The Beginning of the Third Age

Following the nuclear fallout from the great Atomic Wars on 2789 AE, Kannists and Berserkers alike established a government from the ashes to ensure that no fighting as horrific as the nuclear warfare would ever occur again. Instead, they began looking outward into the stars, to regain what had been lost during the long absence of the Second Age. The Tiger Race had renounced their seven century long reign over the throne of the Ten Empires and upon took the place of the Ox Race, beginning the Third Age of the Ten Empires, the age of space exploration for the Kannists and Berserkers.

Rift Travelling, Pros and Cons

Even after the nuclear fallout, knowledge of travelling through the Multiverse remained. The Multiverse was theorized to be connected by the Rift, a tangent universe with our own that connected all universes out there together into a giant network. All it took was a proper particle collapse using a neutrino discharger with a miniature haldron collider and a zero force displacement field to start a chain reaction that would cause the Rift to not only be tangible in our universe, but also make it visible as a wormhole. By going into this portal, you can then be taken from one place to the next in the blink of an eye, similar to teleportation. They were able to construct such a piece of machinery that had all of these features needed to generate a Rift Portal. This machine was known as the Rift Portal Drive, or RP Drive.

However, there are some downsides to this remarkable form of travelling. First off, the Rift is a relatively unpredictable means of travelling throughout the multiverse, as you never really know where you're going to head off to. It's important to keep the coordinates of where you are stored within the RP Drive as a default point to get you back in case you find yourself lost or trapped someplace that'll get you killed.

Secondly, travelling alone as a single person, even in a full varia suit is also dangerous, because not only of the first problem, but also that objects conceding the mass equal to 600 kgs fly right through the Rift. This may sound fine and dandy, except even if you were to plot a course to where you wanted to go, you could wind up going somewhere else, regardless of how specific you are, because the Rift is such a chaotic means of travelling.

Objects equal to or exceeding this mass, however, are sent to an nexus of infinite spatial mass where all objects that would cause the least amount of friction. This place is simply known as the Fulcrum. A ship larger than 600 kg could be sent here and be able to replot the course they were wanting to go to ensure that they didn't wind up getting lost, and they can take as much time as they need or want to. Time is conserved when travelling through the rift, meaning however long it takes you to get from point A to point B is however long it takes you to get through. In fact, it completely bypasses the time-space theory on an object travelling faster than the speed of light in space.

And so, instead of using environmental rift suits as originally planned, the scientists instead were asked to construct a long ranged shuttle with capabilities of flying through both space and atmospheric conditions of all kinds, also known as an aerospace craft. After months of slaving over blue prints, the very first Rift Scout, named the Monarch, was built, and remained a mainstay in multiverse exploration for 20 years before unmanned Rift Probes stole the spotlight.

Note: No one has ever truly seen or stepped foot on the Fulcrum. It's believed that to be an accumulated mass of debris and matter from stuff colliding together and building up to a piece of what could be considered a planet. However, being an unpredictable void still, it's been strictly enforced to never walk out of a ship while inside the fulcrum.


The Monarch

The Monarch, named after the butterfly, is an ancient, one manned rift-travelling scout ship used to map out the multiverse in the early days of the Ten Empires. It was lightly armored, vacuum sealed, with a small lounge room with emergency supplies and enough life support to last a week. Packing a single fusion powered engine with ball and socket auxilary thrusters for space travel, the ship could reach up to mach five in flight, and could turn on a dime with the thrusters in space. However, these older models didn't come equipped with computer controlled EM Locks like today. They had hydraulic pistons which gauged durasteel bars and locked the thrusters in place, and it all had to be done manually from the cockpit. These processes could take over an hour to do.

Another distinct feature that marked all of today's aerospace craft was the G-Diffuser, an artificial gravity generator that also affected the ship as well, generating an equalizing state of gravity between the ship and interstellar objects like stars, black holes, and large planets. Regardless of the gravitational strength, the Monarch could fly through atmospheres and ride close to the sun, protected by varia shielding and advanced sil plating(Artificial silicon made fifty times as resilient to heat, cold, and radiation), without being affected at all by outside gravitational pulls. This always proved useful, as it eliminated the need of giant boosters to push a ship far enough out a planet's atmosphere. The ship would be able to go at a constant velocity without any need to accelerate. However, other laws like wind speed and air pressure still apply. That's why the Monarch was outfitted with folding wings that could be extended out in case of environmental changes. Tail fins also extend out for extra flying capabilities.

The ship upon leaving its flight zone would punch in a random set of coordinates from the Rift Drive. Since they didn't really know where to find anything, they just let the RP Drive punch in stuff at intervals of 30 seconds. After replotting their course, if needed, the ship would go outside into the the new location, and start taking photographs and visual readings of their environments in all sorts of spectra. The RP Drive would then warp the ship to a different location, and would repeat this process until about the hundredth or so warp before warping back to the location it started at before. These coordinates were then uploaded into a computer and evaluated by the Science Division, where they kept the locations of interest stored in the RP Drive memory bank and deleted the rest which weren't so interesting(Usually every six out of a hundred were ever found interesting). This process was done with a team of twenty, highly paid daredevil pilots every day, five days a week, four weeks a month, and nine months every year(vacation time was given to the pilots of these monarchs), for 20 years, giving them 432,000 different usable and interesting locations to explore. That's quite a lot of stuff to explore isn't it? And this is what laid down the basic reconnection of the ten empires across the planets which the Lunari had first laid down for the ruins and later the Kannists.

The life of a Monarch pilot

The pilots of these rift scouts were often a select few taken from the Orodon's imperial air force and sometimes the navy, though a select few were actually rogue pilots who owned their own planes from as far back as the atomic wars, often used to entertain crowds at public outings.

These pilots were very well taken of, including medical insurance and a dental plan, largely to ensure that the health and needs were taken care of to make sure they could do their jobs and fly. They were provided with room and board within the limits of the science division, where utilities, maintenance and water were paid for. They were all put into segregated apartments with four people to each room. Each apartment unit had a kitchen, a living room with an LCD Television and cable, two bathrooms and a vanity room, and four bedrooms for each pilot. There was also a pantry and broom closet for keeping cleaning supplies, though a maid was brought in every week to clean up the place.

Every week from monday to friday, the pilots would wake up early in the morning, get dressed and clean themselves to prepare for another day of Rift Travelling, taking either cars or buses to make it to the pilot stations. They would then gear up, be given their assignments, review some safety rules every day, and then enter their ships. They travelled through 100 portals a day, completing about eight hours of work, would park back into the station, and would then have the rest of the day as they wished. They had saturdays and sundays off for religious practice, and had three months paid vacation time in the summer to visit family and get rejuvenated for the upcoming travels. Sounds like a good job, right?

Wrong. As a matter in fact, the Rift Pilot's drives weren't always pleasant and easy. Some of these rift potrals were dangerous. A rift pilot could fly in from anywhere, from the insides of a creature's stomach to the center of a supernova to even a field of beautiful, man eating gorilla flowers. They would not only have to maneuver their way out of danger until the RP Drive rewarped them, but sometimes, the RP Drive would shut down out of nowhere, or a leak in the hull could risk shooting the pilot out of the monarch. Despite how much a pilot could be prepared, they could never fully expect what would pop out at them in the realm of chaos. Sometimes, a pilot would never come back, forcing the need to get a replacement.

Because of this, eventually the Science Division decided that it would be safer to use the unmanned space probes in place of pilots, leaving the pilots out of work and either looking for new jobs or re enlisting back into the military. Dangerous as it was, some pilots found the experience fun, and these pilots helped pave the way for Multiverse Travel through the Rift. Let us never forget these pilots and their sacrifice.

--END LOG--