Pictured above is the permanent listening post at the galaxy's edge, five hundred lightyears from the star cluster the Vagabond Fleet finally decided to claim and call home, circa the year 7832 AD (3311 Imp). This base was erected some 200 years after the initial settlement of the Driftwind star cluster at the urging of the Droyne leadership, and is still manned well into the 10,000's by representatives of all four of the initial Vagabond races.

Those who live and work there are uncertain what they're listening for, or even what direction they're supposed to listen to, but the Drone caste are respected, and the legendary journey , which started in 2788 AD had the rim as its destination for this very purpose first, before all the other 'important' reasons for the migration. Four races with nearly five thousand years of travel together now feel it in their very bones the same urge the Droyne do, to wait, to listen, to record what happens in the distant, silent dark.

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While the Zhodani went toward the core of the galaxy, seeking the answer to a bizarre riddle found in a psionic sensitive interstellar 'map' left by the ancients, a nomadic group of non-human races sought removal from the wreckage of the Rule of Man, lighting out past Canopus and Hanstone sectors, fleeing the ravages of conquering Aslan, fresh on the interstellar scene and eager to make their mark.

Fenstone, Sirinna, Chulay and Droyne.

The first and third came with the whole of their races, what was left of them after war, disaster and oppression. The second came because they were wanted, and their curiosity and the opportunity to see everything would have injured those of their race for whom the stars burned, a great many of them. And the fourth, the Droyne, got the ball rolling.

The stolid Fenstone, with their savant-like technical abilities, came in their last few millions. They were able to mobilize, to craft, to create fast and efficiently, but with a conservative regularity. Inspiration was the gift of other races - theirs was production, stoic determination - heads like granite, minds like diamond and hearts of stone. They made the ships, provided the pilots and armies, lifted the factories into the sky for the Vagabond fleet, and took ideas, dreams, inspiration, and fancies from their non Fenstone companions and made them solid, practical, real, and reliable.

Sirinna, sleek, musteline, and fewer than ten thousand form the scout corp. With curiosity at almost suicidal levels, they swarm the stars ahead in single-ships or small survey craft, finding the paths, crossing the gulfs, finding the frozen dead-stars, brown dwarfs in the empty from which the fleet can refuel when a rift opens up ahead. Scientists, scouts, pilots and astrographers, the Sirinna (along with a few Droyne of Sport or Leader caste) make first contact as well as guard the path behind, using roundabout jump patterns to make sure nobody from the core systems hinders the Vagabonds. Their own origins are a mystery - half their genes are terran derived, half are Skiltaire, and yet they're something blended, something not quite either. Only one in four Sirinna are naturally psionic, the rest requiring extensive training from their brethren or from the Droyne in the fleet. One in a hundred are born, randomly, with a physique and abilities indistinguishable from baseline Skiltaire - but the traits don't seem to be strictly hereditary, skipping dozens generations, as if the genetic code plays tricks on the Sirinna, only to pop up again without warning, or with completely new fur patterns unseen before in Sirinna memory.

The third race, the Chulay, was once human, but had been twisted and changed to live in places 'baseline' humaniti could not - polluted atmospheres, rich in sulfur or high gravity. They could live in these less than perfect conditions without protective gear, but their lives were always truncated and miserable as a result and so they hold no loyalty to the race which created them. Though fewer in number than even the Sirinna, the Chulay have doubled their life expectancy since being adopted by the Vagabonds, and their numbers grow steadily, adding to the fleet where the other races remain near constant throughout the voyage, necessitating new city ships and innovation as the journey plays out.

The Droyne are all of a small Oytrip of roughly 500. They instigated the Vagabond fleet, setting out when the Rule of Man crumbled and the blockade of their homeworld simply left. On their way rimward, they stopped for three quarters of a century at the Fenstone homeworld, parking in orbit and negotiating over the lifespan of three seperate Droyne leaders the necessity that the Fenstone to come with them. The Fenstone, were naturally suspicious, especially of the prophesy the droyne Drones kept repeating, of a 'world rift' endangering their race. When the planetwide earthquakes started, they began to listen. By the time the mantle of the Fenstone homeworld began to break up twenty years later, they'd already evacuated 90% of their world's population, the rest staying behind, sacrificing themselves to maintain the infrastructure necessary to continue launching evacuees until the last possible moment. The Droyne lead the Vagabond fleet only because they have a vague sense of urgency to continue moving toward the Milky Way's edge ... The Coynes are cast, and they do what they must, innovating only enough to invent only what is needed to keep the fleet moving. Weaponry, jump drives, powerplants, life support systems have gradually been improved by the Droyne technicians at the urging of their leaders for the benefit of all participants of the Vagabond fleet.

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All that inspired from the piccie above? *Hee*