Heya. I figured I'd write a "little" journal to explain a little bit more about the setting of No Return, because I initially designed it as a TTRPG campaign setting; there's a lot of info baked into the background and history of the galaxy. Explaining all that lore tends to interrupt the flow and pacing of certain scenes, I am noticing.

The basic premise of the setting is a far future where Humanity has spread to many different habitable worlds. This mass seeding happened over the course of tens of thousands of years, and many generations of Humans had to live in space-bound colonization-ships before arriving at their destinations. This time in travel was spent modifying their genomes with the DNA they brought with them - samples from Earth - to better adapt to the new environments.

Many thousands of years after these colony arks were dispatched, Humans discovered true warp-travel, and it was in short order that contact was re-established with these splinter-races. Humanity forged a galactic council with these descendant races, who by now each had their own customs, histories, and even biology.

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The Races:
Although life is rare in the galaxy, it's common enough that Humans were able to identify dozens of potentially-habitable planets. Some of these planets had their own biomes, some more complex than others. However, true intelligent life has only evolved twice in the Milky Way of this setting; first were the Riak, the elder race. Second were Humans.

Riak:
The closest thing to living gods the galaxy has seen, Riak evolved as an arachnoid race on a world close to the center of the Milky Way, called Ranorada, many millions of years ago. They are gifted with unnatural mental abilities, allowing them to do many incredible feats; they can dominate the minds of lesser beings, they can telepathically speak and link to one-another without physical contact, and they can even fold space-time psychically. However, not all Riak were gifted; there existed a caste system in their race, between those who could use these psionic abilities and those who could not. Those Riak who could not use their mental abilities were treated as slaves - and if they dared resist, simply dominated to erase their free will.

Disagreement on the nature of this slave caste was the crux of the fracture within the Riak. Whereas one faction wanted to free the slaves and champion autonomy, the other faction believed dominion over the universe was Riak birthright, and sought to merge their consciousness into a single collective. The first faction became known as the Zyr; the second became known as the Chorus.

These ideologies were incompatible. Where the Chorus sought to bring all into a harmony that was predestined, the Zyr believed that harmony without consent was violence. The war that resulted shook the cosmos, obliterating the galaxy-spanning Riak empire. Eventually, the Chorus vanished, leaving behind only a spattering of the Zyr survivors and the aforementioned non-psionic slave class, now free to choose their own destiny, who would eventually be known as the Advia.

Humans:
Humanity's fate was shaped by the discovery of a mineral with unique properties, found within an ancient seabed on Mars. This mineral was almost like black gold, and it held the capacity for the generation of negative energy. Unknown to Humans, they had discovered debris from the Riak war, and within it was contained the Riak's ability to warp space.

Humans wouldn't discover that until the mistake had already been made. Setting up this mineral in generators within the high atmosphere of Venus, Humans began an experiment to absorb the heat from the hell-planet; in 50 years, the planet should be cooled enough to reverse the effects of the runaway greenhouse cycle. However, an errant mass ejection from the Sun caused the generators to malfunction - and in doing so, reveal the true power of Riakite, which was to use negative energy to manipulate space-time.

Venus vanished; teleported some distance away, in the orbit of Bernard's Star.

The knock-on effect within the Solar System was felt immediately, with Earth's orbit being disrupted due to the loss of its sister planet. This disruption would spawn the great scramble - the construction of the colony arks, the mass migration to Mars (which by then had been sufficiently terraformed to be chilly but not frozen). The societal turmoil also spawned Earth's greatest and most terrible leader: Tanus the Revolutionist. The question of who earned a seat on the arks or on the freighters to Mars created mass upheaval that was wrangled by Tanus as he rose to power; but Tanus is a story for another time.

So soon after the discovery that Riakite could bend space, Humans hadn't yet managed to refine it into reliable warp engines. The best they could equip the colony arks with, were more short-distance "jump drives", that pulled space closer to the engine in a limited vicinity. The journey of the arks were thus not smooth, and nobody aboard was much protected from the effects of relativity.

To survive on the new worlds Humans had identified, would require a mix of cybernetic enhancement and biological gene-manipulation. Since the universe was not necessarily teeming with effective DNA codes, the ark-Humans mined the codes of animals which they brought along - dogs, cats, birds, and so on. Over the course of many generations and much trial and error, the peoples that arrived on the selected colony-worlds were humanoids, for sure, but no longer quite human.

These days, the Human homeworld is considered Mars, now called Mavorte. Although Humans managed to recolonize and terraform Earth back to habitable conditions after its' freezing-over, it isn't quite the same, and is now called Cel (pronounced "chell"). The Sun is now called Pesedjet, and the star and each of the planets is associated with a deity from the Ennead: the Sun with Atum; Mercury with Set for his sailing beside the sun on his barque; Nephthys with Venus, a feminine aspect of funerary rites due to Venus leading to Earth's cataclysm; Earth/Cel with Osiris, the god of death who was reborn; Mars/Mavorte is symbolized with Nut, the goddess of astronomy, for the discovery of Riakite which allowed Humans to reach the stars; Jupiter is associated with Geb, whose gravitational pull forged the solar system; Saturn with Isis, the most majestic planet who's rings are slowly fading; Uranus/Ouranos is symbolized by the wind god Shu; and finally Neptune is associated with Tefnut, goddess of water and consort of Shu.

----other races----

The Drake

Human experimentation with Riakite had alerted the old Advia to their existence. What followed was Humanity's first encounter with an alien race - and a violent one. The Humans gave a nickname to the aliens who they made contact with, calling them The Drake - a visual cue from the shape and bulk of their cybernetic exoskeletons. I won't go into the details of The Drake War for now, suffice to say that the paranoia and militarism of Tanus had proven extremely leaden with foresight. The Battle of Mars concluded the war, with the Drake retreating back their central world, Advia.

As Humans had evolved, the Advians had devolved. Over many millions of years their bodies deteriorated and they began to rely more and more on technology. Between the end of the Riak civil war and the start of the Drake War, the Advia were essentially unrecognizable; having gone from horse-sized spider-like creatures to a permanent larval state; a weak fleshy grub no larger than a football. Their intelligence remained, however, and they used it to build themselves a cybernetic world, with each Drake utterly reliant on technology and the construction of armored exoskeletons to interact with the outside.

Fresh off their defeat at the hands of the Humans, the Drake spiraled into thousands of years of disharmony and infighting, until eventually Advia became a pile of rubble and rust at the hands of-

The Thragg

Hailing from colonized-planet Gryllan, the Thragg are a beastly race descended from the Human arks. Gryllan was a heavy and hostile world, a mega-jungle planet where most of the world rested in permanent tropical conditions. Gryllan is 1.5 Earth's mass and 1.55x Earth's gravity, being 1.3x Earth's radius. Around a yellow giant star with high metallicity, the planet also boasted a level of oxygen similar to Earth's prehistoric past; this led to the evolution of megafauna and flora, and an absolutely ruthless food chain. To survive this nightmarish greenhouse planet, the Thragg had to somehow become the deadliest predators around - and they succeeded.

Thagg became analogous to deathclaws from fallout: rising over 7 feet tall, with bones 3-5 times stronger than a normal Human's. They incorporated a hyperactive immune system in their genome to combat the incredibly deadly bacteria and viruses of Gryllan, and designed themselves to breed efficiently and quickly, to replenish lost numbers. Their most notable feat of genetic engineering was managing to completely re-wire the brain's sensation of pain; a pureblooded Thragg does not sense agony, but instead perceives it as a kind of numb tingling pleasure.

When Humanity eventually reached out to its splinter-descendants, the Thragg spat at them. Thousands of years of being brutal predators and having to rely on violence made them resistant to diplomacy. When they got their hands on Riakite technology and began to colonize the stars though - that's when they became truly a threat.

The Thragg War lasted 363 Earth-years, and the minotaur-like race were a galactic menace. Their ability to breed combined with their sheer physicality made them an immense threat, and the Tanus Predominance - the Human government - struggled and failed to contain them. When finally the Thragg annihilated the Drake to near-extinction, the Humans knew they needed a new ingredient to battle them; 322 years after the Thragg War began, the Tanus Predominance officially forged a military alliance with the other splinter-races.

It would still take over 40 years to push the Thragg back to Gryllan, but the military alliance was successful, and would grant the races involved a number of inalienable rights under the tenets of the treaty. For the Thragg's part they never officially surrendered, and thus Gryllan remains blockaded to this day in-setting, with Thragg not allowed to leave the planet.

However, not all Thragg were part of their race's war and bid for dominance. Many existed on outposts, or in deep space, or scattered to become pirates. Stanley is descended from one of these Thragg who's ancestors managed to avoid getting caught up in the Thragg War; generations of not living on Gryllan has softened Thragg genetics, and now there are folks like Stanley who have Thragg heritage, but present a softer and more civilized form of the horned race.

The Rak'l

The dog-like Rak'l are Humanity's closest companions, having modified their genetics heavily with canine components. The race's culture is steeped in binary symbolism because their people are divided almost evenly between two sub-races.

Rak'l hail from the planet Gorrelik, a tidally-locked planet around a quiet orange-dwarf star. Because the planet is tidally locked, half of it exists in perpetual daytime and is incredibly arid under a honey-gold sky; whereas the other half is locked in permanent night and winter. The planet's climate is regulated by twin moons, which orbit Gorrelik periodically and affect its' water cycles (and axial tilt) to create a circulation of moisture and heat, in lieu of proper seasons. To survive on this world, the Rak'l genetics diverged greatly, with the more arid-bound settlers adopting jackal and hyena traits; and the tundra-locked colonizers giving themselves the thick fur coats of wolves, coyotes, and sled dogs. The two moons also add symbolism to the dual nature of Rak'l culture, with each moon representing one of the halves of the whole - H'tun the arid moon, and Rek'not the tundra moon.

The native biosphere of Gorrelik is mostly concentrated in the twilight-zone between night and day, or else microadapted to the other biomes. The arid side is heavy with snaking rivers that offer sustenance to large herd animals, venomous ambush predators, and large avian terrors; the snowy side is inhabited by small mammals who adapted to the tundra with thick coats, and vast evergreen forests which have formed a perverse relationship with the mammals - the mammals eat their berries and distribute their seeds, but in return the trees have adapted to get most of their nutrients from corpses disposed at their roots.

The Rak'l distinguished themselves during the Thragg War, being the only race capable of physically competing with the Thragg, and earning the savage race's begrudging respect. Rak'l these days are commonplace amongst Human worlds, and their simple genetics make them easily compatible for hybrid lineages. They bear many of the biological advantages of being a humanoid canine - their strong nose being their most prominent, the most potent in the galaxy.

Asar

Hailing from the desert world of Asaril, the Asar adapted themselves with feline genetics to maximize their ability to operate at dawn and dusk. Asaril is a world situated in a binary star-system; it's primary star is an old red dwarf, in a tight (but slightly eccentric) 3:2 spin resonance orbit; further away is a yellow dwarf Sun-like star which lends itself to Asaril having complex Milankovitch cycles. A large iron core and atmosphere that is 1.3x thicker than Earth's contribute to containing heat within the planet while maintaining strong enough winds that no part of the planet becomes too hot for life. However, the dual stars contribute to a day cycle that makes true night-time rare, and while the desert conditions are survivable, they are not comfortable (the iron core generates a strong magnetosphere which defends the planet from charged particle bombardment). In addition, Asaril bears a large moon called Kazerad, which also has a slightly eccentric orbit and contributes to why the planet is not tidally locked to it's red star. The planet is slightly less massive than Earth, giving it 0.9x the gravity, and leading to the Asar being more lithe and thin on average than Humans.

When ark settlers approached Asaril, they had the challenge of adapting themselves to these harsh conditions. The colonists decided upon modified feline genetics - the scorching daytime temperatures favored powerful twilight vision, to operate at peak productivity when able. A coat of radiation-resistant fur helped them deal with the intense red sun, and the unique quirk of giving themselves 4 ears made use of the thicker atmosphere to better detect sounds; a very useful trait to avoid the train-sized sand-wurms that call the sands of Asaril home.

Old sandwurm migration beds lay the groundwork for Asaril's complex network of giant rivers, which flow from the great glaciers that cap the planet's poles - besides these and the odd lake, the planet's surface is low on water, having no major oceans. Weather and seasons on the planet speak not in terms of months and years, but in decades and centuries; contingent on a thousand small interactions between the planet, its moon, and its two stars. In broad strokes however, the native life on Asaril began to rise billions of Earth years prior, before long-term orbital interactions widened the star-binary; back then, the yellow star offered more effective light for photosynthesis. Over time as the yellow star drifted away, life adapted to take light where it could get it, and great Blooms now cover the desert in millennia- long cycles that coincide with great glacial melting - events that occur when the two stars are closest. Animal life has adapted to these conditions as well, often having metabolisms that enable them to survive with very little water - and of course, what life exists on Asaril spent millions of years doing battle over the right to riverbank territory. Mammals are rarer on Asaril than reptilian creatures, with the planet boasting a great array of snake-like creatures that thrive in the desert. Aquatic life does exist as well, but has a rather slim margin of diversity, being confined to fresh-water rivers and lakes.

Culturally, the Asar are the most religious race in the galaxy, having derived their own strange theocratic tenets from legends of the original Sol system and its symbolic reconfiguration under Tanus. Asaril itself is comprised of 42 nomes, or provinces, each headed by a massive temple-city and ruled over by God-Princes; these rulers are understood to speak for the Gods, and every cycle a new one amongst them is decided upon to be the interim God-King/Queen - who acts as a kind of walking pantheon, possessed of the essence of all Gods at once.

Asar are elegant, placing great emphasis on beauty and pleasing form, and their works of art and gold-crafting fetches the highest price in the galaxy (next to Riakite, of course). They are a passionate and free-willed people, known for their adventurousness, curiosity, and a fierce rebellious streak. They strike a strange balance of being artists, explorers, and worshipers. They are confident to a fault, most believing in a protective divine will, and saw the Thragg War as less of a fight for survival and more of a forgone conclusion of victory; a chance to show off their grace and competence. They sometimes struggle with official rank within the Tanus Predominance's military structure - but when put in a position of command, they excel as some of the most renowned captains sailing the stars.

T'zinza

If Asaril was harsh on life, the T'zinza homeworld of Rellian bearing a biosphere is downright miraculous. To explain the T'zinza, one must first explain Rellian.

A former rogue planet, Rellian was captured by the gravity of a devastatingly-bright blue-white star called Cirahma. Life started on Rellian in eons past, before whatever orbital interaction flung it away from its original system - and even the deep freeze of space could not extinguish it, as the planet's core provided enough thermal heat to sustain a sub-surface ocean and life for millions of years. When Rellian approached Cirahma, the great thawing began - but to be replaced with a new challenge, as the power of the sapphire sun approached 9000 kelvin.

Gravitational interaction with Cirahma and its single native planet - a Jovian giant called Nesos - slowed the passing of Rellian and caught it within the orbit of the star, and after a few millennia, it settled into the distant habitable zone. Although the planet now received sufficient heat, it still had to contend with Cirahma's intense radiation. Adaptation came relatively quick, and over the course of the next 500 million years, a network of massive plant roots tunneled through the world, creative vast and complicated caverns.

In the current day, Rellian remains as a blasted planet, with an unassuming barren surface. However, the planet is larger than Earth and bears an unexpectedly robust, oxygen-rich atmosphere - which is how it was marked for potential habitation in the first place. All of the planet's action takes place in the tunnels and caverns below the rocky exterior: volcanism is still happening, and vast subterranean oceans darken the abyss. Although Cirahma's light is relentless, it does not penetrate beneath the surface; the underground is instead illuminated by a bizarre and staggering amount of bioluminescent insects and fungi. The plants within Rellian have vivid and ultraviolet pigments, which inform the many specific symbiotic relationships they bear with the bugs, and they often bear fruit encased in thick, radiation-resistant shells. Many of these symbioses are descendant from bonds made eons before, in the selective pressures of deep space.

Humans approaching Rellian in colony arks were faced with a stark realization; they would be forced to undergo significant alterations to survive on the blasted world. In a wise premonition of the dominant animal life on Rellian, these settlers took to insects for genetic alterations. They abolished their weak Human skin, instead adopting a chitinous armor to protect them from radiation. Worried about their odds of survival, the settlers surrendered their dimorphism as well, and became a unigendered species capable of laying clutches of eggs at a time, to maximize reproductive potential. Indeed - when the settlers finally arrived at Rellian after thousands of years of travel, they no longer resembled Humans at all.

The next several thousand years before re-contact was marked by even more divergence of the T'zinza from their Human origins. To better see in the underground tunnels of Rellian, the T'zinza gave themselves wide eyes with greater sensitivity to wavelengths of light; to better react to the hundreds of venomous insects of the underworld, they modified their nervous system to react to danger more quickly; they even moved their reproductive organs to be external, situated within large scorpion-like tails. When Humanity re-contacted the T'zinza, it was only through carefully-preserved records that they established a common ancestry at all; Rellian had completely re-shaped them.

Today, the T'zinza are a race that gives the rest of the galaxy pause. They are stronger than they look, naturally armored, and unexpectedly quick. They bear tails that can lash out up to 2 meters way from their bodies, tipped with razor-sharp needles that can pierce the heart of any fleshy victim in a flash. Highly individualistic and aloof, the T'zinza also bear truly alien minds by this point, capable of a level of cunning which rivals artificial intelligence. Most concerning, however, is the fact that modern-day T'zinza have the ability to implant their eggs into the bodies of other humanoid creatures if they wished, turning those victims into hosts for their progeny. This potential to violate the autonomy of others at a whim make the T'zinza the subject of many rumors and no small amount of paranoia.

During the Thragg War, the T'zinza were recruited for their minds over their other attributes, and they worked behind the scenes as strategists; this was also partly because the Tanus Predominate were wary about allowing T'zinza to freely access bodies of the virile Thragg. In fact, it's been said that the Predominate would not have achieved victory if the apex-predator T'zinza didn't orchestrate their tactics. The Predominate keep tabs on the T'zinza and watch them with concern - if the insectoids actually showed an interest in galactic domination, the Predominate isn't confident that they could be easily stopped.

However, the T'zinza nation is quiet. What few of them can be found around the galaxy are either diplomats or pirates; the odd T'zinza who joins the Tanus military as an officer is especially rare, but when it occurs, they always shoot up through the promotional ranks in record time. Some T'zinza make headway as renowned geneticists, as their skill and knowledge on the subject is the greatest in the galaxy. Their seat on the galactic senate usually sits empty, and T'zinza civilians who stray from Rellian are often forced back home by a heavy amount of fear and discrimination directed at them. For now, the race seems content to probe the galaxy with noncommittal antennae, safe within their great cavern-cities below the surface of their scorched planet.

Anat

The last major race to discuss also underwent significant change, to the point where - like the T'zinza - they no longer bear children as mammals. These are the Anat, the feathered avians hailing from Caphist.

Caphist is a small planet orbiting an orange dwarf star; a warm world with low gravity (0.7x Earth's) and a near-circular orbit, leading to predictable winds and little seasonal variance. It has a thinner atmosphere than Earth, and less pressure, but comparatively more oxygen. The planet is acted upon by tidal forces, as the habitable zone for an orange star is closer than a yellow dwarf, and this yields a regular rate of volcanism; Caphist is marked by tall basalt pillars, deep chasms, and calderas; quick surface renewal, from a geological perspective. Caphist is a vertical planet, with low gravity allowing trees to grow tall into the sky, creating great airborne canopies that hold ecosystems which never see the ground. Fault valleys channel the world's wind, and great jagged mountains litter the horizon like scattered teeth.

Life on Caphist evolved into two distinct branches; the ground-based predators, who took advantage of the world's oxygen enrichment to grow large and dangerous; and the more adaptive creatures who took to the high ground to escape those predators. As the Human colony ark approached Caphist, they were unsure at how to adapt themselves to the planet, and only began to do so once they arrived.

Caphist proved similar to Earthen conditions, but with specific pressures that forced the hand of the settlers. The atmospheric pressure change was the most problematic, causing issues with the colonists' ability to circulate blood, affecting their ability to stay hydrated. The people who would become the Anat had to adapt quickly and effectively, or their mission would fail. They required lighter bodies, a larger sternum to process breathing with more efficient lungs, a more robust vestibular system to deal with the planet's vertical nature, and some kind of skin protection against the rain-forest-like conditions.

The genetics of birds fulfilled these requirements; they allowed hollow bones and thus lighter bodies, more chest room for modified lungs, improved balancing for 3D environs, and feathers to protect against daily rain. However, unlike the other races, the Anat did not have time to refine their adaptations over generations, and they were left having to accept more changes than they perhaps would have chosen. The most notable of these was to their reproductive cycle; the settlers took on the egg-laying aspect of birds, making them forever incompatible with the other ark descendants. Additionally, a flaw within their genetic tampering resulted in a great reduction of female newborns, leading to a wild cultural shift still felt today.

The Anat of modern times are about 85% male and 15% female, with egg-producing females holding high regard as matriarchal family-leaders. This gender disparity seems baseline-coded into their genetics, and has not significantly shifted for thousands of years. They are a tall, graceful, and dignified people, with their architecture and sense of style favoring vertical alignments. Their cities on Caphist are positioned to take advantage of permanent jet-streams, and their agriculture revolves around wind-borne pollination from the planet's megaflora.

"For the Greater Good" remains the Anat creed, and their culture is steeped in honor, tradition, and self-sacrifice. To die in the line of duty for one's family is the greatest end for an Anat - whether that be their actual nuclear family, their community, or their people as a whole. This emphasis on duty carries over into their sense of self-control, and for an Anat, showing emotional incontinence is a great dishonor. They wear masks to cover their faces, usually adorned with marks denoting their family crest or province of origin; first designed to protect their eyes from rain and to filter out volcanic particles, the masks now cloak the emotions of an Anat even when they leave Caphist.

During the Thragg War, the Anat were the race most easily-adapted to the Tanus Predominance's strict military structure; an ironic fact, because the Anat's tight emotional stoicism makes them seem standoffish to the other races. The idea that the Predominance would be more efficiently-run if it were ruled by the Anat is not a belief uncommon to the avian people. In truth, the Anat simply hold high standards - for themselves, and for everyone else as well.

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There's more of course; I have star maps and stuff, and there's some details on important galactic events that might crop up. One of these being why the Drake secluded themselves after the Humans beat them at the Battle of Mars; another being what became of the Chorus. But that all can wait for another time.

If you've gotten this far then I thank you for your patience ^_^;;
I'm working on part 3/3 of No Return, but I've also got a few more parts to the story that I've been fleshing out since Christmas.
Stanley's journey has barely begun.