This war is completely different than anything mankind has fought so far. At first humans do not even understand what type of being they are actually fighting. It has calculating intelligence but its behavior patterns are written in its DNA over the millions of years it has been riding the galactic currents in mankind's direction, determined to be the only multicellular animated life in any oxygen atmosphere in the galaxy. It is over a century before humanity understands the true extent of...

Klowa had been working the docks as a loss investigator for three centuries, seven hundred and something Earth years. He had gradually built a reputation for results, and for discretion. It is that reputation for discretion that gets him his first case working for one of the captains of the cabal of companies that move almost all cargo in the basin. Someone is putting his ships under unqualified captains, and the losses are piling up.This case calls for the utmost in discretion, fo...

Until now, Hostra Tours had been willing to accept a standard travelogue documentary of any place Dorrick went on Kassidor, but now the stargate has been open two years and the public is getting jaded. To keep them interested he is assigned to get more human interest in his reports.TongSu was still happy with her giant from the stars, but as they reached the great swamp city of Trenst, she felt it was time for some casual Variety. As luck would have it, she meets a fellow floater e...

In the year 5881 the politics of the day is all about the Knights, the Senate, the Guild and the Emperor. After the mechanoid war the Gatekeepers installed a new Emperor who's court is on a deathstar and not on any world. This ancient former Navigator is elevating the military to a much more active role in the Empire's rule.Meanwhile on the ancient, impoverished and primitive planet of Kassidor, the wilds of the huge Ydlontrostl basin have become a haven for many Centorins, as all ...

Memory fades with time. Ephemeral humans remember few details of their childhood when they are old. When people live many centuries, nothing of their earlier lives remains. When this story takes place, it is two centuries since someone marketed an enhancement to memory that improved capacity and length by a factor of one hundred, allowing those who use it to remember clearly for centuries.Memory is a powerful thing. One with it can put one without it at a disadvantage. Sudden recall...

In an ancient land that thought of itself as the 'Known World' until recently, there lies a group of cities only a day's hike from one another that are the cultural melting pot of this 'known world.' Thru most of it's history few paid any attention to the outside world. Then, two centuries ago this area was discovered by an outside group, a civilization of Elves with many advances in technology. They brought advanced crops that banished hunger until the population grew. They brought advanc...

Dorrick has landed a new assignment from the University of Kex on Centorin. They are assisting the Kassikan in locating the last of Feanor's crystals using a ground penetrating imager. The crystal is believed to lie somewhere in the ruins of the Dark Lord's black tower in a has-been tourist trap called Mordor.Just getting there was an adventure in itself, it was a year's flight from Knidola over lands filled with Orcs and other mutants from early genetic science. They have to rescu...

Dorrick has now been on Kassidor ten Earth years, a decade and forty as he tells time now, and they are living comfortably in the Yakhan. Best of all, TongSu has remained with him. Then his old friend Bulf, with whom he'd done some light work in the past, invites him to a reunion dinner in Kex. He wonders how Bulf ever got the money to do that, but because Bulf promised that Jason and Vio would also be there, he thinks it would be nice to surprise TongSu with an all-expenses-paid trip to t...

The Temple of Karasis is very important to the people of the Ydlontrostl basin. It combines the functions of a religion, a research university, a charitable organization and in some sense a government into one institution. In this ancient and nearly unchanging land it is the pillar of their society, a society that believes society itself is holy. One of the most delicate services that the Temple of Karasis provides is arbitration of business disputes. The bishops who preside over this arbi...

It is 3039ad, almost eight hundred Earth years have passed since Desa emerged from the pass thru the Kinsheeta. The starship age has come and gone. If anyone has seen the report of the second expedition to 61 Cygni, you know that Desa was involved in some adventures during the early starship age. Its only lasting effect was cheaper suntower service to more places. That was so long ago that it is now taken for granted and many electronics companies are centuries old and their names are hous...

Among the phantasmagorical erosion of the Zil escarpment is one of the most remote and primitive societies on the planet of Kassidor with literacy and a semblance of civilization not arriving til the 50th century. Here we find people still living in caves and still hunting dangerous beasts as a way of life. It is one of the few places remaining on the planet with organized conflict between villages, or between any groups of people. The Instinct may prevent violence between people, but it d...

The East Bordzvek basin is known thruout Kassidor as a place of certain death. It is too hot for human life, the ground is too rugged and broken to traverse, but most of all, the wildlife is too deadly for even the most heavily armed expeditions to survive. Only the fringes of the basin had been seen, other than that, unmanned balloons and orbital vehicles were the only things that had ever seen it.Honshu is falling back into her loon addiction, uninterested in anything else of lif...