Introduction to the ForgeIn the distant future, humanity has fled its homeworld and taken refuge in the Forge, a globular cluster situated 1,700 light-years above the galactic plane.Generations ago, interdimensional beings possessed the dead of Earth and turned them against their friends and their families. When the situation seemed its bleakest, an iron pillar was discovered on Luna pointing humanity to mysterious gates among the stars. Exodus ships left Earth and passed through the gates to find a number of inhabitable worlds. Some of these worlds are sprinkled with ruins of a space-faring empire humanity has named The Ascendency.There are those in the Forge who make their living traveling the stars in search of Ascendency ruins to try and unravel the secrets behind them. The most sought-after answer is how the Ascendency handled the balefires, great electromagnetic storms that course through the Forge wreaking havoc on the ships caught in them.Eveline Hawking is one such Lore Hunter.The Balefires course through the Forge, making travel between worlds a risky propositionEveline HawkingEveline grew up at her father’s spaceport, listening to the tales of spacers who came through. One day, faced with the prospect of staying rooted to the ground while others had adventures, Eveline stole away hidden inside the ship of a scout bound for the Outlands.Not all the scouts took a liking to Eveline, but a retired lieutenant became a mentor and trained her to fly a ship and delve into Ascendency ruins. Among the projects LT helped Eveline with was building the Vigilant.The Vigilant was once a pleasure yacht called Once Upon a Weekend. Its upholstery was moldering when Eveline first came across it in a starship graveyard, but the frame was the most intact she found. She pulled much of the formerly plush and luxurious interior out, leaving a combination of ostentatious gold plating and bare-metal pragmatism. The result is a ship which looks like a slow cozy ride but holds a drive meant to handle double the weight.Eveline dresses mostly in grease stained coveralls and dusty goggles. Life aboard a starship and delving into ruins just makes keeping nice clothes clean too much of a hassle. It is not uncommon to find her elbows deep in the internals of the e-drive or other starship systems keeping her baby going another day, speaking with Vigilant all the while like an old friend.Opening ImageThe Vigilant is planetside on Verdure, refueling. The depot at Luminus is surrounded by lush vegetation out to the horizon in every direction. The people of Luminus have long used the plant cover to hide their settlement from outsiders.The camera zooms in a rush through the forward viewport on Vigilant to the cockpit where Eveline Hawking sits in the skeleton of a pilot’s seat, eating an apple with her feet resting on the console in front of her. Greasy rags lie on the floor next to the seat along side a pair of wrenches.“May–storm–over” the radio crackles.Eveline snaps forward and begins checking the signal information. It takes a moment to get the receiver calibrated to display information from the other ship’s transponder. The triangulation places the ship approaching orbit. That distance, no wonder the transponder codes are weak.It takes a minute but the transponder codes finally come through as Eveline adjusts the narrowbeam comms and gets lucky in pointing the antenna. She blinks as she sees the ship name displayed.The Rookery.Lieutenant Sakir was like a second mother to Eveline when she first left home. And now she’s in trouble. Eveline snaps to her preflight checklist, skipping anything she thinks can wait in her rush.“Rookery, Vigilant. I read your signal and am inbound,” she calls over the comms.She punches the coordinates into her NavCom and punches the button to fire up the e-drive. There is a hum. And then nothing. The drive doesn’t kick in.“Come on, not now, not now. You can do it.”She pushes the button a few more times, lights flicker, a light hum, and more nothing. Then readings stream across the screen, a whole cascade of failures in the fuel and ignition systems. She can’t make any sense of it all. It’s like the ship says the e-drive isn’t getting any fuel, but the whole point of this stop has been to refueling and get some time for maintenance.“Viggy, come on, what’s wrong. I can’t help if you don’t tell me,” she says to the ship.She traces the failures back. Something must be wrong with the primary impeller, that seems to be where the whole sequence starts. It looks like its just not doing anything.She gets up from her seat and runs back to engineering. She goes straight for the impeller and nearly knocks herself out on an open breaker box. Inside, the main breaker for the e-drive is open. Because the the maintenance She was doing around the ship. She closes the breaker, closes the box, and lightly hits her forehead against the box.“Viggy, I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have blamed you. Now we need to get out of here.”She places a hand on the iron knife she carries.“I will get to LT to help her.”
