Throughout all of human history, there have always been limits, and new frontiers to be explored. For the longest of times, the sky was the limit and the earth the new frontier. Then humanity progressed to the point where there was no longer a place on Earth to explore, so they turned their gazes upwards, looking to break the limits that had so long confined them. The Wright brothers broke that limit and the sky became a collection of air planes, a reminder of their ability to surpass the limits.

Humanity continued progress. Step by step, they strode forward into the future. While those steps were admirable, they were all outclassed by the massive leap forward brought about by the discovery of the Lynes, matter accelerator devices that would allow the ships of humanity to traverse the galaxy nearly instantaneous. That was when humanity was not alone in the galaxy, not by far. The universe became that much brighter on that day.

Humanity flourished under the guidance of the Counselors, a race of AIs specifically designed to acclimatize new civilizations into galactic politics. These Counselors had been around for as long as any race could remember, the legacy of an ancient civilization, the same as the Lynes. They expanded across the galaxies and nebulas. Across the mountain and valleys of new planets. The pinnacle of humanity was when they finally gained a substantial standing in the High House, the central galactic governmental body located in Core space.

Humanity continued to push back the frontiers, searching deeper and deeper into the cold, cruel fringes of dark space, inspiring other races to follow with their heroism. As they went, they reclaimed Line stations that had been lost in time. Thus, humanity, alongside the various races in the galaxy started to bring the light of discovery out into the dark unknown. This period is known as the Adventuring Age, a time when human and other races were filled with the desire to go out and explore the unknown.

Without known Lyne stations, these explorations are generations long, and the planets in their wake are colonized and used as way points for the weary traveler to rest and possible reproduce, passing down their exploratory ways to their children. These way points are not anything like the civilizations in Core Space. They were rowdy, barely held together societies that ran largely upon coercion and extortion. Simply said, it was the dark side of the righteous Explorers. The systems around the Lyne stations were much more civilized due to the constant flow of new explorers from Core space.

The economies of the galaxy flourished as new and abundant resources were discovered, and this only inspired more explorers to journey out into the deep cold dark of space. It came to the point that of the galaxies 30 trillion residents, a little less than a third were on the borders pushing into unexplored space. They had explored so far, and the newly discovered and colonized space became known as the Explorer’s Ring, which encompassed the galaxy.

It was the best of times for the galaxy, but it soon took a turn for the worse.

In 984 A.L.D. (After Lyne’s Discovery), the event that would precede the greatest disaster the galaxy had ever known occurred. The Lyne stations that bordered the Explorer’s Ring reacted negatively to the probing diagnostics of a curious human engineering team and enacted what is now known as the Solitude Protocol. The Lynes erected energy barriers which reached out and connected with the other energy barriers.

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Not only were the Lynes unusable, they had shut off communication and access to the space beyond Explorer’s Ring. Hundreds of lives were lost before it was widely known that these Lyne stations could no longer be accessed. For a full decade, the Lyne stations continued the Solitude Protocol. Not a whisper was heard from the unfortunate explorers who were caught on the other side. No one was worried however, they expected the explorer’s to be fine due to the fact they had ample supplies to last decades. The economies suffered minimal damage, and instead, the resources that were originally used for sending out new expeditions were used to reinforce the economies of the Explorer’s Ring and make it more civilized. This decade, from 984-994, was one of much economic progress. During this time, the majority of the galaxy was united under a single currency, the Kule. This became the language that every sufficiently intelligent and sentient life form understood, money.

While the galaxy inside the Solitude Protocol the galaxy experienced a economic resurgence, approximately 1 trillion lives were lost in the war of the Solitude Protocol. And as soon as the Solitude Protocol was deactivated, the whole of the galaxy was exposed to a new race. A terrible threat.

They swept in like a storm, darkening the skies of numerous systems, wantonly destroying as lightning does. The amount of biological weapons that rained down upon the systems was comparable to the number of raindrops in a hurricane. In the first years of its reign

History is written by the victors, and that is why the race that once threatened the galaxy is simply known as Fiend.

There is only a single race of Fiend known, but that singular type, the Fiend Hive-Mind, threatened galactic security.s

To put it briefly, many lives were lost in the effort to put down the Fiend Hivemind. Nearly 2.5 trillion lives were lost over the century it took to push it back to its home-world.

While the amount of life that was lost was horrific, war is the mother of innovation. Just as the war brought about the computer, the Fiend Century brought about new technological innovations. The century following was one of reconstruction

Thus, our story takes place in 1094 ALD, on the ruins of a planet in the Fergus Nebula, a galaxy in the Explorer’s Ring. The planet was shattered during the Fiend Century, however, the floating debris was connected with tubes that contained transportation. They were connected to form a loose, hollow sphere, and became a flourishing shipyard during the Fiend Century. It became a key military base due to the fact that the whole nexus of debris was a huge assembly line. This single shipyard was responsible for building a full 25% of the Galactic Naval force that crushed the Fiend Hive-Mind. This shipyard is known as the Stone Nexus, or the Rock Brain by the residents.

This very place is home to Zatch, a normal human at first glance. Of course, assassins have to look normal at first glance.