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This is the first in a series of multiple guides connected to Guides/Character Creation. Once you're finished reading this, you are more than equipped with the knowledge necessary to create your character using that guide!

Below is recommended reading if you are new to the server!

The Aurora Setting

It is 2467 C.E., and it has been centuries since humanity left the gravity well of the Sol system to colonize the Stars. Their exploration and colonization would bring them into contact with all manner of different worlds, alongside many intelligent species. Today, the Orion Spur has been mostly explored, but must be explored again, as a crisis looms in the background. Our server takes place aboard the SCCV Horizon, an all-purpose response and exploration vessel, owned and operated by the Stellar Corporate Conglomerate, an economic cartel made up of eight different megacorporations that combined control a majority of the spur's economic activity. It is not an equal organization, or one that any of the megacorporations excepting its leader joined willingly; instead dominated and led by the most powerful individual in the spur, Miranda Trasen. CEO of NanoTrasen, the most powerful megacorporation to ever exist, Miranda is the woman responsible for forming the cartel she now leads, having forced the other seven into line using whatever coercive means available as leverage, regardless of legality. She was the only one with the power to do this due to inheriting a company with a monopoly on the single most important resource within the setting; Phoron.

Phoron

Discovered in 2352 by NanoTrasen, phoron is a typically purple element that is only known to occur naturally (in economically significant quantities, anyway) in a set number of locations throughout an entire galaxy, either as a crystal or gas, and it is not an overstatement to say it is the most important element in the setting. In its elemental state as a solid, phoron is a naturally occurring room temperature superconductor and the only room temperature superconductor known to exist with no viable alternatives. It is a single resource that underpinned an entire century of rapid, exponential economic and technological growth, to the extent it is now a necessary material to maintain the economic and technological level of the Spur. Running out would be akin to being thrown back more than a century economically and technologically.

A good way to visualize what this means for your average resident of the Spur: imagine that in the modern world, we only have a few possible sources of silicon, a resource we rely on for the modern world to function, and there is nothing we can substitute it with if we run out. Moreover, if we ran out, we would go back to the technological and economic level of the early 1920s. Furthermore, 99.9% of all the silicon is owned by a single corporation, which has been unsustainably mining it for over a century; as a result, we are now running out, and that's essentially the situation of the Spur currently.

The Phoron Scarcity is an ongoing shortage of the precious resource primarily caused by over-consumption and unsustainable mining practices. It is a very dire situation, but due to the importance of phoron, the mines are still active, meaning that as every day passes, there is less phoron that can be mined later, causing the situation to only worsen with time. There have been many attempts to find a solution, although these have focused on finding new deposits, which is merely a band-aid on a bleeding artery, stabilizing the situation for a few months until they eventually run out. The most famous attempt to find a solution to the looming disaster was Project Violet Dawn, undertaken by the Solarian Government, which aimed to create a synthetic phoron alternative on Mars. Its fame comes from the fact that it failed so catastrophically that much of Mars' atmosphere was set on fire in a conflagration centered on the South Pole, but which rapidly expanded to encompass most of the southern hemisphere, poisoning people, stealing their air to breathe, and burning them. The intensity of the firestorms saw the arcologies of the southern hemisphere begin to melt, twist, and collapse under their own weight, becoming impromptu crematoriums for the billions of corpses which were all that remained of the inhabitants. No one else has been stupid enough to try something similar since.

What exactly will happen as a result of this scarcity is currently unknown, as Aurora's setting is a continuous story that develops in real time. For more information, join the lore discord server.

Welcome to Aurora Lore!

Aurora Lore is a community writing project that has been continuously running since 2015 with the help of dozens of writers over more than a decade. As a result, the volume of lore written can at times feel overwhelming for first-time players and turn them off from the setting. This page exists as an incredibly condensed summary of the lore, focused entirely on delivering the most important information quickly so that you can feel comfortable joining a round.

The SCCV Horizon

As mentioned previously, the SCCV Horizon is the spaceship that can be found in-game. It is owned and operated by the Stellar Corporate Conglomerate under Miranda Trasen, so all player characters are working for the organization(s) that caused the current catastrophic situation in the first place! Characters can pick to work for any of the eight corporations that make up the Conglomerate; however, each corporation is restricted to certain departments. The IC reason you are still working for and wearing the uniform of your parent company despite working on an SCC asset is that you are contracted out. Many jobs will have specific qualifications that can be found on their job pages. Additionally, the baseline qualifications to work aboard the Horizon can be found here: Stellar Corporate Conglomerate Occupation Qualifications.

Lore, your character, and the Workplace

This section is entirely dedicated to trying to summarize what all this lore means in-game, in an easy-to-digest, informal way. For any new players, or returning players who have been away for a large period of time, the modern-day setting of Aurora is extremely vast, with hundreds of thousands of words dedicated to lore alone. This can feel overwhelming at first,

Everyone started on the server in the same situation you are now - every player, member of staff, and leader of staff teams were once in the same position when it comes to lore. However, the best way to learn is to PLAY THE GAME and read wiki pages as through game interactions, certain things catch your attention, a desire to learn about, or similar. Don't try reading all the lore about a faction at once.

Characters

The general position of the player base at large, and more importantly, the staff team is that THERE IS NO EXPECTATION FOR YOU TO KNOW ANY OF THE LORE BEYOND THE BASICS DESCRIBED HERE, AND THE BASICS OF YOUR ORIGIN BEFORE HOPPING INTO A ROUND as a new player. The basics of your origin can be found in the character creation screen in-game, as little blurbs when you select one. If you find someone 'lorechecking' you, say you are unsure of the lore but are willing to learn. If they continue to pester and argue, you can AHELP it using F1! Be wary that this stuff is all IC - and therefore subject to character bias when learning and similar - for a non-biased source, always use the wiki or ask someone with a purple name.

Secondly, unless you are acting in bad faith - defined as acting with intentional dishonesty, violating the basic expectations of dignified human interaction, and harmful motives - staff will be incredibly understanding. Again, everyone here was once where you are. If you have any questions regarding the lore, new players, expectations, or any questions at all you are encouraged to reach out to any staff member either through Discord, or through the adminhelp command ingame. Staff members in the Discord can easily be identified by their funny colored names.

Lastly, while the lore and wider setting can mean a lot to characters and to the ship, for new players, it means little to nothing, with one caveat. 90% of the time, it is a rationale for why x thing exists in the game, or why we're doing a special event arc. Your experience in-game will not be made worse by not understanding the lore, so GO AND PLAY is the best possible advice you can be given. If you keep playing, everything else will start falling into place after a few rounds, and a week or two in, you'll have a solid grasp on what's going on. That said, there is one aspect where lore and moderation intermix that should be discussed, CCIA.

CCIA

CCIA is a section of the staff team, within the moderation portion, which focuses on helping to create a more immersive, HRP setting through the creation and running of a system in which behaviors can be reported in character, handled in character, and then punished in character. This can throw some people off, and it is certainly not a perfect system, but at the end of the day, it is either have CCIA handle what they do IC'ly, or have it handled by the Moderation Team, OOC'ly. The first time you're contacted by CCIA can be unnerving for new players, as it is not automatically clear how they function and what might end up happening to your character. This section is dedicated to explaining some basic facts about CCIA, how it functions, and what you can expect.

Firstly, CCIA always tries to be as lenient as possible, especially with newer players. Unless you commit a horrific crime, it is very unlikely that anything serious will happen to your character. Moreover, CCIA is not here to fire characters, nor are they here to make them unplayable by adding unfair limitations to play.

Secondly, while CCIA interviews can be annoying to do because of scheduling, they allow you to tell your side of the story and therefore be heard equally with whoever is accusing you of something. CCIA will weigh both testimonies before determining what the outcome of the report will be.

Thirdly, you should approach the game with the mindset that "this is my character's job." CCIA still has a duty to uphold the mantra "actions have consequences" IC'ly, but if you try your best and can explain why you got to where you did, usually a middle ground can be established.

Lastly, as they are staff, any decision made by CCIA can be contested on the Staff Complaints Section of the Forums in an OOC manner.

The Workplace

The Horizon is dominated by the megacorporations. This goes over their departments and general barebones descriptions. Will be expanded, as this basically already exists on the Guide to Character Creation page. Or scrapped IDK.

Stellar Corporate Conglomerate (or the SCC): The Trasen led cartel of which all the megacorporations are members of... to varying degrees of loyalty. They did not join willingly and chafe under Miranda's leadership, forcing her to continually devote time and effort to keeping the corporations loyal and in line; something that every employee of the SCC must do to some extent. One particularly crass captain compared it to herding cats, even at the ship level. SCC employees work in positions of Command, or in the Command Support category.

Miranda Trasen, Leader of the SCC, and the woman who holds the spur in the palm of her hand.

NanoTrasen: The phoron industry titan, originally from a humble biomedical company on Mars. Now the biggest megacorporation ever, they have some stake in nearly every sector. From entertainment, synthetics, food, and even private security. However, NanoTrasens' greatest market and the one that will always be its priority will forever be phoron. NanoTrasen employees are found in Research, Medical, and Service positions.

Hephaestus Industries: The second largest corporation, Hephaestus Industries, has an unparalleled grasp on the industrial and manufacturing sectors of the entire Orion Spur. Hephaestus presents a picture that its employees are HARDWORKING, BLUE-COLLAR (even if managers make more than the entire operations department combined), DOWN-TO-EARTH WORKERS who PULLED THEMSELVES UP BY THEIR BOOTSTRAPS and GOT TO WHERE THEY ARE TODAY, fostering a sense that its employees are members of one big, happy family. However, complete loyalty to that family is expected, so to try and start a union and other worker organizations is considered betraying it, and will see any worker almost immediately fired. Hephaestus employees are found in Engineering and Operations positions.

Zavodskoi Interstellar: The professional face of the defense and armaments industry, Zavodskoi Interstellar's weaponry is found in the hands of everyone from terrorists to soldiers across the Spur, as well as attached to the hard points of nearly every vessel. Given their primary industry, Zavodskoi obsesses over its respectable image and employees' professionalism, reflected in the incredibly high standards Zavodskoi employees are held to. Unprofessionalism or worse, incompetence, are the two quickest ways for an employee to leave the company. Zavodskoi employees work in Security, Research, and Engineering.

Zeng-Hu Pharmacuticals: The bleeding edge of biomedical science and cybernetics, Zeng-Hu promises the future is in elegant, synthetic bodies, and that every disease has a cure. Zeng-Hu is the pinnacle of the medical industry, and the members of its keiretsu reflect that in their adoption of its vision of the transhumanist future with heavily modified bodies. Zeng-Hu employees work in both Medical and Science.

Idris Incorporated: All credits flow towards Idris Incorporated, being the largest banking institution and financial service provider in the Spur. Beyond simply owning the banks, Idris owns the premium methods of spending their partners' hard-earned credits with every luxury available being found in its many subsidiaries. Expensive, haute couture, and the emblem of the upper-class are the definitions of the corporation's domain, and behind their credit stands an equally well-founded security industry to ensure that the money keeps on coming. Idris employees work in Service and Security.

Private Military Contracting Group: Born out of the utter necessity to keep a security guarantee and a gun behind it, the Private Military Contracting Group deploys its many members to protect corporate assets. Originating from the corporate crown of Eridani, the dozen-plus security and mercenary groups of the PMCG all work to enforce the needs and demands of the corporate world... and anyone with enough credits to afford their price. PMCG members work in Security and Medical.

Orion Express: The logistics love-child of the Stellar Corporate Conglomerate, Orion Express ensures that every shipment is delivered on-time, intact, and right to the door, no matter where it is. Operating off of an immense workforce of couriers, miners, warehouse managers, and more, Orion Express is the youngest and fastest-growing member of the SCC. Outside of logistics, the corporation also has holdings in the food service industry with the extremely affordable (to its detriment) promise to deliver an edible product. Orion Express employees work in Operations and Service.

Recommended Starter Planets

Biesel, the capital planet of the Republic of Biesel.

Callisto - Callisto is a settled moon in orbit of Jupiter, and the most populated of the Jovian moons. It is the Alliance's single largest port, a feat accomplished by the massive Warp Gate Network it has in orbit, which was originally designed back in the late 2300s. Since then, Callisto has been a hub of commerce and is the de facto port for the entire Sol system, one of the richest and most populated systems in the entire spur. As a result, Callisto is dominated by sprawling urban topography and is one of the most developed planets in the alliance. The culture of both the planet as a whole and the individual districts is very easy to pick up, and the page as a whole is fairly short. If you want to read the least amount, this is the planet for you.

Biesel - Biesel is a temperate, oxygen-rich planet colonised in the mid-2100s, therefore making it one of the first. It is the capital of the Republic of Biesel and of the Tau Ceti system in general. One of the most populated planets in the Orion Spur, Biesel is one of the economic hearts of the known galaxy and boasts a large amount of urban development and resource richness - primarily in Phoron. It is also where the influence of NanoTrasen and the SCC is at its strongest. The issue is that it was also our setting for five-ish years, so a significant amount of development occurred for it. If you're interested in reading a fair amount of lore, love façade democracy, and also spreading the light of liberty, then this is the planet for you.

Xanu Prime - The shimmering and vibrant planet of Xanu Prime (pronounced Ksa-noo), is the beating heart of the Coalition of Colonies. In nearly all ways, economic, political, and cultural, Xanu Prime holds almost unmatched influence over the rest of the Coalition. It is a cosmopolitan and multicultural hub where nearly anyone from across the Orion Spur can be found, a cornerstone not just in the Coalition but in the galactic community as a whole, and home to a thriving culture and democratic tradition which, along with the dedication and hard work of its citizens, has cemented its position of leadership and wealth which it currently enjoys. The primary page also tops out as the second-longest page on the wiki, and it's one of three. If you're interested in super in-depth lore, reading a ton, the frontier spirit, and multiculturalism, pick Xanu Prime.

From this point, you are again encouraged to move onto Guides/Character Creation provided you're at a loss for what to do.

Sandbox-Scarcity:Newplayerguide

The Aurora Setting

Phoron

Welcome to Aurora Lore!