Event 1: Maiden Voyage

Welcome Aboard the AES Ardent

Four hundred billion flames form a thin, pale swirl in the darkness. Our galaxy, our home: the Milky Way.

It is large. It contains multitudes. The play of heat and light has brought life forth in staggering and varied form, again and again – and with it, conflict. But we are not alone in our struggles; those few of us that were wise, and fortunate, to have survived our infancy have reached out across the stars and found each other.

Vari. Tever. Skala. Omdua. Human. Anthroid. These species stand alongside each other in a pact of cooperation and collective aid: the Alliance of Mutual Species. This alliance is guided by firm principles and procedures, striving to be a beacon of process and improvement, however gradual, over the unheeding void – and those who would stand against them.

For cruelty makes one cruel, and the calculus of survival may favour few over many; the strong over the weak. The Alliance, young and untested by the standard of galactic statehood (a blink in the eye of the universe), sizes up its rivals. At the heart of the galaxy, THRONE’s philosopher engines calculate godhood. At their golden heels and at the Alliance’s doorstep alike, the dissolute marauders of SHADOW are always slavering. And monsters and madmen dwell in the thickets of the galaxy: MOSAIC pseudo-lifeforms shamble among the living, while the CIRCUS hunts for an audience.

The Alliance of Mutual Species has resolved to cast its light into the darkness. Enter the Ardent Initiative – an expedition led by the Alliance’s best and brightest into the uncharted realms of the Milky Way, where many fear to tread. Aboard a state-of-the-art spacecraft, the AES-Ardent, this crew will push at the boundaries of Alliance knowledge and illuminate the unknown for future generations.

New species, and potential allies for the Alliance. Strange phenomena – which might turn all we thought we knew on its head. Worlds and resources beyond our wildest dreams. Everything is out there, waiting to be discovered.

It is time to reach out into the dark once more.

The Ardent Initiative needs you. Will you heed her call?