The Captain's Log

Chapter One is currently all written out. Its at 5.9k words at the moment. I do want to go through and edit it, but for all intents and purposes its done. Chapter Two should take a bit longer but it’ll be easier now that I’m in the swing of things. I want to put them out one after another so I’ll make another announcement then.

Lmao sorry I’ve had a REALLY busy and eventful month. Finals, crappy mental states, you works. But I do owe you guys an update. I can’t say when I’ll post these, but I promise this is the order of what I put out. It’ll be sooner than later I swear.

Lore: The Magnetrine Drive Lore: The New England Federalist Republic Lore: Cascadia and the Union of Pacific Cities aka Pacifica Story: The Fort Astoria Incident Lore: Slipspace and FTL

Hello! A larger update for today, don’t worry, plus an explanation for why things have been slower than I said they would!

For why things have been a little backlogged, that’s just because of school. I haven’t had much time to focus on writing for this blog. It takes me awhile to begin with, then I always do another draft in order to get it to where I want it. This takes awhile, especially for longer things, which is why they’ve been taking awhile.

Still, I am updating things! I have a few things I want to put out soon (I’ll be finishing them up this weekend and posting them, hopefully, starting on Monday). Most likely I’ll put something out before then, along with another update.

“Though wait Ignis!” you might be asking, “What exactly are you writing about? I mean, I got the earlier lore posts, but what’s going in the setting?” That is a very good question! To go over the basics, most of what I write (Besides the smaller ‘lore’ posts) will be character-driven or will expand an overall lose plot.

To give a quick overview, the main story of this all is that the ISC Captain Ignis is tasked with finding out more about the history of a damaged AI, and his travels throughout the solar system looking for information. This is easier said than done, as the ISC is in a series of conflicts, many of which are in locations Ignis needs to go to. Over time more characters will be added, in both supporting and protagonist roles, though he’ll be the main focus.

Is “Captain Ignis” something I just stole from my main username? Yes! Will he be a blatant self-insert OC that I’ll make extremely overpowered? No! Don’t worry, I just placed the name on him, not anything else. I really just consider the name independent of my online username, I just already associate it with him.

Despite its apparent mineral wealth, initial colonization efforts on Mercury were few. The surface of the planet experiences massive shifts in temperature from day to night which created a need for underground settlements. The expenses for sending equipment over to do this took a large amount of time and effort, leading to many nations skipping out on Mercurian colonization. Most looked to planets and moons farther away from the sun. That changed with the Russian Federation.

The Russian Federation had a limited presence in space, with small settlements only on Luna, and sought to expand their influence in space. Several locations were scouted, such as Ceres and Triton, but in the end Mercury was chosen. Key figures in the Russian government sunk vast amounts of money into the planet, creating a series of underground settlements. Each was built on top of mines, expanding down as more material was dug up. Before long massive rail lines connected the major settlements. Despite the enormous costs, Mercury ended up generating a large amount of profit.

Perhaps ironically, none of this would return to its parent country. The creation and funding of Mercurian settlements ended up bankrupting Russia and was one of the leading causes of its fracturing. While Russia did break up, Mercury did not, and continued to stay afloat and continued to expand. Even with the “collapse” of Earth, Mercury stayed strong, its natural resources continuing to be sold. Trade with other settlements was seemingly a given for much of Mercury’s early history.

As moons and planets throughout the system started to gain strength, however, the power of Mercury waned. Multiple other factors weakened the planet, such as cheaper raw materials being imported from out of the solar system or the distance required for trade being seen as too much. Mercury’s governments weren’t blind to this change however and tried to stall or reverse it. Shipyards were created near the surface of the planet and several on-planet companies started to develop and sell artificial intelligence. Even with these efforts the Mercurian economy started to stagnate. While conditions stayed similar for those living there, many of the massive building projects that were underway were postponed indefinitely.