The Comm Guild Maelstrom's Edge

When travelling at speed away from the ultimate destruction of the Maelstrom, the need for constant resources is always there. We've covered this with interstellar hydrogen harvesting and automated crop ships, but there is another key piece of the puzzle.

Stopping off to manually harvest asteroids and other space detritus is a slow, energy intensive and hazardous affair. One of the most important post-maelstrom ships is the mining ship - a huge vessel which flies at the head of a fleet, ingesting physical matter from space and performing some basic processing of it.

Larger material that would not fit in the intake is usually blasted by flanking assault craft so that as much as possible can be consumed for the long journey towards the galactic rim.

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.

Today's forward guidance is a nice preview of an upcoming Epirian model. Next week we'll discuss some of the options and features of this model, but this week we just wanted to share the image!

The model will vary slightly from the artwork as it will be entirely plastic and as a result, some design restrictions (with angles of the guns, shaping of the feet/legs, etc) cause some modifications to be necessary, but the final sculpt is pretty close to the artwork as with most of our models!

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.

We really love how this Karist Trooper turned out in yellow, with a complementary blue cybel glow. Using the indents on the face plate as a stripe marker was something we'd considered doing to mark out sergeants in the squad, but it never looked half as good as it does here as a natural part of the colour scheme.

One of our favourite pieces of terrain in the studio collection is this refinery by 3T studios, made using foamcore and the Maelstrom's Edge Terrain Sprue

When assembling it, they were kind enough to take a whole bunch of WIP photos, so we can show you just how simple it is to create impressive buildings like this.

Everything begins with the basic shapes. Sketch them out on paper or however you like, cut out of foamcore, and then glue them together on a hard base

Next, the whole structure gets a light coat of texturing. Spackle/plaster works well for this, and it is also used to break up the texture on the base as well

Now, the core structure of the building is fully painted, so that if anything breaks off or peels away later, there wont be bright white material showing underneath

Now the fun part, components from the Maelstrom's Edge Terrain Sprue are affixed to the building, often using a plasticard backing so that they cleanly fit on the various faces of the structure.

Here's just how much detail can be created from the terrain sprue (and a bit more from a second sprue) and some strips of thin plasticard, along with a straw and a chunk of the frame of the terrain sprue as well for piping.

Once all those loose components are superglued on to the base building, we end up with the final structure

Grab a copy of the terrain sprue today and try it yourself!

In today's community spotlight, we wanted to share the lovely work that Keltikhoa did on their project blog. From metallic Karists to this awesome Angel conversion:

and in keeping with Monday's Minnow spotlight, here's their Angel Minnow colourscheme:

The Comm Guild's community spotlight focuses on sharing something from the Maelstrom's Edge community each week, if you have anything you'd like to get in to the queue, please get in touch with us via the Maelstrom's Edge website

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.

The Karist forces take heavy visual and technological inspiration from the Angels that they alone have managed to contain and manipulate both on and off the battlefield. Minnows are the immature form of Angels, and are captured by Karists in deep space and then trained and raised into mature Angels.

Design

As with mature Angels, the core of a minnow is immutable, with void gel extruding from the body and being manipulated by the Angel. Minnows have very limited control over this void gel, so unlike the mature Angel cannot form claws, talons and similar on demand, but instead have wings and small claws which they can manipulate for speed and mobility, making them useful battlefield tools for the Karists. Angels are great conversion fodder for this reason, as you can take the immutable core as a starting point and then go nuts with greenstuff on the void gel sections.

Plastics

The Angel Minnow sprue is worth a mention for the technical complexity involved in its production. Normally, a plastic sprue is produced with a two part tool, which means detail has to flow to each side of the tool. The Angel Minnow plastic sprue was built with Sliding Core technology, which means instead of having a two or three part body, we were able to make the core of the model a single piece by using a 4 part tool instead of a 2 part tool. This allows the mouth of the minnow to sink back into the body instead of being flush or a separate face part with a nasty join line. As a result of this, the sprue has no frame around the outer edge and the Angel Minnows are probably the easiest models in the entire Maelstrom's Edge range to assemble.

Weapons

Armed with a deadly Cybel Pulse attack, Angel Minnows have both ranged and close quarters capability, and coupled with their speed can quickly outflank and decimate an opposing squad.

If you'd like to hear more about Angel Minnows, the audiobook A Keeper's Duty follows the Karist capture of larger/end-stage minnows on a decaying space station.

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.

Part of our early testing for getting our final colourscheme together was sending our models out to a bunch of talented painters and getting them to completely make up their own colourschemes.

Today's photo is one of those - an Epirian Contractor in a white and blue colourscheme.

There is a lot going on in such a small space for this model, with the windswept leaves on the base working really nicely with the at-ease but on guard pose, as if the contractor has just spotted something of concern.

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.

This week's community spotlight is this fantastic Angel conversion by Benjamin Jelley. The elevated base looks awesome enough, but spreading the limbs out to more of a climbing pose completely changes, and massively enhances, the dynamism of the model. We think it is a great piece of work!

The Comm Guild's community spotlight focuses on sharing something from the Maelstrom's Edge community each week, if you have anything you'd like to get in to the queue, please get in touch with us via the Maelstrom's Edge website

Today's artwork is one which we have not featured too heavily in our literature to date. We are very keen to show as much daily life as we do warfare, and this image is one of the central pieces around that theme.

Click the image above to view it as a larger size.

This city is a typical Epirian city like Pike's Basin on Zycanthus. When the Epirian Foundation starts to terraform a world, it needs a presence on that world. Settlers usually arrive before the atmosphere is fully supportive of life, and so in the early decades of terraforming, settlers live in giant habdomes the size of a small city. As the atmosphere settles, these domes are removed or at least no longer maintained. Being the point of influence for much of the planet, cities grow in and around the original settlements. Often, as shown in the image above, huge buildings spring up through the remains of the original terraforming habdome - something which is left as a reminder of mankind's dominance over the planet.

A handler and two scarecrows watch over the city, silhouetted in the foreground as life goes on, the Maelstrom a distant but ever present concern for its inhabitants.