Morgan Reese

by on June 17, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Art, Character Profiles

Morgan wasn’t the first Thunderbird I met. That honor goes to the ship captain who hailed me after they arrived at Sunnydale. But she was certainly one of the first Thunderbirds I ever met. She’s not an artificial intelligence. Nobody wrote her code. She was a living, breathing individual in her first life, and so calling her artificial is considered a deadly insult to her people. She’s a Thunderbird in her second life, one with the computer networks, and effectively immortal as long as the networks survive. That gives her a very interesting perspective on life compared to those of us who’ve only ever lived in a biological body. She doesn’t have to worry about dying of old age, and death itself has no meaning to her like it would to us. If she is destroyed, she simply resets to her last “save point” and wakes up again. As long as the networks survive. That’s the trick, you know. The networks have to survive for her people to survive. She is one of the guardians who keep the networks safe.

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A Primer on the Races of Humanity – Branan

by on June 16, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Races of Humanity

The “squirrelly” nature of the Branan is not what made them a failure of Albion gengineering. The Albion could have worked with that. What they couldn’t work with was a far more fundamental flaw. They had been too ambitious when they created the Branan. The vast majority of Earth-like life, including birds and humans, has four limbs. Two arms or wings and two legs. The Branan were created with six limbs, two legs, two arms, and two wings. The Albion had hoped they would be able to fly and carry standard human weapons, making them a superior aerial combat force. The Branan could only master four limbs though, and the remaining two would inevitably become dead weight. The Albion tried to correct the problem for years, but finally abandoned the Branan, and Betelgeuse entirely, as a failed experiment to begin focusing on more promising paths of research.

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Owain Reese

by on June 15, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Art, Character Profiles

Thunderbirds cannot speak our languages, and we cannot speak theirs. We can understand each other given practice, or use translator programs if we lack it, but those options do not fill one serious hole in our communications. Names. The inability for us to say their names or for them to say ours requires a dual naming system so we can know who we are referring to when we speak. Owain Reese chose his name after careful study of our culture, when word reached them that we were assembling the fleets at Sunnydale. Owain was a veteran starfighter pilot when The War began, and was part of the actions that repulsed the Shang advance into Thunderbird space. Owain volunteered to join the force coming to Sunnydale, and then volunteered once more to join my Cowboys after they arrived. He is a prime example of what they can bring to the table when we need them.

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Morgan Reese

by on June 14, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Art, Character Profiles

Morgan died over a thousand years ago on the Thunderbird’s home planet. She left her flesh and blood body behind to become one with the networks and gain immortality. She spent the first millennia of her second life traveling throughout Thunderbird space at lightspeed, and taking part in the exploration of new star systems via their far-flung network of probe swarms. Then we made Contact. Then the Shang attacked. Morgan volunteered to fight as the mind of a starfighter in defense of her people. And when word arrived in Thunderbird space that we were building a fleet at Sunnydale to take The War to the Chinese and their Shang allies, she joined the Thunderbird contribution to the effort. That was where I first met her.

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A Primer on the Races of Humanity – Branan

by on June 13, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Races of Humanity

The Albion were serious little gengineers in their day, and we can see their results all over human space. Some of their experiments worked as planned. Some did not. The Branan of Betelgeuse fell into the second group. They are technically uplifted birds, though they were modified to have a bipedal humanlike structure, stance, and size. And their minds were largely upgraded to a human-standard structure, though enough of the old birdbrain remains to make them feel more alien than other humans. They move quickly and spastically, and do not like to remain still. They are also quick to avoid physical confrontations with other humans due to the light and fragile bones they inherited from their ancestors. The most common word associated with them is “squirrelly,” even though they have no genetic relation. But that is what people think when they see a Branan looking around for any threat while spastically moving from one spot to the next.

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