Name: Mark A. Lopez
Species: Human
Sex: Male
Age: 36
Role/Job: Military Engineer / Maintenance Specialist

Appearance:
Mark stands at about 6’0” with a broad-shouldered build earned from years of physical labor both on the farm and in the field. His skin is tanned and weathered, with lines of sun exposure and grit from working in harsh environments and a scar at his right cheek from an incident in the EDF. His eyes are dark brown, his hair is usually shaved short at the sides.

Most defining is his left arm—a biomechanical replacement, with visible servos and a few personal modifications bolted onto the frame, including a retractable multi-tool and an arc lighter.

Skills:

Field Engineering: Mark is a highly competent mechanical engineer, specializing in vehicle repair, hull maintenance, and jury-rigging damaged systems under pressure. His knowledge spans from farming combines to military drop-craft.

Improvisation: On or off the battlefield, Mark has a knack for making do with what’s available—turning junk into solutions. He once rigged a cooling bypass using irrigation pipes and an old refrigerator core.

Biomech Tuning: Since receiving his mechanical arm, he’s become adept at fine-tuning prosthetics and other biomechanical interfaces, sometimes helping others with maintenance if they trust him.

AI Systems Enthusiast: While not a programmer, he has a deep (albeit amateur) understanding of old-world AI theory, and has spent years sketching out designs for a non-AI multipurpose helper unit. His fascination is a secret he keeps close around most people.

Weaknesses:

Limited Coding Knowledge: Despite his fascination with AI, Mark has little grasp of complex software or algorithm design, making his goals difficult to achieve without outside help.

Blunt Honesty: Mark has a tendency to say what he thinks, which doesn’t always make him the most diplomatic member of the crew.

Loner Habits: Years of working in solitude, first on the farm, then in forward engineering posts have made him slow to trust and often self-reliant to a fault.

Arm Dependency: While his biomechanical arm is a marvel of medical engineering it's also a potential liability. If it’s damaged in combat or during field work, it can short out, seize up, or overload the power system he relies on for other tools. Maintenance is constant, and failure at the wrong time could mean losing vital capability or even consciousness if the feedback circuit surges.

Mark Lopez was born on the colony world of Shinar, one of the breadbasket planets under Eden’s nominal control. Life on the farm was honest, hard, and painfully dull for a boy who always wanted to know how things worked. While most of his peers were content managing livestock or harvest cycles, Mark spent his free hours digging through old equipment manuals and disassembling engines—much to his father's frustration.

The moment he turned of age, he enlisted in the Eden Defense Force. For him, it wasn’t patriotism, it was escape. The EDF gave him structure, purpose, and most importantly, access to machinery far more complex than a tractor. He specialized in mobile repair teams, patching hulls and power systems mid-operation,iIt was during one such deployment responding to a native incursion on a refueling moon that a fuel tank explosion cost him his left arm. The recovery was long, but the biomechanical arm he received became a project in itself, something to improve and refine, piece by piece.

Years passed, he rotated between Eden and her colony worlds, assigned to keep aging patrol ships running and patch together crumbling infrastructure. Off-duty, he filled notebooks with schematics for a machine assistant, a sort of autonomous helper drone that could aid mechanics or farmers. But anything resembling artificial intelligence was a dangerous subject. Even speaking the word "AI" in Eden's outer colonies was enough to get you shunned or even killed. Still, he toyed with the idea of limited, pre-scripted logic routines as a workaround, he never built the thing, but he carried the notes wherever he went.

Then came the Metacer. At first, he thought the reports were another drill or a hoax, then his relay station stopped responding. Then the sky fell.

Mark served during the desperate defense of Tarnas Station, buying time for civilians to evacuate. When the order came to fall back, he stayed behind to ensure the generators didn’t fail. He escaped only when a freighter pilot overloaded their engines and crash-launched through the hangar roof, buying him just enough chaos to board the last transport to Eden Orbital Station. >/list>

Name: Sarvenolos of the Third Fane of Tekumo. Goes by Sarve when interacting with humans, Dhasath, and Kiellar.
Species: Morelian. A sentient serpentine species from one of the Edenian colony worlds. They possess a pair of prehensile tongues, which are disturbingly dextrous and articulate. Their tails are also hands… in a quite literal manner.
Sex: A Man
Age: 26
Role/Job: Aspiring musician-turned-reservist-turned-tutor. Would rather stick to the first one.
Appearance:

He's around ten feet long.



Skills:

The Maestro - Sarve was and still is a pianist and violinist. He tried to join a choir, but he couldn't quite fit in, what with having very different vocal chords, so he only sang in solo.

The Art of War - Sarve was in the military for some time, mostly for the health and schooling benefits. Still, due to his serpentine physiology, he was trained to be a stealth specialist, slipping into places no humanoid (or kieloid, for those that despise humanocentrism) could fit into, such as ventilation shafts, pipes, and the innards of machinery. He's never been in actual combat yet, though…

Weaknesses:

Agoraphobic - Whether it be through genetic memory or simply not being used to it, Sarve is absolutely uncomfortable with wide open spaces. Such as… space. He would rather be involved in a scandal than go to a spacewalk.



Backstory: Morelians are a society divided into two. There are those that stubbornly continue to cling to the jungles, maintaining their old way of life. Sarvenolos was not born as one of them.

Instead, Sarvenolos of the Third Fane of Tekumo was one of the so-called “Sky Touched,” which is a distasteful Morelian term for members of their species that have committed heresy and actually integrated with the Outsiders.

Outreach missions by philanthropic, humanitarian, and religious groups were nothing new in Eden and her colonies. While corporations often simply bulldozed their way through the ancestral lands of the Morelians, there were those who instead wanted to integrate the native population into the colonies. It was a hard, slow, and painful process. Schools, hospitals, and missions were built in the fringes of the jungles that the Morelians called home; close enough that the Morelians could easily reach them if they wanted, and far enough that the Morelians didn't perceive them as a threat. Anthropologists ventured into the jungles; sometimes, they returned laden with gifts and the story about having to eat a leaf with writhing grubs inside it. Sometimes, they do not return at all.

Sarvenolos would be one such ‘gift,’ brought along by a human anthropologist back to Eden. He was but an infant back then, still blind as newborn Morelians are. His mother, whose name he barely remembers, practically begged the human to bring him to the colony. To an advanced civilization, away from a tribalistic society the poor woman said to be ‘where sickly children die.’ Sarvenolos would never meet her again.

Sarvenolos would be brought up in a communal kinder block; if there was one thing the primitive and Sky Touched Morelians had in common, it would be that everyone's children were raised together. The difference, however, is that Sky Touched Morelians interacted regularly with humans, Dhasath, and Kiellar; and it would be in one of these interactions that Sarve would discover his purpose in life.

When he was barely ten, he and the rest of the young Morelians would be treated to a small fundraising concert by a pair of Dhasath; a singer and an instrumentalist. He would describe what he heard and saw next to be “the most beautiful things in all of existence.” Inspired, he asked the kinder block’s administrators if he could learn how to do what those two did. His wish was granted.

Eventually, Sarve would outgrow the kinder block, and had to live and study for himself. Unfortunately, being a 20 year old street musician without a degree wasn't getting him much in terms of money, so the military appeared to be an attractive prospect. He told the recruiters that he was a true patriot; in reality, he just wanted the free subsidies into education and healthcare. Being a Morelian, though, his training would be focused more around stealth and sabotage, as his physiology was more suited to such operations. He never had to fight in actual combat, however; he finished the four years of service (along with a degree) in total peace.

After that, he would live in relative prosperity with his own apartment and pet cat as an online tutor. People were sometimes prejudiced, but he didn't care. The cat didn't judge. The anthropologist that basically saved his life as an infant would sometimes come by to ask how he was doing. And a Kiellar co-worker seemed to really like him for some reason.

This life of quiet calm would be rudely interrupted by the Metacer invasion, however. The military was obliterated almost immediately, and once again, Sarve didn't get to fight; a fact that he was infinitely thankful for. He knew for a fact that had the military actually gotten to call up the reservists like himself, the Metacer would have swept through them regardless.

Another relief would be that he managed to get to the last ship leaving Eden. He could only thank God for that.

Name:Vitiafa of Endiohon
Species: Kiellar
Sex: Female
Age: 160-ish
Role/Job: Priestess
Appearance:

Skills: Vitiafa’s soldiering skills may be incredibly rusty, but she’s a very old hat at handling blasters and blades and can be deceptively good at fighting, at least from a fixed position or for a short time.

Vitiafa is understandably well-read, and brings an understanding of Makerism and several human strains of religion in addition to her kiellari polytheism.

Her extremely rural background and sometimes semi-itinerary lifestyle has taught Vitiafa the ever valuable skill of cooking well.

Weaknesses: Completely blind in one eye and stricken with an often noticeable limp in her gait, the older kiel suffers from her old wounds. Running, though far from impossible for someone still as physically active as she is, proves to be quite painful.

Her pride makes for a volatile mix when combined with her injuries, and unprompted aid is likely to earn scorn rather than gratitude.

Backstory: Vitiafa’s life began on one of Eden’s older colony worlds, Euphrates, being one of the middle children to a family of farmers providing foodstuffs for the Edenites. Her childhood was marked by long days in the field and home, dutifully toiling with her family to earn what the gods would bless them with. A proper kiellar upbringing involves scouting youth groups and preparation for at least a small stint in the military, and Vitiafa was no exception to this and took the craft well enough.

She served briefly in one of Euphrates’ local militias, which mostly consisted of eventless patrols and glorified pest control duties against the wildlife. It is an honorable service, to be sure, but it was nothing exciting to the young Kiel, who had done pretty much the same thing prior to joining up. Instead, Vitiafa turned to the central military for the adventure she silently craved in the infantry.

To say Vitiafa received what she wanted would be an understatement. During a raid on a pirate base, she had taken point into one of their labs and received a splash of acid to the face for her troubles. Her immediate reaction was a piercing screaming before adrenaline surged forth. With gritted teeth as her flesh boiled and bubbled, she brought her carbine on the target rushing her with a knife and yanked the trigger. Almost instantly, she dropped her rifle, reached for her canteen and doused the side of her face. The cool relief lasted for merely a moment as the acid was diluted, before the coolness of the water and the very air burned her as equally as intensely.

Vitiafa was about to find her way to triage when a grenade smashed through one of the windows.The resulting blast left several pieces of shrapnel in her right leg and severely damaged her right foot, which essentially ended her time in the infantry. Her devout upbringing led to a hard pivot into religious studies. She spent the rest of her time in the military as a chaplain, where her curious nature led to private research into other faiths among those of Eden.

She returned home following her discharge, and rejoined her as one of the priestesses at her local temple and the local militia. As she grew older, and more experienced, her time was spent increasingly away from home. First, in larger communities on Euphrates, then even on trips to Eden’s cities. The cosmopolitan nature of the military and her service as a chaplain served her well in the diverse urban settings, though part of her longed for the simple life of home while she was away.

It was during one of these visits to Eden when the metacer threat reemerged and blitzed their way to the world. Her first thought was to rejoin the front, bolster the morale of those fighting the hard fight, and perhaps die facing the foe. An extremely heated debate with her superiors, however, convinced her to acquiesce to the idea of evacuating.