Not all the worlds of the Centauri Cluster are green. Beyond its scant habitable planets stretch lethal wastelands – wreathed in toxic storms, scorched by radiation, and crushed under relentless gravity. Death traps where no human, no machine, no Earth-approximate life can survive for long.
But to the Celestials, these hellscapes are not obstacles; they are opportunities. Beneath the extreme terrain lie veins of untapped energy, rare minerals, and the perfect laboratories for experiments that are too dangerous to conduct anywhere else. Once human, the Celestials have spent 40,000 years transcending biology, evolving into something more. Their grip on the Cluster is absolute, but to exploit its most volatile worlds, they needed a workforce built to endure the impossible.
Their solution? The Arkavir.
A species of bioengineered Changelings, the Arkavir were designed to survive where others perish. Acid rains that melt flesh. Heat so searing it ignites air into fire. Cold so deep it shatters bone. They are shapeshifters of necessity, survivors by design – the Celestials’ ultimate tool for navigating the deadliest frontiers. To most, the Arkavir remain a mystery. Are they to be feared? Pitied? Few Travelers have seen them up close, and fewer still without the buffer of heavy protective gear. Towering and powerful, their forms vary with their environment – biochemistry, size, and structure all molded by the brutal worlds that shape them. But despite their differences, there’s no mistaking them for anything else.
For the Celestials, the Arkavir are not just workers – they are the hands and feet of their ambition, the key to ensuring that no world, no matter how hostile, remains beyond their reach. They believe they have mastered endurance. That they alone decide who survives and who is forgotten. But the Celestials made one fatal miscalculation.
They didn’t account for us.
We are the Travelers – humanity’s eternal warriors. We do not break. We do not yield. We carve paths through the impossible, not because we are designed for it, but because we refuse to be erased. We fight to outlast what was created to outlast us.
The Celestials may have shaped the Cluster to their design.
But we will shape its future.