MythFactory · An original universe, built in the open

Cythera

The Pirate of Basarûn · Foundation Era

the deep · outside the lanes

charts tell you where to cross · blacksalt lets you cross

contact · bearing steady

The Julnara: a 437-metre hull retrofitted over five centuries, adrift in deep space

hull 042 · registry 宇宙船492

437 metres · the first blacksalt hull

five centuries of retrofits · her weathering is strata, not damage

Registry schematic of the Julnara: five hundred years of retrofits in strata

read her hull like rings in a tree

every era welded its machines over the last

and somewhere in the welds · the things her crew never told anyone

A lone crew working a cold seam, faint violet light deep in the crystal

$Raw blacksalt: black crystal with cold light banked in its fractures$

her cargo · the fuel of civilisation · blacksalt

cut by hand from live seams · in the cold · in the dark

the robots get the daylight; the people get the dark

A berth corridor aboard the Julnara, a lit cabin hatch standing open

Now boarding · the ship's manifest

Take a berth aboard the Julnara.

An original science-fiction universe, made by hand and released as it's built. The first-look dossier on the ship: her decks, her fuel, and what it costs the people who crew her. Sign the manifest and sail with her.

The deep: a violet nebula wheeling with dust and starlight

The promise

A blacksalt freighter five centuries old. A fuel that pays for a civilisation and takes its miners. A world with a crime at the bottom of it. The first dossier opens the hold, below. Sign the ship's manifest and it lands in your inbox, with everything that comes after.

An orbital over-watch console tracking the inbound Julnara, her violet plasma trailing, over Basarûn

Entry 001 / The Ship

Four hundred and thirty-seven metres of spare parts and stubborn resilience.

An ancient hull buried under centuries of mismatched retrofits: the first vessel ever to burn blacksalt, and still the fastest thing in the deep. The dossier opens her up, deck by deck, down to the things her crew built into the keel and never told anyone about.

$A fist-sized shard of blacksalt, black crystal with light banked deep in its fractures$

Entry 002 / The Fuel

Inert when it's warm. A bomb when it's cold.

Blacksalt: a black crystal that banks starlight in its lattice over geological time. Refine it wrong and a stone the size of your fist takes the mountain with it. The entire economy of the age runs on getting it right.

Automated mining units working the dead layer — Mining automatons

Deep-mine extraction rig — Extraction rig

A Blacksalt Industries oversight console watching the killing face: the live feed of a miner working the seam, a violet seam-survey map at its side

A crew working a cold seam deep underground, a faint violet glow in the crystal

Entry 003 / The Cost

Those who pull Blacksalt from the rock rarely grow old.

Down on the killing face, in the lightless cold, the crews work a seam that slowly puts the light out behind their eyes. A badge and a death-clock in the same cold glow. The few who survive long enough to grow old become legends.

The rime-sign: The badge and the death-clock. The quick carried into the body, lithifying the miner from within. Read by how far it has spread.
Salt-lung: The lethal core. Spores wake in the cold wet lung and bank radiation inside the body. The miner becomes a slow source that never switches off.
The seaming: Skin cracking along the wrinkles, cold blue-violet crystal seated down in the fissures, violet veins beneath. Systemic, not only the face.
Rime-blindness: A milky cataract frosting the sight away. One eye first, then both. Decay, not light.

Cutting into the cold crystal seam — The cut

A miner in the early stage of the rime, fine cracks beginning at the temple — Rime-afflictedFirst signs

The rime advancing, the skin seaming with crystal as one eye clouds — Rime-afflictedRime-rip

A veteran far gone with the rime, cracked and stapled, both eyes clouded — Rime-afflictedSaltskin

A miner who survived the rime into true old age, greyed and seaming with violet crystal, one eye clouded — Rime-afflictedLegend

A miner's face consumed by the rime, skin cracked and seamed with cold crystal, eyes clouded white

Cythera seen from orbit, a colonised world under construction, an ice-storm eye turning over the day side and city-light webs across the dark

Entry 004 / The World

A world built as a promise. Broken at the keel.

Cythera: a new civilisation raised out of the dark by five founding civilisations, its guides and leaders, with hundreds of peoples beneath them. The dossier maps the world the whole saga is fought over, in the brief, bright moment before the rot reaches it.

Survey · recovered plates

Orbital reconnaissance of the mining bodies: dead rock and live seam, shot from low orbit. The cold violet in the fractures is the same thing that gets into the men.

Orbital survey plate of an asteroid mining body — Recon · 09

Now boarding

Put your name on the manifest. Sign the register. Take your berth.

Your name, an assigned number, a place on the Julnara's manifest. Signing on subscribes you to the Captain's Ledger, the ship's newsletter: Field Dossier 001 lands in your inbox the moment you board, and everything after it reaches the crew by email first. Every holo-cast, the films, the shorts, the shipboard radio broadcasts. Board now and you board as First Watch: struck once, never reissued, never outranked. Free to take. Unsubscribe any time. Finite berths available.

From the Packet · the ship's news №001 Sealed · crew ears only This is the Packet. Here are this week's soundings. Thirty-one days outbound, the deep runs quiet, the chief has the forward coil in pieces again, and one unread line goes up on the board. Read by Edda, signals and stories. Crew ears only. Sign the manifest to unlock →