OUR HELEUS, OUR HOME
The Archon is defeated. The Kett are forced back beyond the Heleus cluster. But Heleus has more tricks to play on the hopeful 100,000 Milky Way colonists than the monsters of Exaltation. The natural, the ancient and the personal all want a piece, be it a piece to take or to give, of the Andromeda Initiative.
As usual, the crew of the Tempest, the Pathfinder team, are the ones caught right in the middle of it.
Foreword
Ryder
My custom Ryder can be seen in the cover image, though I understand a few people will want to know in more depth her appearance, so I'll cover it here.
She has green eyes, a very vivid green often related to the shade of an emerald gemstone. She's a redhead, freckles cover a large part of her upper body. Her height is on the lower end of the 'normal' region of the scale.
If you wish to create my Ryder in the game itself, directions are quite simple:
Select custom preset 10.
Change to hairstyle 3.
Keep the colour on the preset's row, but move to the first one on the left.
Eyes. Both set the ring to bright green. Inner colour: 3/4 towards bright green from the black side. Outer colour: Closer to the 1/3 mark.
Scar tissue: Type 2. Visibility: 0.1
Origin & Concept
When this story started, it was quite different. People may recall 'Time & Place' from before. My own first venture into Andromeda, you might say. I got generally good feedback for it, as well as a few pointers (Special thanks to jerseydanielgibson for some in-depth suggestions) for things to improve on. As a result of this, I decided to remake a few elements of the story to count towards these suggestions.
One I bring up in particular was the confusion of a couple of people when I mentioned the concept of a series. I probably worded that badly, but let me explain. An example; I had a conversation with someone about the prolonged plot, the hinting at things. You'll see that a few times in the first episode. I was having a chat with this reader about this, the hint you will see at the end of the first chapter and the end of the third. Somewhere along the line, my reply went something like this:
I'll keep that in mind. I plan to reveal more about the subject in the next story so I'll try out this method then.
Their reply seemed to hint at confusion. They put 'the next story' in quotation marks like I just did. I might have perceived it wrong, but to quote it in such a context as the reader did seemed to me to maybe unintentionally hint that they didn't fully understand what I meant. That one, I could've given a miss to, but I also got the same impression from a couple others upon chatting about it, that the multi-story concept either didn't make sense or was tricky to keep up with. This is why it's been a couple weeks since I ended off Time & Place, and why this story you're on now exists.
Upon some thought and re-planning, I have to agree with you guys. The multi-story concept is tricky to keep up with, having a story called Time & Space and a story called Lost In Space in the same long story, yet linked only by having 'Part one/two in Our Heleus' is hard to keep up with. They almost seem too separate from one another, as if they are their own entire stories, like they're supposed to be their own individual sequels to the games, and that's not the aim. The aim is that the whole series is the sequel, the individual stories are just sub-plots, much like the side-missions in the game add small bits of background to the main storyline while retaining their own start, middle and end. I thought for a while on this, and how to better explain it. Then I realised the answer was staring in my face the whole time.
Episodic concept. Episodic. Episodes. In a TV series, a single episode doesn't carry its own name to the whole series. You don't get 'Heaven Sent: A Doctor Who episode'. You get 'Doctor Who Series 9 Episode 11: Heaven Sent'. The name isn't that of the episode, the name is that of the series, the episode is just the name of this section of the larger story. Why should an episodically arranged story be any different?
So welcome to Our Heleus, Our Home. This story will be made up of several smaller stories in the form of episodes, each their own plot while carrying part of themselves over into the main storyline. Each episode will be separated clearly by a 'title page' where, if there is one, a foreword such as this will be placed.
Now if you ask me, I need to cut this off before the foreword becomes a story in itself. If anyone has any questions or comments, feel free to leave them in a review and I'll do my best to answer them in the next Author's Notes or Foreword. If you've any suggestions or tips, gimme a PM, mainly because they tend to lead to longer conversations than one or two ANs in a couple chapters can cover. Plus, I think we can all understand the preference to keep criticism less in the public eye, one gets mildly embarrassed by such things but not ashamed to talk about and fix them.
That said, without further adieu, go enjoy this story!
And you! Yes, you sat there at the phone with the energy drink and black shorts! 'What happens next' as a question won't get an answer! ;)