The Comm Guild Maelstrom's Edge

The Epirians do everything they can to reward risky endeavours. Anyone who can find a valuable world or mining resource towards the fringes of the galaxy is rewarded with a share of the wealth for as long as things are harvested. As a result of this long standing policy, large numbers of Epirian Prospectors have existed for generations.

Individuals as tough as nails, from human to alien, anyone with enough grit and the willingness to risk it all in deep space can register as a prospector and head to the rim of the galaxy, far beyond the reach of the cybel network.

Isolation, alien attack, system failures and simple betrayal cause the number of failed prospectors to vastly surpass the few successes, but with the winners purchasing entire systems with their newfound wealth, the call to the unknown is loud.

Crisis Point is an hour long Maelstrom's Edge audiobook by Stephen Gaskell.

Crisis Point highlights the challenges facing the Epirian officer Vasar Kopak, a man responsible for the security of an escape route from the Edge threatened Merida system, as a large fleet of refugees who have gathered under the banner of the Broken try to flee the inevitability of the Maelstrom.

Unlike many of our wider universe stories, this story deals directly with two factions - the Broken and Epirians, and features a fair amount of space-based drone control along with some heavy action.

If you've not got it already, then give Crisis Point a listen! All of our audiobooks are professionally produced and are provided in DRM free MP3 format for download or easy listening in your browser on any device.

Part of the development of the comprehensive background fiction for Maelstrom's Edge is ensuring a constant level of universe-specific terms. This week we discuss the term tunnelhugger.

The cybel network has been covered in detail before. As one may figure out from putting 2+2 together, the cybel tunnels can be transited by a vast range of spacecraft. The aggregate informal term for these is 'tunnelhugger'.

A tunnelhugger is a ship that has the right kind of electromagnetic shielding to repulse the constant onslaught of energy from within a cybel tunnel. If that energy makes contact with conventional matter (like the hull!) it will explosively detonate in a manner similar to a matter/anti-matter reaction. The energy requirements to sustain such shielding are immense, and therefore an engine with cybel energy capability is practically always a requirement for a tunnelhugger as well.

Tunnelhuggers are much less common than conventional craft which by their very nature reside in individual systems. Escaping the maelstrom in a conventional craft might get you close to a waystation near a cybel gate, but transiting the cybel network to safety is much less common.

In the Maelstrom's Edge universe, massive numbers of people are forced to flee ahead of the ever-expanding galactic explosion that is the Maelstrom. We've previously shown one of the ships used for energy and resource acquisition, but converting that energy into food to keep the population functioning is another challenge all together.

While the majority of vessels are equipped with simple algae and fungal vats which can provide a balanced, if unappetising meal, there is a huge amount of variance in space travel cuisine. Many, such as the majority of the Broken, give over entire floors of their vessels to livestock to introduce more options to their food choices. The Epirians tend to produce large volumes of food that can be stored indefinitely, travelling with generations worth of supplies on their largest craft.

The most desirable food source are the Automated Crop Ships that traverse the galaxy. Traditionally they were not widely utilised outside of distant terraforming excursions, but the Maelstrom has caused them to be in massive demand. They are a pure luxury which increase the satisfaction of a fleet's populace immeasurable. A constant supply of fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts and more is possible with even a single Automated Crop Ship in a group of survivors, and it is relatively common to see populated ships sacrificed by a fleet if there is a chance to save their crop production facilities when resources run low or dangerous circumstances arise.

Tales From the Edge is the forthcoming short story collection series from Spiral Arm Studios. The first book is scheduled for release at the start of October, and the second in February. The first book contains short stories from three authors, covering a wide range of our factions and background fluff.

The second book will contain the short stories from the third party authors mentioned during our kickstarter.

Physical copies of the books will likely be printed towards the end of the year, for sale at conventions and likely online as well. Digital copies will be available through amazon as soon as it is ready.

Sorry for the short post this week - we are finalising the cover and just making a few final decisions on the contents over the first two books, so it is a little early for us to go into extreme detail just yet!

One thing that we see quite frequently is a misunderstanding around cybel energy - the energy which Karist Angels feed upon, and which is harvested from the cybel tunnels at the network's irising gates. The Maelstom's energy is similar and related to cybel, but is highly volatile, unstable and unusable, with far too much volume to be contained in any way.

The energy that forms the cybel network is known as cybel energy, and is naturally occurring. Until gateways into the cybel network were first opened, cybel energy was rarely found in real space, but the first travellers through the maze of tunnels between stars soon learned that the medium of the tunnels was a powerful energy source, and today there are few space vessels that don’t use cybel energy in their shields and engines.

Natural cybel energy will annihilate with conventional matter and energy, ultimately eliminating both in a burst of heat energy. The more cybel energy and conventional matter interact, the greater the resulting explosion. A few litres of cybel losing containment creates an explosion large enough to raze a city block. It is for this reason that cybel energy is carefully controlled and typically not allowed planetside without refinement.

Cybel energy is sometimes classed as ‘Raw’ in the wild and ‘Refined’ after magnetic processing. Raw cybel energy can be harvested from the cybel network, contained or repelled by electromagnetic fields. The refinement process uses a series of concentrated electromagnetic fields to align the energy, in a similar fashion to the polarisation of light. The refining does not change the energy itself, but reduces its volatility, allowing it to be used as a fuel source when contained in various shielded vessels from small battery sized objects to huge drums for industrial and starship use, and lowering the risk of accidental discharge.

In appearance, natural cybel has purple and blue hues with a wispy texture, appearing to the naked eye like tendrils of nebulous smoke or mist. When pinched in an electromagnetic vice inside a fuel source or reactor, the energy of small reactions can be amplified and harvested as heat, driving more conventional engines and devices. Spaceships also use magnetically contained shields of cybel energy to protect their hulls, both whilst travelling through the cybel tunnels and in space combat.

The Karist Enclave, obsessed with the nature of cybel energy, have taken to using it to power their weaponry. Due to the long-term detrimental health effects of exposure to the energy this is frowned upon by other societies, but there is no denying its effectiveness as a weapon, burning into its targets and annihilating any mass it hits with devastating effect. Although cybel energy has been known by galactic civilisations for millennia, another type of cybel energy has only recently been discovered by the founders of the Karist Enclave during their escape from a Maelstrom-infected collapsing cybel tunnel. The wispy, pink energy has a peculiarly unreactive nature, allowing non-lethal physical contact with little more than superficial burns, although it also seems to interact with the human nervous system. Most who experience contact with na-cybel have euphoric feelings, a narcotic like high, and out-of-body experiences. The Karist priesthood claim that this is a glimpse of ascension, whilst others dismiss it as a dangerous drug addiction.

To clarify the above rulebook excerpt further, there is 'raw' cybel energy - that which can be harvested from cybel tunnels, there are various grades of 'refined' cybel energy, which have differing levels of volatility, with a mid-level refined version being the type which is fed to Angels, and the least volatile being 'na-cybel' - used in Karist rituals, and finally the energy of the Maelstrom which is like a super volatile form of raw cybel energy, unusable and exploding forever outwards.

We are proud to present the sequel to Transit... Fracture!

Fracture follows directly on from the end of Transit, and once again is a one hour long audiobook by Stephen Gaskell which serves as a broad introduction to the Maelstrom's Edge universe. Fracture continues to follow Kelvin as he and his family go to great lengths to try and escape their Maelstrom threatened world.

We've made the first 5 minutes of Fracture available here for preview.

Fracture can be purchased at the Maelstrom's Edge website.

As with all of our audiobooks, the pace of narration is deliberately designed to work well for listening to when you are either painting or driving. Painting our models is a massively enjoyable part of the hobby for us, but painting while enveloping ourselves in the universe with an audiobook makes things even better.

If you've got a long commute, or want to take your relaxation to the next level when painting, please do check out some of the Maelstrom's Edge audiobooks.

Part of the development of the comprehensive background fiction for Maelstrom's Edge is ensuring a constant level of universe-specific terms. One that has become quite endearing to us is Stellargee.

While the etymology of the word should be fairly self apparent, a combination of 'Stellar' and 'Refugee', the reason for the introduction of the word was because every time we used 'Refugee', it pulled us back to the modern era/real-world settings, and away from the grandiose galactic scale vision of the universe that we try to encompass when talking about the crisis caused by the Maelstrom.

Refugee was also strongly suggestive of world-scale evacuation and migration, whereas Stellargee allowed us to vastly increase the scope of people affected and associated with the term.

Stellargee is specifically defined in our internal dictionary as "The diaspora refugees - able people temporarily on a world while fleeing the edge". Billions of people forced on to desperate planets, doing everything they can to keep themselves and their families ahead of the inevitable expanse of the Maelstrom.

In the Maelstrom's Edge universe, massive numbers of people are forced to flee ahead of the ever-expanding galactic explosion that is the Maelstrom. Evacuation fleets require large amounts of energy, both for travelling long distances through space and to support the many lives aboard each ship on those long journeys. Over time, fuel and other resources inevitably become scarce.

The scientists and engineers of humanity have had millennia to consider solutions to resource optimisation in space. One of the most prevalent is the Interstellar Hydrogen Harvester, or 'IHH'. This relatively small ship has a huge set of harvesting films affixed to the front of it, which allow it to grab every possible scrap of interstellar material that it can. This material is then redirected to a storage hub at the rear of the craft which is periodically emptied into the purpose built storage ships in the fleet.

Harvesting is dramatically more efficient in resource rich areas of the galaxy, such as nebulae. However, objects of large mass tend to attract the Maelstrom at a greater rate than open space, so diverting a fleet for more efficient resource collection is never a decision to be taken lightly.

A handful of IHH ships can massively extend the practical range and viable capacity of an evacuation fleet, and are therefore extremely valuable to all of mankind. Countless fleets have been destroyed in combat over the smallest rumour of IHH possession.

Welcome one and all to The Comm Guild - the official blog of Maelstrom's Edge!

After a year of operating maelstromsedge.com, coupled with recent changes in the way facebook works, we found that updates were getting harder and harder to share with everyone, and loads of casual bits of information and cool community items were getting buried rather quickly. JP proposed that we set up a frequently updated blog as the central point for our communications, and now you are reading it here at The Comm Guild.

Over the coming weeks, months and years, we'll be sharing everything from release news, to promotions, to fiction and artwork, to model breakdowns and more. Please bookmark us (CTRL-D), or add us to your blog reading list so that you dont miss anything!



You might have seen the name 'Comm Guild' crop up a few times in the context of Maelstrom's Edge. For those readers who are not already familiar with them, this is their story...