Here’s a Space Opera AU for you, @typeytypeytypey.
Myka is an Atraxan, a species that is fairly new to the interstellar community. They have an (inaccurate) reputation as dumb muscle, due to a few factors: 1) they’re new to spaceflight and playing catch-up with everyone, 2) they’re gigantic and have trouble operating systems designed for other species - to them every button is tiny and fiddly, which slows them down, and 3) people are assholes who judge by appearances. There are (again, inaccurate) rumors that Atraxans were “brought up” - that some species gave them the technology for spaceflight - because according to prejudice many don’t think they were capable of developing it without help.
Like many Atraxans, Myka joined the military - in her case, she became a Space Ranger. There she met Sam, another Atraxan. Eventually they were joined together in an Atraxan mating pair. As a part of that, an Atraxan’s left horn is bleached and then dyed to match the patterns on their partners horn. If one of the pair dies before the other, the bleached and dyed horn is broken off. And so, when Sam died, Myka’s left horn was broken. Unfortunately, her brethren in the Space Rangers were less than understanding, viewing her as “broken”. She was an Atraxan, and only good for muscle in their view, and now she was less “tough” and not useful anymore. Eventually Myka couldn’t take it anymore and left the Rangers. She wound up on Artie’s ship, Spaceship 13 (Artie is very literal, and all his ships have been named “Spaceship [#]”. He wanted to name this one Spaceship 3, but Claudia managed to convince him that 13 was a cooler number). There, she isn’t the muscle (that’s Pete and his power armor) but instead navigates and keeps the books. She still likes to wear her Space Ranger fatigues when she can - she’s proud of her service- but they tend to spook the clients, so she can’t wear them when they visit.
Spaceship 13 is a “shipping” spaceship. Shipping is in quotes because it makes runs of varying levels of legality, aka they smuggle stuff. Artie is the Captain of the ship, and the pilot. Mrs. F is the mysterious financier. Steve is the “face”, the person in charge of lining up clients and handling most of the contact with them. Claudia is the ship’s engineer. She lost her limbs in an accident, and they’ve been replaced by robot ones. Her brother Joshua was killed (kinda) in the same accident, but he lives on as the ship’s AI. Pete, as mentioned earlier, is the muscle, as well as the ship’s gunner. He has a set of power armor/a mech suit, which is well armed and armored in addition to increasing his strength.
One day, Spaceship 13 is running some mysterious cargo, which they are told needs to be kept refrigerated. A fire breaks out in the cargo hold, and after it’s extinguished Myka opens up the cargo to make sure it isn’t damaged. There she discovers Helena, cryogenically frozen. This is extremely shocking, not because it’s a person - they deal with some very sketchy clients, trying to slip some human trafficking through is not that surprising - but because it’s a Lunalian, and the Lunalians were all mysteriously killed over a hundred years ago, before the Atraxans achieved interstellar flight.
Lunalians evolved from moths - silk worms to be precise - and unlike Atraxans, they actually were brought up in a sense, though not intentionally. Lunalians were bred and trained to weave ever more complicated silk patterns for Todarii (artie is one - they’re dwarf-like creatures). This led to smarter and smarter Lunalians, and eventually they achieved sentience and began quietly learning Todarii technology. When the Todarii learned what had happened, they freaked, and destroyed all knowledge of their involvement with the Lunalians. Nowadays, Todarii have a general distrust of Lunalians, vaguely feeling them untrustworthy, but unaware that this is a folk memory of their sordid history which had been scrubbed from all actual records.
Helena, following the death of her daughter, was seduced into the Cult of the Finite Stars, who promised that when they succeeded in their goal of opening a dimensional rift that Christina would be revived. Helena wound up helping them with the science involved in opening the rift, only to realize through her calculations that the rift would actually destroy the universe. When she protested, she was frozen to silence her. They kept her alive, however, so that she could be there when the rift was opened. Helena was a princess, and her disappearance was a matter of great concern to the Lunalians. Realizing that the Lunalians would if able track her down and destroy there work, the cult hatched a monstrous plan - to wipe out the Lunalians. They succeeded, and now the time grows near to open the rift. They began moving the pieces to completion, and as a part of their plan shipped Helena to the site of the rift opening. This is when she is discovered, as she is shipped via Spaceship 13. Now the newly revived Helena and the crew of Spaceship 13 must race against time to stop the cult before the universe is destroyed. But will the cult managed to seduce Helena again with their promises of reviving the dead?
I spent way too much time designing a whole universe complete with alien species and a plot for this
Visual inspirations for everyone -
Myka - the Qunari from Dragon Age, Tauren from Warcraft, the Pane from @dragonoak
Helena - moths pretty much. I kinda was thinking that the fashion of moth’s could be a bit steampunky with their brown swirls on the wings
Both Myka and Helena - some of the weirder, more alien interpretations of trolls from the Homestuck fandom when I was in it
Claudia - a less dark Adam Jensen from Deus Ex, little bit some of the more spindly star wars droids. Off duty/out of mec MEC troopers from XCOM. also maybe her as an elf from that video game W13 ep
Artie - Dwarves, generally. Volus from Mass Effect. Torbjorn from Overwatch
Pete - Master Chief from Halo (out of armor). Armor: MEC troopers from XCOM. Power armor from fallout, particularly Fallout 4′s more tanky interpretation
Joshua - EDI from Mass Effect, Cortana from Halo, that dude whose name escapes me (the one who liked doctor calder) from that episode when he was split in two
don’t really know what Steve or any of the others looks like in this universe. didn’t get that far
sorry this took so long to post, things occurred IRL with varying predictability. hopefully it all posts ok. may do some more stuff drawing in this universe once I’m off mobile.
