The Galactic Repository

The setting of TGW is, unsurprisingly, The Galaxy. Specifically one mid-sized spiral galaxy known as The Milky Way. It is widely inhabited by innumerable worlds of innumerable levels of culture, society, and technology. The most populous race are the Humans, who are almost everywhere. They are followed in second by Humanoids - those who are not quite human, but due only to minor variations. (For instance, the elven Eoclu). Other races do exist and it is always possible that a new race will emerge from some previously unexplored corner of the Galaxy. (For instance, the Yinxen)

It is commonly believed that Humans have always populated the Galaxy. The idea of so expansive a race originating from a single planet is preposterous - even to the most capable, contemporary scientists. 'Earth of Sol'(That being the Earth that we live on in real life) exists only as a legend and borderline religious myth, as it has never been found, nor has any evidence of it's having ever existed in the first place.

That which is common among the vast majority of sentient beings is generally named uncreatively.
The most commonly spoken language in the Galaxy is 'Standard'.(A stilted mixture of English, Spanish, and Russian, with some Chinese nuances sprinkled in and a hint of Arabic for good measure.) Everyone speaks Standard, simply because it's what everyone else speaks. Other languages do exist, but are typically reserved to more isolated cultures. (Typically.)

The most commonly used currency is 'Standard'. It comes in the form of shiny metallic coins representing one, five and ten, and metallic nylon bills representing twenty, fifty, one hundred, and one thousand. Other currencies do exist, but barter and trade is often the best alternative.

The most commonly used method of timekeeping is 'Galactic Standard Time'. 50 seconds in a minute, 50 minutes in an hour, 20 hours in a day, 10 days in a week, 5 weeks in a month, 10 months in a year. Years are counted in cycles of one million, at which point year 999,999 would lead into year 000,001. Nobody is sure how many times the cycle has repeated.
For the purposes of redundancy the starting date of TGW will be considered:
[02:03:06-346,935]
Local planetary time is also used often - that being time which depends on variables such as planetary rotation, orbit, etc. Usually clocks will display both LP and GS time.

The most commonly used method of transit is The Stardrive, which is capable of moving large masses at faster-than-light speeds, resulting in an average transit time between systems of one to seven days - obviously depending on the trip. No successful, returning voyage is known to have been made outside the Galaxy.

High above Earth City, the silence of open sky was suddenly broken when a great flaming wreckage came descending like some hellish asteroid. In an impressive show of wrath, the oblong vessel broke in two and proceeded to dig out respective craters in close proximity, far off in the Southern Jungle. The flames burned a clearing around the desolated ‘ground zero’, but petered out before any further damage could be done.
But this ancient ship, which had been idly orbiting Earth IV’s moon as presumed space junk for longer than anyone could remember, was only the first in a rapid series of collisions. An unknown anomaly in the planet’s electromagnetic sphere had suddenly begun to interfere with the critical systems of every flying machine within the atmosphere – but the majority of the disturbance was located just around the Southern Jungle.

The second collision was that of a sleek, but primitive single-man craft that looked like it hadn’t been serviced in decades. Tar-black smoke bellowed from behind it as it began to glide along the treetops, the unusually precise pilot doing their best to land without dying. The small craft carved out a path through the trees and into the ground, finally coming to a halt not far from the first wreck.

The only survivor – if it could be called that – of the initial wreck was the ancient combat droid CD-407B, who preferred to go by Bravo. Thickly accented and inherently infuriating, Bravo engaged the pilot of the second ship which had crashed in the clearing.

He was The Mad Ranger – Tall, a long old duster over body armor, and a masked helmet with hollow, ominously glowing eyes. The Ranger had, like so many enthusiastic explorers and adventurers, been searching for the legendary Earth of Sol, and it had brought him to this impostor world.

Their confrontation was interrupted briefly when a troop of twenty soldiers in advanced, black combat armor and armed to the teeth came out of the southern tree line, strolling past the two without a second glance and continuing on north. They were followed by a woman in a long, black coat – who made some peanut-gallery comments and went on her way.

Bravo claimed to be the product of an army constructed to fight a war that never happened – due to the end of the world. That world, he claimed, was Earth of Sol. He also intoned cryptic riddles about the ‘key to Earth’ and the ‘Angel Moon’.

A fourth ship crash-landed nearby, containing a troop of soldiers from a governmental body known as ‘The Alliance’ and immediately began firing on the two in an attempt at establishing order and control over the situation. They were driven into retreat, but not before The Ranger’s ship had been, intentionally or otherwise, turned into a nuclear bomb capable of blowing half the planet to nothingness.

This crisis was averted when Bravo re-wired the ship, activating the rockets and sending it skyward to detonate safely in space. As it shot up, it very narrowly missed a small, unobtrusive recon ship that had been hovering at a high altitude and watching the events unfold.

Bravo, acting erratically with corrosion of his circuits over time, proceeded to retreat into the deep jungle.

Through the eyes of that two-man surveillance ship, someone else had been watching – taking in every detail, every sound. His plan had worked – the modified electromagnetic sphere of Earth IV had finally attracted and stranded something that might be of considerable use. Bravo claimed to be from Earth of Sol, and that made him number one on Aelyn-Paeryc Petrovalyc’s ‘most wanted’.

His immense starship, the Stella Viventium, appeared over the planet and loomed like the end of the world. It was the size of the legendary New York City and those below were positively dwarfed by its’ overwhelming presence. It had appeared from nothing, without the slightest sound – A.P. knew how to make an entrance.

But rather than causing any more havoc, the cold, ominous man with the inky black eyes and the short haired, more casually dressed woman presumed to be his wife boarded a small shuttlecraft, launched from the Stella, got some distance away, and then teleported similarly to the surface. Once again, they had appeared from nothingness and stepped out onto the ravaged battlefield that once had been a large section of dense jungle.

There they met The Ranger, who was immediately offered a job – Help get that robot into Aelyn-Paeryc’s custody at any cost.

Unfortunately, the droid had been picked up and swept away by a mysterious vessel which had not made its presence known, leaving only the lack of Bravo’s electronic signature to announce that he was no longer there.

The Ranger returned with A.P. and Alexia to the Stella, where he was outfitted with new and repaired gear, armed and armored, and generally taken care of by an extensive team of eccentric experts that A.P. considered to be his ‘crew’. He built a particularly close friendship with the chief mechanic and roboticist, Drakis Volo – he would cherish the friendship for years to come.

More unexplained things were happening – an orbital laser had appeared above the scene of the previous battle and attempted to destroy A.P. and The Ranger before they could escape back to the Stella. Unusual weapons which utilized whatever technology their impossible teleportation was built from were activated from the gigantic vessel and the laser was destroyed, only to be replaced with a second one – sporting an adaptive shield. It was forced into retreat, but not without collecting the reconnaissance it needed.

The ship which had picked up Bravo and the two orbital lasers had been the property of one [Grimlock Kampfer] – a wiry man in black, with a frightening bladed mechanical hand and a thick Germanic accent. He had arrived shortly before A.P. and the Stella, proceeding with establishing a base of operations on the snowy, northern continent of ‘Siberia’. With a gargantuan army of robot soldiers he would prove to have both the resources, the means, and the motive to prove a virtually indestructible force.

As The Ranger was getting fixed up, Kampfer made contact with A.P. and introduced himself as ‘The Dimensional Lord of Technology’ – then informing him that he was in possession of ‘forbidden technology’ and that the ultimatum had been made to either surrender the ship…or be exterminated.
The Captain wasted no time in expressing his refusal and preparing a counterattack.

Kampfer had, upon realizing that he was the prize that A.P. sought, transferred Bravo from his Siberian base to the nearby city of Kartupelis. He had recently and with little trouble begun occupation of the small city, and since reinforced it to near impenetrability. Bravo was kept under the heaviest security there, forces under the command of Kampfer’s cyborg daughter, Maria Lockhart.

But Kampfer had taken an offensive, as well – opening a wormhole not far from the Stella. From it emerged what had once been a luxury starliner, now clearly infested by some alien species which had turned it into some kind of hive. It drifted lazily, but directly for the massive hull of the Stella.

Simultaneously, the Lord of Technology launched powerful naval fleet toward Earth City, led by the Z-bot Admiral Omega of the flagship Tsunami.

Forced to alter his plans, Aelyn ordered his ‘command module’ disconnected, and the remainder of the Stella retreated into hiding – by disappearing, just like it had first come. The Command module constituted all of the governmental and civic establishments aboard Stella, which kept the civilian city running smoothly.

Aelyn’s counterattack was immediate. Recognizing his inability to effectively defend the command module he disconnected a module smaller still – the ‘warship module’, armed to the teeth with all manner of the tools of destruction. The Command module rejoined the civilian module off wherever it had gone, and Aelyn was left to face the enemy alone.

In a last-ditch attempt to gain an advantage over his adversary, Aelyn detonated the great machine within the core of the planet that so affected the magnetosphere – the effect was a planet-wide EMP, intended to decimate any and all technological devices – primarily Kampfer’s robot army. Simultaneously he unleashed a barrage of explosives on the stray infected ship. Oddly, it reacted by sending out a distress signal – either automatic function or the aliens aboard were intelligent.

And then it was no more – an impressive show of fireworks from the surface.

Using the electromagnetic crippling of Kampfer’s robot army, Aelyn sent The Ranger and a small team of his most trusted agents – The Ranger among them – to infiltrate the city of Kartupelis and extract Bravo out from under their noses. With the EMP in place it would be little challenge.

Things did not go according to plan – the extraction team reached the city limits only to be met with a still fully functional army, just waiting for them. The EMP had been ineffective and Kampfer had made it seem the opposite to lull his enemy into a false success.

But it would not stop Aelyn or his team – the Captain, using up all of his combat resources very rapidly, deployed a series of autonomous military vehicles and simple combat droids to the main road leading into the city and mounted a remotely-operated frontal assault while the extraction team made their way toward the city center as subtly as they could – which was not very subtly at all.

Ultimately, The Ranger and Bravo found themselves engaged in mortal combat just as the frontal assault was beginning to be repelled. With time running out until the bulk of remaining defenses came to pulverize the tiny extraction team, the rooftops and plazas were their stage and no holds were barred. Bombs began to rain down on the little city as long-range MIRV missiles were fired from Aelyn’s warship on the other side of the world. With both sides reduced to virtual nothingness, the battle was over.
Maria fled while Aelyn desperately moved to escape his warship, which had been once again besieged and now overpowered by the orbital laser which had retreated earlier. He was just barely able to board the miniscule, bus-sized ‘Bullet’ stealth transport, landing in the decimated Kartupelis city square to evacuate his extraction team. It took some minutes to collect all of Bravo’s scattered remains and load them, but at last the mission was complete – at incredible cost – and Aelyn was able to retreat back to the Stella – wherever it had gone.

There, Aelyn finally began to give some explanations.
The Stella’s incredible teleportation ability was due to an impossibly advanced technology – the Paradox Engine – which his brother had created after somehow achieving impossible and almost godlike feats of technology. The teleportation was actually transit between the Universe and a plane of paradoxical existence and nonexistence called simply The Not, or ‘notspace’. The Stella and associated craft were the only machines in the Universe capable of harnessing the power of the Not.

Aelyn claimed to have been born and raised with his brother Paeryc on Mars – the legendary red moon of Earth of Sol – which he ludicrously insisted was actually its’ own planet. His story followed that in his time, only the Sol system was inhabited, and travel between stars was fundamentally impossible – until he and his brother invented the stardrive – that which propels every starship through the Galaxy and the endless ocean of suns.

The Stella Viventium was constructed under the strict supervision of Paeryc Petrovalyc himself, and them immediately passed to his older brother. It was a colony ship, designed to cultivate a society which would then spread out to the other worlds.

Then, one day, the entire Sol system just disappeared into nothingness – but Aelyn and the Stella, protected by integration with the Not – were spared; as were the colonists.

Bewildered, Aelyn knew not what to do, save for sitting and waiting.
When two centuries had passed and he nor his wife had aged a day, he began to suspect that something was off – that, plus the fact that they had both become completely incorporeal to anything that was not a direct extension of the Stella.


Aelyn recalled Paeryc mentioning some incredible threat to the entire populated Sol system and eventually supposed that he had somehow brought the entire system into the Not in order to protect it from his foreseen demise – but why had they never returned? Had something gone wrong? And it could have been no mistake that he, with the ship and colonists had been left behind. Taking on his brother’s name as a hyphenated addition to his own, Aelyn-Paeryc assumed that he had been the backup. If Paeryc made it all disappear and something went wrong, the colony ship would survive and go on to be mankind’s salvation.

Since time immemorial, Aelyn-Paeryc had been searching for Earth of Sol. He had become a monster – black eyes resulting from some error in the phenomenon which made him incorporeal – undying, unexisting, and now without purpose, considering that the Galaxy was now more widely populated than he ever would have imagined. But every person needed a purpose – so his would be finding Earth of Sol at any cost.

Over the next few days, Drakis Volo and Dorin Harkahn dedicated their lives to repairing Bravo back to full operating capacity.
With Bravo’s circuits no longer corroded with time, he was able to think straight. Aelyn demanded of him that he assist in locating Earth of Sol, and was promptly reminded that he had failed to search the wreckage of Bravo’s ship in order to find anything useful – things which Bravo would need if he were to be of any use.

And so a second expedition was mounted, launched in secret. They returned to an Earth City that had been ravaged with war – it glowed an eerie red on the horizon, haunting the jungle canopy, hanging there forebodingly, only hinting as to what hellish nightmare could have descended upon it in the time that Aelyn and crew had been gone.

But the city was not their target, and they were deep enough into the jungle to avoid whatever that catastrophe had been – though that was not to say their operation would go according to plan, either.
Shortly after arriving at the crash site, the extraction-team-gone-archaeologist-expedition were faced with a terrible creature – a grotesque parody of a knight, juxtaposed and relentless, spewing flame from appendages which appeared neither organic nor fabricated. The Ranger engaged the creature – which was a Dendril, one of the aliens that had appeared in the infested starliner – while the rest of the team uncovered a second survivor of the crash – a hulking humanoid mech named Arsinova.

Arsinova proved challenging to squeeze into the cramped stealth craft, and to make things worse others had appeared at precisely the most inconvenient time.

In the process of loading the ship, Aelyn discovered two stowaways, a foxkin half-breed kid and a dark skinned woman with long, white hair. Infuriated, he made to dispose of them and in his anger revealed that failing to control his emotions resulted in what appeared to be his flickering out of existence.

The stowaways were rescued by yet another newcomer – a one-eyed robot called Emperor Arthur who seemed to have only the boy’s best interest at heart, though he did not seem to appreciate the attention.

As the battle between The Ranger and the Dendril intensified, so did the effort to load Arsinova. When they had done so, the Dendril turned its’ weapons on the ship, but the Ranger valiantly held the beast off – at the expense of staying behind as a devastating nuclear explosion decimated the crash site.

Aelyn returned to the Stella to recoup and learned that things were more convoluted as they seemed Arsinova had agreed to assist in any way he could, including by downloading all his precious memory banks into the Stella mainframe – information that was actually from Earth of Sol.
But right away there were conflicts, inconsistencies – Arsinova claimed that Earth of Sol had been burned – scourged by cleansing flame at the hand of his own kind in order to keep the humans from uncovering their ancient and powerful secrets. His story proved to be true, and yet impossible – when Aelyn’s story checked out as well. Viable, legitimate data from both Earths.

Reality was collapsing.
Something had been causing a great deal of trouble between dimensions and weakening the infrastructure of spacetime, and different timestreams, different realities were beginning to collide and merge, each trying to fill some space that was in turn used to fill another.

Just as Aelyn was about to ask Arsinova where to begin, he was hailed for emergency communication. It was Admiral-Captain Wan Nabes and Benedict Severin of the heavy artillery cruiser Kingsbane.

The old physicist had little to say – only that the dimensional teleportation of both the Stella and Kampfer’s forces (Which operated only in realspace) now proved some great danger to all parties involved - but he would not digress. Instead he requested that Aelyn remain in notspace until further notice - and he would have done so, too.

The signal came from nowhere, existed for the merest instant and then was gone as if it had never been, leaving only the damage and chaos in its wake as proof that it had. Zeroes and ones, some incomprehensible code - it tampered with technology all over the Galaxy. It forced the Stella back into realspace and negatively impacted many of the Kingsbane's systems - the two ships were put on a collision course but through skilled maneuvering on both ends the deadly impact was avoided by a hair.

It was a beautiful day in Earth City. Skyscrapers towered into cyan sky streaked with gentle brushstroke clouds. The streets were filled with groudcars moving at a steady pace, the sidewalks with people going about their business. The magrails hovered and twirled around the buildings as the silent trains sped along, stopping at aerial stations to disembark passengers onto stories-high platforms. Ketin Clarke was at peace.
Yet content as he was to lay upside down on the streetside bench and lazily watch the passers-by, one particularly out-of-place individual caught his eye. A tall woman, dark of complexion with long, white-blonde hair and – most curiously – spindly black horns atop her head to compliment oddly pointed ears. Her attire was far from what would be typical anywhere on a planet such as Earth IV.

She was Nirix T’relis – member of an elven race known as Eoclu, and expert assassin – and unlucky enough to be put on Ketin Clarke’s ’indefinitely pester’ list.

The half-breed followed her around for some time, eventually separating when the appearance of someone else – who did not end up sticking around – threatened to distract Kete from her long enough to escape. Nirix proceeded to a nearby building where she met with the contractor of her previous assassination job, informing him that it had been complete and securing payment.

She returned to the lobby, only to find Kete being bullied by a security guard – this began a long series of mostly-futile attempts at protection.

Under the assumption that the half-breed was a homeless waif, Nirix offered him lunch – largely in her curiosity about him. They retreated to a small eatery run by another Eoclu who was a long-time friend of Nirix, but Kete needed to cut the meal short when he began suffering terrible headaches. They were in reality due to the strange qualities of the planet’s magnetosphere interfering with his cybernetic implants.

Kete found himself in West Park – the park that separated Earth City from the Southern Jungle. (It had apparently been named by someone who had only a cursory knowledge of basic cartography.) There he met a young man who appeared to be about the same age as himself – he was dazed and confused, tired and hungry and seemingly totally clueless as to where he was.

While Kete was in the process of trying to convince the other that he was a friend, Nirix tracked them down – only to be interrupted when some twenty black-armored spec.-ops soldiers burst from the treeline. Ketin, knowing they were after him, attempted to make Nirix and the boy look as if they were not with him and fled through the park.

The soldiers were led by a woman in a long, black coat, brandishing sword and revolver.

In a split-second decision which would change her life, Nirix chose to assist the fugitive half-breed and proceeded to systematically eliminate eighteen of the twenty soldiers. She caught up to Kete just as the woman had him pinned by the neck to a tree. One shot through the shoulder sent the woman to the ground, and while Nirix was threatening to finish the job the half-breed continued to flee under the assumption that Nirix was a bounty hunter.

Nirix gave chase, wanting to clarify, and it took them deep into ancient, natural jungle paths and clearings. As she was closing in, Lord Kampfer teleported into the area, grabbed the half-breed, and whisked him away in an instant to an interrogation room deep within his Siberian base.

Kampfer had taken a considerable interest in Kete – he had heard of the ‘Devil Eye’ in passing, but there had never been adequate reason to go looking for him. Yet in the hours past the boy had come up a number of times, and with the realization that the Galactic Empire (An organization in which Kampfer had skirmished with regularly over the decades) was spending inordinate sums of standard on trying to capture or kill him as quietly as possible, his Lordly interest was piqued.

But the real reason he was so interested was that for all the rumors and statements made about the ruthless nature of the murderous Devil Eye, this boy seemed entirely harmless and even to mean well. A psychological study, perhaps.

It did not take long for Kampfer to determine what exactly was going on with the boy – he intended no harm to anyone, he sought in fact to keep harm from coming to all he could – there was something about the kid that he liked. Kampfer offered to remove Kete’s cybernetic eye – it was the cause of most of his trouble – but the prospect terrified the boy, who could not bear to be without it now. In lieu of that, Kampfer offered total protection from the Galactic Empire under his own forces – even though Kete wanted nothing to do with him.

Kampfer sent Kete back to whence he had retrieved him some hours prior, and proceeded to the depths of his most well-guarded laboratory in order to use what he had learned from Kete’s personality to complete the artificial intelligence of his greatest creation, which would be the robot Emperor Arthur – a worthy bot to stand in for Kampfer himself while he went upon his business in the Dimensional Planes.
Ketin found himself once again in West Park – South of Earth City – night had fallen, and as he sat beneath a tree he could hear the sounds of bombs falling in the far distance up north. He chose not to look into it, and instead decided to take a walk through the old jungle paths again – running again into Nirix T’relis entirely by coincidence. She was overjoyed to see him again, and he was shyly eager for a friend he could trust. The two would stick together then, it was unspokenly decided.

Kete wanted to get off Earth IV. Kampfer had reminded him too much of someone that it deeply pained him to think about. With the occasional rumbling from the north, Kete chose to let his adventurous side take over and he went dragging the Eoclu woman southward, toward some other sound that had seemed interesting at the time.

When they arrived at the clearing, hiding expertly in the bushes and out of sight, the scene was clear, but that did not mean it entirely made sense. It was the wreckage of a very large starship which had cracked and splintered as it crashed through the atmosphere – along one mostly intact hull could be read the word Jaggernaut, presumably the old vessel’s name. Some kind of research team was doing some kind of salvage operation, apparently led by the man with the long, black hair and disturbing black eyes.

At once, chaos broke loose when a creature looking something like a knight out of hell emerged from the treeline opposite the clearing. It spewed fire from gun-like appendages and immediately set upon attacking the black haired man and his crew.

Now was the time to move – Kete dragged Nirix along and stealthily boarded the small, bus-sized ‘bullet’ stealth craft that the black haired man had brought there. He wriggled through a back panel and the two were now stowaways.

As Aelyn’s crew worked to salvage the remains of Arsinova, Aelyn himself and The Mad Ranger worked on destroying the slowly approaching, but well-armored knight thing. Even with Aelyn’s last great weapon – the gaudy, golden revolver capable of firing projectiles which interacted with the Not – it was proving a powerful adversary. Just when they were on the verge of being overwhelmed, it was Emperor Arthur that appeared from the bushes to inform them that the enemy was a Dendril. Despite that he had been a creation of Kampfer himself, Arthur proceeded to assist Aelyn and The Ranger – though Aelyn refused to trust what was clearly a creation of his enemy and fired openly on his new potential ally.


But the battle began rapidly to turn in the tide of the Dendril’s favor when Arthur sustained damage that put him out of commission for some minutes during self-repair and Aelyn was forced to retreat while the Ranger stayed behind to hold off the metal monster. As he was preparing to take off in the Bullet stealth craft, the man noticed Ketin and Nirix hid away in the rear of the vessel and promptly made to shoot the latter. It was Arthur who grabbed Nirix from the path of Aelyn’s bullet after he kicked Kete onto the ground. From there, the remainder of Aelyn’s crew boarded and made to take off.

The battle between The Ranger and the Dendril warrior came to a climax with a devastating nuclear attack. Aelyn’s bullet rode the shockwave back into space, while Kete yanked Nirix into cover and waited it out. When the smoke cleared, the Dendril had been defeated.
Having been abandoned at his own insistence, the Ranger was now stranded on Earth IV and not any closer to completing his original mission – that being to find the original Earth of Sol. After a brief confrontation between himself and Arthur (Who was continuing to keep on Ketin’s side) he made a retreat into the jungle. Arthur then convinced Ketin and Nirix to go with him under the premise that they would be given fare off the planet – which Kete wanted very badly. It did not seem like a good idea, surely a trick, but the boy felt he had little other choice.

The trio were teleported to one of Kampfer’s glacti-stationary space stations, which acted as a civilian and military base populated entirely by his robots, most of which were the very human-like ‘Z-Bots’. Kampfer (Who was at the time preparing for a surgery to transfer his consciousness into a newer, healthier body) needed only make some preparations before they could leave. That, and there was someone who wanted very strongly to meet Ketin Clarke.

That person was Doctor Sarah Glades – a living relic of the life Ketin had wished so desperately to leave behind. She had worked with Duros Aller. She had loved Ketin like her own son but had never been given the chance to show him – thus why he did not remember her. It was a stressful encounter and ended with Kete under the assumption that everyone was out to get him, even Nirix. He wanted nothing to do with any of them and the best course of action from that point out was to go get smashed and forget all his troubles.

On his way to the party, Kete stumbled into Kampfer himself and the two proceeded to get very, very inebriated. The Lord had reminded Ketin too much of Aller before, but now there would be no such association, and the two would become chummy rather quickly. From there it was music, drugs, excess, vice, sex, and the sort of adventures that would go entirely forgotten except for the pictures.

When they separated, Kete found himself again shoved back into feelings he wanted to keep away. Nirix, who had been showed to her room and spent the prior hours there, he snapped at in assumption that she wanted to get to him too. He angered Arthur with his inability to keep optimistic and was saved from having his head punched in by Glades who tranquilized him and took him off to a private room. There, when he woke up, the two talked for a long while and many of the issues were settled. They parted on good terms.

Nirix received a cryptic message on her communicator – only a location and nothing more. Most likely this was another assassination job by someone who wanted to keep the information scant until a personal meeting. She and Kete made their way separately to the station dock and were met there by a strange robot who went about dancing and babbling on about cheese and socks and assorted nonsense. The robot, who called himself ’Loki’ disturbed Ketin with his utter madness, but was revealed to be a covert bodyguard for the two of them and Kampfer as well.

Just as they were about to set off, the terrible signal came – the zeroes and ones that came from nowhere and disturbed all bands of technology. Ketin shoved Kampfer and Nirix into the ship, risking his own neck in a horrifically stupid attempt to minimize the damage. It would have ended in his own death if Kampfer had not grabbed him by the hair to yank the boy out of the collision course of falling debris.

Kampfer, who found that his entire, vast empire had been simultaneously affected in all manners of ways by the mysterious signal, ordered an immediate Galaxy-wide retreat back into the Dimension of Technology, and his presence in the realm of ‘reality’ dwindled to a mere one percent of what it had been.
The three of them now safely on the small ship and Nirix clinging to a Kete who had obviously regretted his earlier words of scorn, it seemed that there would be relative safety, at least for some short period of time...