, which is part of why they were never completed in time. I’ve made slight (but growing) progress on them both leading up to this period, but here we are. Day one of the Special, and there’s no story up.
That’s the real reason for this journal entry. To explain why there’s no story up right now (at the time of posting) and what to expect. I’m sure I’ve disappointed a lot of people that enjoy my work, but that’s just the way it goes. If nothing else, I’m also going to let you know a little more of what to expect from the stories you ARE getting, so let’s see what’s worth waiting a year for!
The first story of the pair is titled I Know You’re Out There Somewhere, another Moody Blues song. This is your mandatory, scheduled Alisha story of the Special, and I’m sure some people missed Alisha’s exploits last year. Here you’ll get to see him in attendance at a political fundraiser, getting up to all the usual mischief you’d expect from our crossdressing little con artist. Unfortunately for Alisha however, there’s a little more going on in attendance than he might have been ready for…
The second, of course, is the continuation of Lucas’ story. The tale of this poor fox, first begun in Luka, will reach its explosive conclusion here (hopefully on Christmas Day as scheduled), in the story Pleasure And Pain, named for the Divinyls song. When we last saw Lucas, his past had caught up to him in a big way. In Pleasure And Pain, Lucas and Taylor’s story will be resolved. I… honestly don’t know what more I can say right now that won’t spoil it. I do hope it’s worth the wait. I’ve been agonizing over this story for a year.
I hope the holiday period is going well for everyone, and that you’re all happy and healthy little critters. With any luck, 2017 will be a vast improvement over 2016 (admittedly not a great feat), and we’ll see things on the up for everyone. I’ll be back to writing plenty, uploading more often, and with any luck there’ll be more than just Blood And Water books to talk about next year too. More information will come later, but for now?
For now, have a lovely holiday period and watch this space; Fae’s Christmas Music-Themed Special has been reduced in scope this year, but it WILL come!
… and so will you. Hopefully. Maybe.
- Fae
Why I Like Furry - A Fandom Retrospective Through My Eyes
Posted 9 years agoThe porn’s pretty nice, I guess.
So, Zootopia’s out now in a lot of places. Mine is not one of them. However, I think that the inherent existence of Zootopia as a ‘real thing’ that has emphatically ‘happened’ recently is actually something that warrants a truly special look at this big, broad, wonderful fandom of ours and exactly what it is we love about it.
Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe it’s more that I’m sitting here in my chair, procrastinating writing the next scene of the Blood and Water novel because I’m a fucking nutcase who can’t stop worrying about whether it’s good enough and actually write the scene. Maybe I just want an excuse to take an introspective look at the fandom through my own eyes and what it means to me, what it’s capable of meaning, and what it’ll mean for the presumably legion new fans that Disney’s new cash cow is going to bring in for us. Regardless of the why, here’s my thoughts (admittedly born during a particularly lovely shower) on why, exactly, I like furry stuff.
When I came to the fandom *incoherent mumbling* years ago, it was art that brought me in. Sexual art, actually. I was working on a school project that brought it to my attention at first, and it was entirely by fluke that I found it. To every graymuzzle out there who remembers PureYiff, I give a hearty thumbs-up. So I was thrown in the deep end, during my teenage years, of the furry fandom. The deep, spooge-swollen depths.
But it wasn’t the pornographic aspect of the artwork that I saw that really caught my eye. Instead, it was the quality of the art. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I couldn’t draw to save my life. If you put a gun to my head and you told me to draw anything, let alone something as complex as a person? I’d click the safety off for you. It was never gonna happen. Seeing different artists all working together on this one simple sub-genre of artwork was amazing to me. I’d always enjoyed cartoons and cartoon creatures, but this was something else entirely. This was adult, this was intimate, and this was inherently real to me. It was a side of anthropomorphism that I’d never seen before, and it was this adult side that hooked me.
I’d seen Robin Hood and I adored The Lion King and I was spoon-fed a whole slew of anthropomorphic characters over the years, from talking quadrupeds to upright pants-wearers. My first furry crush was [REDACTED] when I was in grade four. I believe a grand total of two people in the world know who that character was. One of them is me. Neither of us understand what the appeal was. But it wasn’t until much later, when confronted with the adult side of anthropomorphism that I could take those strange feelings between my legs and ascribe something else to them. I could understand something in a new way.
All the cartoons that I had grown up watching and adoring were amazing, but sterile. They existed in a creative space where the normal rules didn’t apply. Anvils dropped on coyotes and hilarity ensued. Physics was a plaything. Faced for the first time with the sight of sexualized animal people, I came to an inherent understanding: anthropomorphism doesn’t just have to be comedy. Anthropomorphism can be a lot more, and it can be something truly powerful.
My first foray, some may remember, into furry writing a long time ago was Tales of Sol. Originally conceived as a pair of stories, one was designed to set up the characters and the sci-fi universe and the other was going to be that which I thought had to be done at the time: hardcore (heterosexual… gasp!) sex. It ballooned out into a seven story series with a relatively truncated sex scene just prior to the climax that, while important to the plot and the characters involved, could have just as easily been the tasteful fade-to-black that later edits of the scene would have. I had taken the sexualized side of furry that I’d seen, extracted from it adult themes and adult behaviour (including sex) and fearlessly crafted a world around it.
As much experimentation as anything else, it was my first step toward understanding what anthropomorphism can be. A lot of your who have followed my stories for a while know that every now and again, I can go dark with a lot of my stuff. Even the stories that are sprinkled in amongst feel-good-fap-good furry porn can have some terrible themes associated with them (Fae’s Christmas Music-Themed Special alone over the years has dealt with domestic abuse, homelessness, self-prostitution (in two different contexts), hateful and trapping relationships and emotional fallout to name just a few things) can have powerful thematic elements that can help them to rise beyond simply a means to blow your load.
Writing fiction is, from the moment I discovered that anyone could do it if they just worked at it hard and long enough, all I’ve ever wanted to do. I’ve gravitated naturally toward fantasy and science-fiction, because speculative fiction allows one the complete freedom to explore whatever themes one wants to explore. You can, in science-fiction, discuss an idea that would be touchy if it was based on earth with contemporary human characters. You can for example take the idea of an alien race that humanity conquered and enslaved, extrapolate to their freedom and integration into human society, and tell a story of systemic racism in the post-freedom era. Speculative fiction provides a degree of separation that allows for an issue like that, or the nature of progression versus conservatism, or the threat of a tech-dominated world, or any number of other things to be discussed and absorbed without the inherent ugliness that those discussions can bring about. Especially in this current age of socially- and politically-correct walking-on-eggshells we have. Speculative fiction allows you to wrap a theme that might be rejected into an entertaining medium that people will take in, discuss and debate. Speculative fiction greases the gears of critical thought and consideration, and this I think makes it one of the most underappreciated and powerful genres of writing.
Furry is the same thing. Anthropomorphization of animals allows human traits and intelligence to be assigned them, but it also allows for the human condition to be explored in different ways. Furry fiction provides a means for us to tackle our humanity with a degree of separation that I believe lets us look at our lives more critically. It allows us to observe our society through a lens, focus on an issue and deal with that issue in an entertaining and appealing way. It is, in much the same way as speculative fiction as a genre, something that I believe will be increasingly essential to how we understand ourselves as a species and each other as a society.
There’s a lot of jokes running around right now regarding Zootopia, and a whole lot of furries that are convinced that it’s either the best thing ever for the fandom or the absolute worst thing since [Insert Most Recent Overblown Furry Crisis Here]. There’s a lot of comments about non-furs making ‘zoosonas’ or thinking that Nick or Judy or those tigers or whatever are hot in spite of not being furries themselves.
Which… c’mon. They are, each in their own way, pretty hot.
But without having seen the movie and while trying to avoid any spoilers that I can, I doubt that a company as smart as Disney has simply made a fur fandom cash grab. They (probably) did not spend millions of dollars just so we, as a collective fandom, can rush out and buy their overpriced shit. They (I guess) did not write this movie for the fandom specifically. We are many but we are not exactly fucking legion and, while our spending habits regarding consuming content in place of consuming food are well-documented and often shameful examples of fur fandom lore, this movie is not just for us.
What I have heard is that it is a well-written (if plot-predictable) movie that is well- and entertainingly told. Given that, I have to assume that Disney has been smart about their writing. I have to assume that they have made good use of anthropomorphic characters in this movie to tell a good story in a good way. I have to believe that the use of anthro characters has been used to tell that story and confront very real, very human concerns. Certainly the trailers for it made me laugh and Disney has a generally exemplary record with making expressive and interesting looking characters, but if what I heard about Zootopia is right they have done precisely the kind of thing that I think the fandom needs. They have done what I like to do. They have approached human issues with furry characters.
This fandom can be a pain in the arse for a lot of its members. I have friends that have lost their gorram minds over the years because of the nature of the fandom’s inhabitants and some of the frankly stupid shit that they get up to. I have friends that have had to step back from it just so they can breathe without being choked out by people making absurd claims. Just today I had one such friend tell me a story about how a reader once accused him of having an anti-feline agenda. A fucking anti-feline agenda.
Let that sink in for a second.
And yet, in spite of that, I love creating content for the fandom. I love writing with anthro characters. I have a hell of a lot more fun with them than I do with human characters, unless I need human characters specifically to tell a particular story. I love the physicality of their expression. I love the abstraction of the human condition through a furry lens. I love the sheer volume of creativity that oozes out of this massive conglomeration we call a fandom. Yes, there’s a lot of bullshit to wade through sometimes, but fucking Christ is it worth it in the end.
I love furry. Unashamedly, unabashedly, warts and all. I love it for what it was, I love it for what it is, and I love it for what it still has the potential to become. The fandom is evolving and maturing every single day, and I wholeheartedly believe that I am not the only one who believes this to be the case. I can’t be the only content creator out there who sees the enormous potential of what is, to so many of us, just a cute hobby.
Through it all, I remember that the oft-ridiculed porn of the fandom is what opened my eyes. I remember that despite all the jokes and poor conception of the fandom because of the sexualized aspect of furry characters, that was what awoke in me the idea that abstraction of human issues through anthropomorphism could be a powerful and fun writing tool. I love the fandom, and I love it warts and all, and the sexual aspect of the fandom is not one of those warts to me. The adult side of furry has been, to me, a creative gateway to greater things.
So yeah. The porn’s pretty good, I guess.
So, Zootopia’s out now in a lot of places. Mine is not one of them. However, I think that the inherent existence of Zootopia as a ‘real thing’ that has emphatically ‘happened’ recently is actually something that warrants a truly special look at this big, broad, wonderful fandom of ours and exactly what it is we love about it.
Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe it’s more that I’m sitting here in my chair, procrastinating writing the next scene of the Blood and Water novel because I’m a fucking nutcase who can’t stop worrying about whether it’s good enough and actually write the scene. Maybe I just want an excuse to take an introspective look at the fandom through my own eyes and what it means to me, what it’s capable of meaning, and what it’ll mean for the presumably legion new fans that Disney’s new cash cow is going to bring in for us. Regardless of the why, here’s my thoughts (admittedly born during a particularly lovely shower) on why, exactly, I like furry stuff.
When I came to the fandom *incoherent mumbling* years ago, it was art that brought me in. Sexual art, actually. I was working on a school project that brought it to my attention at first, and it was entirely by fluke that I found it. To every graymuzzle out there who remembers PureYiff, I give a hearty thumbs-up. So I was thrown in the deep end, during my teenage years, of the furry fandom. The deep, spooge-swollen depths.
But it wasn’t the pornographic aspect of the artwork that I saw that really caught my eye. Instead, it was the quality of the art. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I couldn’t draw to save my life. If you put a gun to my head and you told me to draw anything, let alone something as complex as a person? I’d click the safety off for you. It was never gonna happen. Seeing different artists all working together on this one simple sub-genre of artwork was amazing to me. I’d always enjoyed cartoons and cartoon creatures, but this was something else entirely. This was adult, this was intimate, and this was inherently real to me. It was a side of anthropomorphism that I’d never seen before, and it was this adult side that hooked me.
I’d seen Robin Hood and I adored The Lion King and I was spoon-fed a whole slew of anthropomorphic characters over the years, from talking quadrupeds to upright pants-wearers. My first furry crush was [REDACTED] when I was in grade four. I believe a grand total of two people in the world know who that character was. One of them is me. Neither of us understand what the appeal was. But it wasn’t until much later, when confronted with the adult side of anthropomorphism that I could take those strange feelings between my legs and ascribe something else to them. I could understand something in a new way.
All the cartoons that I had grown up watching and adoring were amazing, but sterile. They existed in a creative space where the normal rules didn’t apply. Anvils dropped on coyotes and hilarity ensued. Physics was a plaything. Faced for the first time with the sight of sexualized animal people, I came to an inherent understanding: anthropomorphism doesn’t just have to be comedy. Anthropomorphism can be a lot more, and it can be something truly powerful.
My first foray, some may remember, into furry writing a long time ago was Tales of Sol. Originally conceived as a pair of stories, one was designed to set up the characters and the sci-fi universe and the other was going to be that which I thought had to be done at the time: hardcore (heterosexual… gasp!) sex. It ballooned out into a seven story series with a relatively truncated sex scene just prior to the climax that, while important to the plot and the characters involved, could have just as easily been the tasteful fade-to-black that later edits of the scene would have. I had taken the sexualized side of furry that I’d seen, extracted from it adult themes and adult behaviour (including sex) and fearlessly crafted a world around it.
As much experimentation as anything else, it was my first step toward understanding what anthropomorphism can be. A lot of your who have followed my stories for a while know that every now and again, I can go dark with a lot of my stuff. Even the stories that are sprinkled in amongst feel-good-fap-good furry porn can have some terrible themes associated with them (Fae’s Christmas Music-Themed Special alone over the years has dealt with domestic abuse, homelessness, self-prostitution (in two different contexts), hateful and trapping relationships and emotional fallout to name just a few things) can have powerful thematic elements that can help them to rise beyond simply a means to blow your load.
Writing fiction is, from the moment I discovered that anyone could do it if they just worked at it hard and long enough, all I’ve ever wanted to do. I’ve gravitated naturally toward fantasy and science-fiction, because speculative fiction allows one the complete freedom to explore whatever themes one wants to explore. You can, in science-fiction, discuss an idea that would be touchy if it was based on earth with contemporary human characters. You can for example take the idea of an alien race that humanity conquered and enslaved, extrapolate to their freedom and integration into human society, and tell a story of systemic racism in the post-freedom era. Speculative fiction provides a degree of separation that allows for an issue like that, or the nature of progression versus conservatism, or the threat of a tech-dominated world, or any number of other things to be discussed and absorbed without the inherent ugliness that those discussions can bring about. Especially in this current age of socially- and politically-correct walking-on-eggshells we have. Speculative fiction allows you to wrap a theme that might be rejected into an entertaining medium that people will take in, discuss and debate. Speculative fiction greases the gears of critical thought and consideration, and this I think makes it one of the most underappreciated and powerful genres of writing.
Furry is the same thing. Anthropomorphization of animals allows human traits and intelligence to be assigned them, but it also allows for the human condition to be explored in different ways. Furry fiction provides a means for us to tackle our humanity with a degree of separation that I believe lets us look at our lives more critically. It allows us to observe our society through a lens, focus on an issue and deal with that issue in an entertaining and appealing way. It is, in much the same way as speculative fiction as a genre, something that I believe will be increasingly essential to how we understand ourselves as a species and each other as a society.
There’s a lot of jokes running around right now regarding Zootopia, and a whole lot of furries that are convinced that it’s either the best thing ever for the fandom or the absolute worst thing since [Insert Most Recent Overblown Furry Crisis Here]. There’s a lot of comments about non-furs making ‘zoosonas’ or thinking that Nick or Judy or those tigers or whatever are hot in spite of not being furries themselves.
Which… c’mon. They are, each in their own way, pretty hot.
But without having seen the movie and while trying to avoid any spoilers that I can, I doubt that a company as smart as Disney has simply made a fur fandom cash grab. They (probably) did not spend millions of dollars just so we, as a collective fandom, can rush out and buy their overpriced shit. They (I guess) did not write this movie for the fandom specifically. We are many but we are not exactly fucking legion and, while our spending habits regarding consuming content in place of consuming food are well-documented and often shameful examples of fur fandom lore, this movie is not just for us.
What I have heard is that it is a well-written (if plot-predictable) movie that is well- and entertainingly told. Given that, I have to assume that Disney has been smart about their writing. I have to assume that they have made good use of anthropomorphic characters in this movie to tell a good story in a good way. I have to believe that the use of anthro characters has been used to tell that story and confront very real, very human concerns. Certainly the trailers for it made me laugh and Disney has a generally exemplary record with making expressive and interesting looking characters, but if what I heard about Zootopia is right they have done precisely the kind of thing that I think the fandom needs. They have done what I like to do. They have approached human issues with furry characters.
This fandom can be a pain in the arse for a lot of its members. I have friends that have lost their gorram minds over the years because of the nature of the fandom’s inhabitants and some of the frankly stupid shit that they get up to. I have friends that have had to step back from it just so they can breathe without being choked out by people making absurd claims. Just today I had one such friend tell me a story about how a reader once accused him of having an anti-feline agenda. A fucking anti-feline agenda.
Let that sink in for a second.
And yet, in spite of that, I love creating content for the fandom. I love writing with anthro characters. I have a hell of a lot more fun with them than I do with human characters, unless I need human characters specifically to tell a particular story. I love the physicality of their expression. I love the abstraction of the human condition through a furry lens. I love the sheer volume of creativity that oozes out of this massive conglomeration we call a fandom. Yes, there’s a lot of bullshit to wade through sometimes, but fucking Christ is it worth it in the end.
I love furry. Unashamedly, unabashedly, warts and all. I love it for what it was, I love it for what it is, and I love it for what it still has the potential to become. The fandom is evolving and maturing every single day, and I wholeheartedly believe that I am not the only one who believes this to be the case. I can’t be the only content creator out there who sees the enormous potential of what is, to so many of us, just a cute hobby.
Through it all, I remember that the oft-ridiculed porn of the fandom is what opened my eyes. I remember that despite all the jokes and poor conception of the fandom because of the sexualized aspect of furry characters, that was what awoke in me the idea that abstraction of human issues through anthropomorphism could be a powerful and fun writing tool. I love the fandom, and I love it warts and all, and the sexual aspect of the fandom is not one of those warts to me. The adult side of furry has been, to me, a creative gateway to greater things.
So yeah. The porn’s pretty good, I guess.
2015-2016, and Blood And Water
Posted 10 years agoSo. Uh, hi. Fae here!
First, let’s address the elephant in the room. Fae’s Christmas Music-Themed Special 2015 never finished this year. I’m honestly, awfully, terribly sorry about that. I’ll get into more about why that’s the case in a moment, but to help people understand why 2015 was such a dry year for me, I have to get into what happened in it.
First off, I lived in five separate places over the course of the year. I moved once in March, once in August, once in October and once again in December. That sort of moving is in and of itself not conducive to getting any writing done. While it didn’t stop me entirely, what work I did was not furry in nature. It was, in fact, for my first self-published novel.
Not advertising it here since I want to keep my furry and non-furry writing separate, but enterprising individuals would be able to find it if they wanted. Please don’t share it through furry channels if it’s all the same to you, but anyone who privately wants to know what was worked on is free to message me as well and find out what the novel is and how they might obtain it.
I also lost both my last surviving grandparent in March, and then my uncle (both on my father’s side) in September. So in between some very hostile living environments for me, I also lost family. My father of course has been more than a little shaken by all of this; seeing the solid, tough man I’ve become familiar with over my life start to break down has been more than a little disconcerting. He has, of course, required support through all of this, which has further taken my time. This all says nothing of how the day job has continued to kick my arse and keep me on the bare minimum I need to survive, or how that will not stack up when new expenses hit in just a few months.
The move in December was the big kicker, and that’s what screwed up my FCMTS plans. I was only able to complete three of the five stories before the end of the month, and I’ve been busy with other writing and plotting since then. I do intend to finish them, but at this moment it feels like something that will have to wait until I have free time at the end of this year. FCMTS 2016 may well be a seven-story series; the longest in the tradition’s history. Don’t worry; I don’t plan to make that a habit. I’d rather keep up with a consistent, five-a-year routine, thank you very much.
Now, let’s address the BIGGER elephant in the title: Blood And Water.
Two years ago, I started an experimental furry series called Blood And Water. I had no plot, no world, no structure, no planning and no characters (aside from three names: Deacon, Bain, Oswell). When I started, it was a fun little experiment while I was working on a different novel that will be seeing revision work soon. I didn’t think I’d get so caught up in it as I did.
Without sounding like an egotistical twat (which, let’s face it, I feel like I’ve already crossed that line today!), it wasn’t just me that was so caught up in it. Plenty of people left comments on the series to share their support of (or revulsion with) the characters. There were discussions on what was going to come next. There were wonderings about things that I’d mentioned in previous pieces as new story elements came to light. It became more popular than I would have dared anticipate, as people were enamoured with Deacon’s story.
So here’s the other reason why FCMTS 2015 didn’t finish: I’ve started working on the sequel.
Blood And Water is going to have a sequel not in the form of another series here, but in the form of a full-length novel. It’ll be written as a novel first instead of a series, and released as a novel. Yep. I’m going to self-publish that, too!
At the moment, I have some thoughts on what I want to be able to do with Blood And Water, both the original series and the novel. I’d honestly like to know what fans of the series would like to see me do and what they’d like to see out of a novel that follows on from the events of the series itself.
At present, my plan is to have five separate releases to better cater to different people with different tastes and wants for the series. Interested? Here’s what I’m currently thinking:
Original Series: the series itself, fully edited and cleaned up and compiled into its own book, available both as a paperback print-on-demand and an e-book. This would also include a small novella, packaged with the book itself, unique to these releases.
The Novel: also available in paperback print-on-demand and e-book format. This one would also have its own unique small novella, exclusive to those releases.
The Compilation: An e-book only release that contains the original, edited and cleaned up series, the new novel and also each and every one of the stories that have so far been published to SoFurry, FurAffinity and Weasyl, also edited and cleaned up. I’d do it for paperback too, but it would just be too large to be cost-effective.
This way, I feel like I can do the most amount of work to please the most amount of people. People who don’t want the full series don’t have to get it; they can simply buy the novel by itself. Those that want to carry around the fullest collection of Blood And Water they can would only need to buy the compilation e-book, and get the most bang for their collective buck. Those that want the paperback or e-book stand-alone versions of the original series or the novel (complete with some great in-fandom art on the cover, I sincerely hope!) are able to do that too, and because they’re not getting as much as the compilation I figure they can get something special.
Please let me know what you think of all of this. I’ve got the story for the novel all nutted out, and I’ve started work on first drafts now. Blood And Water is going to happen before the end of this year if I have my way, and I’d like to know how everyone who enjoyed the series would like me to approach it. Leave a comment, or message me privately if you’d like. Your feedback is so, so important to me. It’s that feedback that helped me get through Blood And Water in the first place.
Thanks everyone, and may 2016 be nowhere near as shitty as 2015 was!
- Faora
First, let’s address the elephant in the room. Fae’s Christmas Music-Themed Special 2015 never finished this year. I’m honestly, awfully, terribly sorry about that. I’ll get into more about why that’s the case in a moment, but to help people understand why 2015 was such a dry year for me, I have to get into what happened in it.
First off, I lived in five separate places over the course of the year. I moved once in March, once in August, once in October and once again in December. That sort of moving is in and of itself not conducive to getting any writing done. While it didn’t stop me entirely, what work I did was not furry in nature. It was, in fact, for my first self-published novel.
Not advertising it here since I want to keep my furry and non-furry writing separate, but enterprising individuals would be able to find it if they wanted. Please don’t share it through furry channels if it’s all the same to you, but anyone who privately wants to know what was worked on is free to message me as well and find out what the novel is and how they might obtain it.
I also lost both my last surviving grandparent in March, and then my uncle (both on my father’s side) in September. So in between some very hostile living environments for me, I also lost family. My father of course has been more than a little shaken by all of this; seeing the solid, tough man I’ve become familiar with over my life start to break down has been more than a little disconcerting. He has, of course, required support through all of this, which has further taken my time. This all says nothing of how the day job has continued to kick my arse and keep me on the bare minimum I need to survive, or how that will not stack up when new expenses hit in just a few months.
The move in December was the big kicker, and that’s what screwed up my FCMTS plans. I was only able to complete three of the five stories before the end of the month, and I’ve been busy with other writing and plotting since then. I do intend to finish them, but at this moment it feels like something that will have to wait until I have free time at the end of this year. FCMTS 2016 may well be a seven-story series; the longest in the tradition’s history. Don’t worry; I don’t plan to make that a habit. I’d rather keep up with a consistent, five-a-year routine, thank you very much.
Now, let’s address the BIGGER elephant in the title: Blood And Water.
Two years ago, I started an experimental furry series called Blood And Water. I had no plot, no world, no structure, no planning and no characters (aside from three names: Deacon, Bain, Oswell). When I started, it was a fun little experiment while I was working on a different novel that will be seeing revision work soon. I didn’t think I’d get so caught up in it as I did.
Without sounding like an egotistical twat (which, let’s face it, I feel like I’ve already crossed that line today!), it wasn’t just me that was so caught up in it. Plenty of people left comments on the series to share their support of (or revulsion with) the characters. There were discussions on what was going to come next. There were wonderings about things that I’d mentioned in previous pieces as new story elements came to light. It became more popular than I would have dared anticipate, as people were enamoured with Deacon’s story.
So here’s the other reason why FCMTS 2015 didn’t finish: I’ve started working on the sequel.
Blood And Water is going to have a sequel not in the form of another series here, but in the form of a full-length novel. It’ll be written as a novel first instead of a series, and released as a novel. Yep. I’m going to self-publish that, too!
At the moment, I have some thoughts on what I want to be able to do with Blood And Water, both the original series and the novel. I’d honestly like to know what fans of the series would like to see me do and what they’d like to see out of a novel that follows on from the events of the series itself.
At present, my plan is to have five separate releases to better cater to different people with different tastes and wants for the series. Interested? Here’s what I’m currently thinking:
Original Series: the series itself, fully edited and cleaned up and compiled into its own book, available both as a paperback print-on-demand and an e-book. This would also include a small novella, packaged with the book itself, unique to these releases.
The Novel: also available in paperback print-on-demand and e-book format. This one would also have its own unique small novella, exclusive to those releases.
The Compilation: An e-book only release that contains the original, edited and cleaned up series, the new novel and also each and every one of the stories that have so far been published to SoFurry, FurAffinity and Weasyl, also edited and cleaned up. I’d do it for paperback too, but it would just be too large to be cost-effective.
This way, I feel like I can do the most amount of work to please the most amount of people. People who don’t want the full series don’t have to get it; they can simply buy the novel by itself. Those that want to carry around the fullest collection of Blood And Water they can would only need to buy the compilation e-book, and get the most bang for their collective buck. Those that want the paperback or e-book stand-alone versions of the original series or the novel (complete with some great in-fandom art on the cover, I sincerely hope!) are able to do that too, and because they’re not getting as much as the compilation I figure they can get something special.
Please let me know what you think of all of this. I’ve got the story for the novel all nutted out, and I’ve started work on first drafts now. Blood And Water is going to happen before the end of this year if I have my way, and I’d like to know how everyone who enjoyed the series would like me to approach it. Leave a comment, or message me privately if you’d like. Your feedback is so, so important to me. It’s that feedback that helped me get through Blood And Water in the first place.
Thanks everyone, and may 2016 be nowhere near as shitty as 2015 was!
- Faora
EMERGENCY! EMERGENCY! THE YEAR IS REGENERATING!
Posted 12 years agoOne more year down!
Hopefully this finds most of you recovering from the food-coma haze of the Christmas period and the alcohol-induced haze of your New Year’s celebrations. Work’s probably started up for the majority of people, and life has gone back to its normal, boring old routines.
It’s pretty much the same for me, though my routines are shifting a whole hell of a lot. We’ll get to that shortly and what that means for my writing in the fandom, but for the moment let’s go and have a look at what I wanted to accomplish for 2013 and what I actually did!
2013 was… not a good year for me. My ambitions were high, but life conspired against me in a great many different ways to screw me over. Six full-length completed novels and another completed first draft was a bit beyond me, even with so much work already completed on many of them. Still, I got stuck in as best I could.
One of the hardest things to do as a writer is let go of your work. This can be either to send it off for publication, or to set it aside for a while to gestate, or even to cast off because you weren’t good enough. Three separate novels last year were given the flick because of the realization that my writing hadn’t advanced to the point where I could effectively tell the stories I wanted to tell. It’s a soul-crushing feeling for me, to see that I’m just not quite good enough to do what I once thought myself so capable of doing. Pushing through that is something I’m still working on.
MPreg March came back with a vengeance this last year, and to continued (in my mind, at least), success. Rounding out the Serevokin story with The Missing Link was a whole mess of fun, and it seems to have been popular with everyone who’s read it. Whether or not I continue with the Serevokin stories this March will remain to be seen. Equally, I may not even continue with the male impregnation stuff at all. It was born out of a desire to test myself in new material that I don’t always write. While I might still do it from time to time, I think I should perhaps move onto new challenges. We’ll see. Leave your thoughts in a comment; I’ll give them all due weight!
I did mention in the last journal that, in the middle of the year, I fired off a novel to Sofawolf in the hopes of publication. This novel is the culmination of years of planning and work, but was not without its flaws and difficulties. Had I the time and the stomach to rewrite it from scratch for the eighth time, I would have done so. However, as previously stated, life last year was just a complete trainwreck for me. Instead, the decision was made to edit what existing work I had to update it as much as possible. While I fear that this may hurt the chances of publication – and the overall quality of the piece, much to my chagrin – it was the only viable option I had. I had to put something out, if only for my own peace of mind. I’ve been sick of sitting on this for the last nearly six years now.
NaNoWriMo came and went and saw another rough novel being halfway created. NaNo is always a chore for me, but not for the same reasons as most writers. Writing a little under seventeen hundred words a day doesn’t bother me; I recently learned that at a sprint I can write two thousand words in half an hour. However, tumultuous living conditions and constant shifts in my life, combined with the onset of what has become frustratingly nightly panic attacks when I try to sleep, rendered impotent my ability to write more than that. I hit my NaNo word goal not easily, but with gritted teeth and sweat-glistened brow. I love the work, but I have to now clean it up.
Fae’s Christmas Music-Themed Special 2013 went well, though it seemed a lower-key affair than previous years. The big underachiever has to have been Blind Winter which, while appreciated for what it is, was perhaps not the best choice for the first story of the special. Fun to write but with some heavy themes, maybe I should have gone with something else first. Make Me Lose Control was well-received, though not as well as Separate Ways or I Want To Come Over. The latter became the most favourited piece of the Special by a wide margin, and the former brought on calls to write a novel or series to follow it up. Then, of course, there’s Turn Back Time.
Part of the fun for me is the constantly growing and evolving story arc that I try to maintain each year. Yes, most of this year’s Special stories had their roots in previously-written pieces, but the only really coherent story series within the Special (currently, at least) is that of Lucas and Taylor of Luka, Insensitive and Turn Back Time. I absolutely love the comments I receive, but the ones for the story arcs are particularly appreciated. It makes me feel all the warm fuzzies to know that people are investing themselves in the characters, and that they don’t want to wait until twelve months are up to explore their future. It helps to reinforce that I’m doing my job well, and words can’t express the gratitude I feel at reading just those few lines of thought you leave behind. To everyone who comments, I salute you.
Finally for 2013, I had a very, very ambitious project at the very tail end of the year: Fae’s Six-Day Novel-Writing Challenge the Third Esquire. I… may have gotten a little carried away with the title. Regardless, the challenge was simple: take a few days off work and just write like it’s my only job in the world. Six days. Ninety thousand words. How did I do? Well… not great.
People who followed my twitter (@faorameridian) would perhaps have noticed that I was doing hourly and bi-hourly updates there on my wordcount over the course of the days. These mysteriously petered out by halfway through day three. My end wordcount was a mere twenty-eight thousand words. Not even a third of the way to my goal. This is, however, not a frustration or a disappointment to me. Nor is it seen as a failure of mine to stick to my goal and deadline and the like. Allow me to elaborate; it’s not like this is a short journal, anyway!
I was never going to hit ninety thousand words in six days. It was an impossible mark to reach. Between Christmas, family obligations, household obligations and frankly enough heat to fry an egg on my gorram chest, I knew going in that I would fail. I set myself an unrealistic but highly-desirable goal to do two things and two things only. Firstly, to make a hell of a dent in a new novel. This was a success, even though I have since decided to scrap this novel for another one. It just isn’t working the way I wanted it to, and I don’t think any amount of editing will fix that. The second – and far more important – goal was to establish a reasonable goal for the next time I do this. I learned a number of very important things about my writing abilities over the course of this experiment:
- I can effectively write twelve thousand words in poor conditions over the course of seven hours, while taking very short breaks for food, drink, bathroom, etc. This equates to roughly thirty words per minute.
- Thirty words per minute isn’t impressive until I realize that it’s constant. That’s thirty words per minute even when I’m not at the computer and writing.
- I can write two thousand words in a single half-hour period at a sprint.
- Treating my writing as a full-time job, at the rate of twelve thousand words a day, I could write over four million words per year.
- With my preference for writing novels capping out at least at one hundred thousand words, I could conceivably write a novel every month and still have time left over to put up a short furry story every single day of the year.
- I’m not doing that because I’m not fucking crazy.
- A more realistic goal in the meantime is six novels in a twelve month cycle, with my twelve thousand words a day split between writing and editing.
- I’m gonna spend a metric fuckton on tea.
That’s a lot to learn in a short space of time. The realization that I could write four million words a year as a full-time writer if I maintain my current pace (never mind if I train myself to higher speeds!) was a huge kick in the arse for me. I now have hard data that I’ve never truly had before. The fact that I had to abandon my experiment three days in because I desperately needed to actually relax for a little while before work ran me over again doesn’t change anything. I made the call I had to for my stress levels and I would make the same one again.
That draws my 2013 to a close. So, what’s coming in 2014, then?
Well, for starters, more furry writing. I plan to have at least one furry story uploaded every single month in the hopes of actually having a presence in the fandom again. I’ve already started work on a new series using a new method I’m calling, “I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK I’M DOING!” Now, by using the I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK I’M DOING! Method, I am basically going to write this whole series with no prior planning. Everything that I do, from the first chapter, is on the fly. If I have an idea I might jot it down and use it later, but I’ve done no planning. I don’t know who the characters are before I start. I don’t know what the plot is. I don’t know what the overarching story is going to include. I don’t know how the players develop. All I know is that I’m writing, and it’s actually pretty gorram fun. The series is tentatively titled Blood And Water, and you should see the first piece of it up in the middle of January. That’s right; just a week and a half or so out!
My previous journal mentioned my hope to have three novels written and cleaned up and prepared for self-publication online. While that’s looking like quite the ask, I am not at all uncertain of my ability to do it. Last year I didn’t know what I was getting into and what all could possibly have gone wrong. This year I have grown so much as a writer and a person that I’m prepared. Shit’s gonna go wrong. I’m gonna get fucked over. No matter what happens though, I have months to get done what I now know I could complete in a matter of weeks. I have the knowledge, forethought and drive to accomplish my goals now, where last year I only had vague hopes and dreams.
Three mainstream novels.
At least one furry novel.
Consistent furry writing for upload here.
Working toward writing sustainability as a career.
Fuck.
Well… no one can claim I don’t dream big. Strap in, boys and girls. 2014 may well make or break me!
- Faora
Hopefully this finds most of you recovering from the food-coma haze of the Christmas period and the alcohol-induced haze of your New Year’s celebrations. Work’s probably started up for the majority of people, and life has gone back to its normal, boring old routines.
It’s pretty much the same for me, though my routines are shifting a whole hell of a lot. We’ll get to that shortly and what that means for my writing in the fandom, but for the moment let’s go and have a look at what I wanted to accomplish for 2013 and what I actually did!
2013 was… not a good year for me. My ambitions were high, but life conspired against me in a great many different ways to screw me over. Six full-length completed novels and another completed first draft was a bit beyond me, even with so much work already completed on many of them. Still, I got stuck in as best I could.
One of the hardest things to do as a writer is let go of your work. This can be either to send it off for publication, or to set it aside for a while to gestate, or even to cast off because you weren’t good enough. Three separate novels last year were given the flick because of the realization that my writing hadn’t advanced to the point where I could effectively tell the stories I wanted to tell. It’s a soul-crushing feeling for me, to see that I’m just not quite good enough to do what I once thought myself so capable of doing. Pushing through that is something I’m still working on.
MPreg March came back with a vengeance this last year, and to continued (in my mind, at least), success. Rounding out the Serevokin story with The Missing Link was a whole mess of fun, and it seems to have been popular with everyone who’s read it. Whether or not I continue with the Serevokin stories this March will remain to be seen. Equally, I may not even continue with the male impregnation stuff at all. It was born out of a desire to test myself in new material that I don’t always write. While I might still do it from time to time, I think I should perhaps move onto new challenges. We’ll see. Leave your thoughts in a comment; I’ll give them all due weight!
I did mention in the last journal that, in the middle of the year, I fired off a novel to Sofawolf in the hopes of publication. This novel is the culmination of years of planning and work, but was not without its flaws and difficulties. Had I the time and the stomach to rewrite it from scratch for the eighth time, I would have done so. However, as previously stated, life last year was just a complete trainwreck for me. Instead, the decision was made to edit what existing work I had to update it as much as possible. While I fear that this may hurt the chances of publication – and the overall quality of the piece, much to my chagrin – it was the only viable option I had. I had to put something out, if only for my own peace of mind. I’ve been sick of sitting on this for the last nearly six years now.
NaNoWriMo came and went and saw another rough novel being halfway created. NaNo is always a chore for me, but not for the same reasons as most writers. Writing a little under seventeen hundred words a day doesn’t bother me; I recently learned that at a sprint I can write two thousand words in half an hour. However, tumultuous living conditions and constant shifts in my life, combined with the onset of what has become frustratingly nightly panic attacks when I try to sleep, rendered impotent my ability to write more than that. I hit my NaNo word goal not easily, but with gritted teeth and sweat-glistened brow. I love the work, but I have to now clean it up.
Fae’s Christmas Music-Themed Special 2013 went well, though it seemed a lower-key affair than previous years. The big underachiever has to have been Blind Winter which, while appreciated for what it is, was perhaps not the best choice for the first story of the special. Fun to write but with some heavy themes, maybe I should have gone with something else first. Make Me Lose Control was well-received, though not as well as Separate Ways or I Want To Come Over. The latter became the most favourited piece of the Special by a wide margin, and the former brought on calls to write a novel or series to follow it up. Then, of course, there’s Turn Back Time.
Part of the fun for me is the constantly growing and evolving story arc that I try to maintain each year. Yes, most of this year’s Special stories had their roots in previously-written pieces, but the only really coherent story series within the Special (currently, at least) is that of Lucas and Taylor of Luka, Insensitive and Turn Back Time. I absolutely love the comments I receive, but the ones for the story arcs are particularly appreciated. It makes me feel all the warm fuzzies to know that people are investing themselves in the characters, and that they don’t want to wait until twelve months are up to explore their future. It helps to reinforce that I’m doing my job well, and words can’t express the gratitude I feel at reading just those few lines of thought you leave behind. To everyone who comments, I salute you.
Finally for 2013, I had a very, very ambitious project at the very tail end of the year: Fae’s Six-Day Novel-Writing Challenge the Third Esquire. I… may have gotten a little carried away with the title. Regardless, the challenge was simple: take a few days off work and just write like it’s my only job in the world. Six days. Ninety thousand words. How did I do? Well… not great.
People who followed my twitter (@faorameridian) would perhaps have noticed that I was doing hourly and bi-hourly updates there on my wordcount over the course of the days. These mysteriously petered out by halfway through day three. My end wordcount was a mere twenty-eight thousand words. Not even a third of the way to my goal. This is, however, not a frustration or a disappointment to me. Nor is it seen as a failure of mine to stick to my goal and deadline and the like. Allow me to elaborate; it’s not like this is a short journal, anyway!
I was never going to hit ninety thousand words in six days. It was an impossible mark to reach. Between Christmas, family obligations, household obligations and frankly enough heat to fry an egg on my gorram chest, I knew going in that I would fail. I set myself an unrealistic but highly-desirable goal to do two things and two things only. Firstly, to make a hell of a dent in a new novel. This was a success, even though I have since decided to scrap this novel for another one. It just isn’t working the way I wanted it to, and I don’t think any amount of editing will fix that. The second – and far more important – goal was to establish a reasonable goal for the next time I do this. I learned a number of very important things about my writing abilities over the course of this experiment:
- I can effectively write twelve thousand words in poor conditions over the course of seven hours, while taking very short breaks for food, drink, bathroom, etc. This equates to roughly thirty words per minute.
- Thirty words per minute isn’t impressive until I realize that it’s constant. That’s thirty words per minute even when I’m not at the computer and writing.
- I can write two thousand words in a single half-hour period at a sprint.
- Treating my writing as a full-time job, at the rate of twelve thousand words a day, I could write over four million words per year.
- With my preference for writing novels capping out at least at one hundred thousand words, I could conceivably write a novel every month and still have time left over to put up a short furry story every single day of the year.
- I’m not doing that because I’m not fucking crazy.
- A more realistic goal in the meantime is six novels in a twelve month cycle, with my twelve thousand words a day split between writing and editing.
- I’m gonna spend a metric fuckton on tea.
That’s a lot to learn in a short space of time. The realization that I could write four million words a year as a full-time writer if I maintain my current pace (never mind if I train myself to higher speeds!) was a huge kick in the arse for me. I now have hard data that I’ve never truly had before. The fact that I had to abandon my experiment three days in because I desperately needed to actually relax for a little while before work ran me over again doesn’t change anything. I made the call I had to for my stress levels and I would make the same one again.
That draws my 2013 to a close. So, what’s coming in 2014, then?
Well, for starters, more furry writing. I plan to have at least one furry story uploaded every single month in the hopes of actually having a presence in the fandom again. I’ve already started work on a new series using a new method I’m calling, “I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK I’M DOING!” Now, by using the I DON’T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK I’M DOING! Method, I am basically going to write this whole series with no prior planning. Everything that I do, from the first chapter, is on the fly. If I have an idea I might jot it down and use it later, but I’ve done no planning. I don’t know who the characters are before I start. I don’t know what the plot is. I don’t know what the overarching story is going to include. I don’t know how the players develop. All I know is that I’m writing, and it’s actually pretty gorram fun. The series is tentatively titled Blood And Water, and you should see the first piece of it up in the middle of January. That’s right; just a week and a half or so out!
My previous journal mentioned my hope to have three novels written and cleaned up and prepared for self-publication online. While that’s looking like quite the ask, I am not at all uncertain of my ability to do it. Last year I didn’t know what I was getting into and what all could possibly have gone wrong. This year I have grown so much as a writer and a person that I’m prepared. Shit’s gonna go wrong. I’m gonna get fucked over. No matter what happens though, I have months to get done what I now know I could complete in a matter of weeks. I have the knowledge, forethought and drive to accomplish my goals now, where last year I only had vague hopes and dreams.
Three mainstream novels.
At least one furry novel.
Consistent furry writing for upload here.
Working toward writing sustainability as a career.
Fuck.
Well… no one can claim I don’t dream big. Strap in, boys and girls. 2014 may well make or break me!
- Faora
