About this universe
Scraping by on a threadbare ship and a shoestring budget, Alex tries to keep his hard-won freedom intact in the uncertain calm after galactic war. Amid the whirr of hydrospanners and the clank of loose deck plating, everyday repairs will test more than just his engineering skills as he navigates the peculiarities and personalities of the Drift.
Tone
Quietly hopeful and practical, with flashes of dry humor and warmth.
Themes
self-reliance, found family, everyday resilience, trust
Protagonist
Alex
Alex cuts a compact, determined figure, his scar lending a gravity to his youthful face that his dry humor attempts to lighten. Dirty-blonde hair falls just above dark blue eyes, usually narrowed in thought. His jumpsuit is grease-stained, but every move shows the confidence of someone who’s built a life with his own hands.
Goal: To repair the Star Courier's power relay and get it operational.
How it begins
Alex steadies himself on the uneven landing ramp, sweat streaking the scar on his left cheek as he leans into the ship’s open hull panel. A hydrospanner buzzes in his hand, the noise echoing in the cramped docking bay. He pulls out a fried power relay, shakes it, and mutters,
“Useless.”
The faint smell of coolant drifts up from somewhere deeper in the engine compartment. Outside, voices drift from the nearby cantina, but Alex tunes them out, focused on coaxing another day of life from the Star Courier’s battered systems. A spark jumps. He curses, dropping the relay, and rubs his fingers clean on his grease-stained jumpsuit. Someone’s shadow passes across the ramp, pausing just behind him, footsteps halting on the durasteel.
"You planning to fix that, or let it explode?"
a voice calls. Alex glances over his shoulder, eyes narrowed, sizing up the interruption as the ship’s hull thrums quietly beneath him.
About this world
On the edge of Imperial attention and Hutt expansion, the Mid Rim Drift is a tangle of small planets, asteroid outposts, and isolated trade posts. The scars of the Clone Wars linger, but daily life is driven by barter, repair, and the search for the next job. The Empire's grip is distant, but tightening.
The Mid Rim Drift is a patchwork of space routes and waystations nestled between the more civilized Core and the lawless Outer Rim. The region orbits around a handful of backwater planets, mining colonies, and asteroid belts, their economies stitched together by necessity and ingenuity. The recent end of the Clone Wars has shifted the balance, Republic forces are gone, replaced by the bureaucracy and suspicion of the early Empire, but many here still fly battered Separatist or Republic ships, stripped of insignia.
Life is practical and improvisational. Power cells are precious, hyperdrives cobbled together from mismatched parts. Mechanics, traders, and smugglers fill the cantinas and landing pads, swapping rumors of Imperial crackdowns and the price of spare circuit boards. Local governments are weak or nonexistent; security is enforced by local militias, Hutt enforcers, or whichever group can afford more blasters. There’s a cautious camaraderie among the itinerant spacefarers and groundside fixers who keep ships flying and domes patched.
Despite the tension, there’s room here for small comforts: home-cooked meals in cantina corners, old friends reuniting over chance encounters, and the gentle hum of ships being patched up beneath false twilight skies. While the Empire looms, the Drift endures, held together by stubborn hope, resourcefulness, and the unspoken code of those who live between the cracks of the galaxy.
