Space is big—really big. Although the Blazar setting focuses on one section of the galaxy, it encompasses an area so vast that it cannot be easily imagined. This Almanac is meant to provide a broad overview, with details limited to the general defining characteristics needed to provide context for the campaign.

When considering the galactic scale of things, there are two massive challenges to maintaining any type of societal structure, travel and communication. In the Blazar setting, two forms of faster than light travel allow spacecraft to carry passengers and cargo from system-to-system. With no reliable communication network, all data is delivered by spacecraft and transmitted locally. In this way, it is not unlike mail deliveries made by train before the advent of the telegraph.

Understanding how this all works together to maintain a functional society requires some understanding of the galaxy’s attributes and the methods of faster than light travel.

About the Galaxy

The Embre Galaxy, is elliptical with a roughly circular shape, stretching nearly eight hundred thousand light-years across and containing around five trillion stars. Unlike most most elliptical galaxies where stars rarely form and expansion is very slow, The Embre Galaxy is a hotbed of star formation and it is rapidly expanding. Instead of a super black hole at its center consuming gas and dust, it has a massive cluster of singularities that eject streams of plasma, called the Blazar Expanse. It is likely that this unstable and very powerful core may one day collapse to form a single massive black hole, allowing the Embre Galaxy to take its place among so many others of its kind.

These plasma streams wind through the galaxy, curving around gravity wells, to form a complex series of flows referred to as the Lattice. The vast majority of inhabited planets are situated along these flows—in addition to being responsible for its rapid expansion, the flows are responsible for seeding the galaxy with life.

What is a Blazar

Defined as a black hole whose accretion disk contains relativistic jets of ionized matter. These singularities are powered by the material that falls into them. As matter spirals into the center, it superheats the material in the disk, which generates an enormous amount of energy. Perpendicular to the disk are a pair of beams formed by the interaction of magnetic fields running through this high energy field, which launch ionized material at near light speeds.

Between the spin of the accretion disk and intense gravitational forces within the Blazar Expanse, the plasma that escapes through these beams is able to achieve relativistic speeds beyond the speed of light.

The Lattice

Thanks to the Blazar Expanse, streams of ionized plasma flow like rivers through the galaxy. Bent and twisted by the gravity of native stars, they shaped planetary systems in the mid-curvature of the galactic outer rim, where this labyrinthine network of plasma flows meanders around the cradle of civilization.

Moving at light speeds, these flows pick up dust and gasses making them visible as massive streaks in the sky from nearby planets. Like rivers, craft are able to travel along the flows for interplanetary travel without consuming vast amounts of fuel. Though, because the streams are charged with ionized energy, a more mechanical technological approach arose to combat the electrical overloads, transforming technologies used by space-faring races.

The majesty, complexity, and beauty of the flows has made it a focus of scientific study, corporate greed, and religious fanaticism. With no centralized government to oversee or patrol them, and a convoluted set of good faith treaties that vary by world, system, and race as guidelines, travel for anyone not associated with a galactic organization is hazardous at best.