Chapter 2: A History Lesson

Many hundreds of millions of years ago, during the time of the 2nd Universal Government, a race of beings called the Twark developed a utility Android for want of a better word. This Android form was living, made of Silicon but completely non-sentient as it was designed to be inhabited and controlled by one or more projected beings. Not just the minds but the auras that made and defined a person.

The advantages of this new utility form were found to be unending and more and more variants were developed. Eventually transformation routines and an enhanced computer support system that worked with and extend the auras of the inhabitants were made. This allowed a user to own one Form but format it in many ways.

Years later; many, many years later; after the fall of the 2nd Universal Government, a much reduced Twark were involved in a war with the Dae-Mon. A warlike race from high gravity worlds who were intent on controlling the galaxy. Allying themselves with a Polity called the Combine; the Twark fought a war of losses.

Losses, until an engineer found the plans for the Form and created the Battle Form. Large, 3 meters and more, designed to operate in 5 - 9 gee worlds and impervious to the vacuum of space, the Battle Form was thought to be the answer to what passed as their Prayers.

Unfortunately it wasn't powerful enough to handle the esoteric energies being thrown around in this bloody, devastating war. The Battle Form was modified. Stronger, armoured skin, better and more complex sensors, a more powerful computer and the final enhancement was a modification to house a Triad. A Triad is an esoteric form, made of three beings, one taking the role of the light, one the dark and one the grey. This combination, difficult to achieve and much stronger in the whole than the mere sum of its parts, enhanced by the strengths of the Battle Form hardware, turned the tide of the Dae-Mon/Combine war. Or so it was believed.

Other groups of Twark, fleeing from the war, found splinters and shards of the "Last Globe of Creation". An esoteric artifact of incredible power that allowed the wielder to create pocket universes, complete in all details. Many pocket universes were created across the Planes of Reality, housing variants of existing cultures, experiments. They seemed, for an unknown reason, to delight in creating versions of Earth, many based on ancient entertainment shows. And so the Q was born.

A mere few thousand years before Jai was born; the then King of the Fendaril, James the First, founder of the Fendaril, discovered the Sword of Rhiannon. Years later, during an adventure with a bunch of Humans and Elandril in a medieval type world, one of the party, a young Human, Joassa Las Ran Tag, fell from her horse and injured her wrist.

James helped her up and while holding his sword healed her wrist, both were startled by the green glow that formed during the process. Over the following years, the wrist hardened into a thick green covering, exceptionally strong. So strong that once, while wearing full Battle Armour, Joassa was shot by an armour piercing round that easily breached her armour. It then bounced off her wrist.

Meeting up with James later, Joassa was transformed into a Full Battle Form, Sentient and able to use all of the forms capabilities, she went on with her life, little realising the form she was wearing was damaged, very damaged. Other Battle Forms existed, having made a home on a high gravity world, because they found that the body needed the "stress" of the gravity to fully develop, something the original designers hadn't realised.

Several hundred years later, the Fendaril were involved in a battle of extinction with the Coalition of Species. They hated, with a religious fanaticism, all high technology users; and The Fendaril were certainly in that mold. Joassa, now an Engineer of some note in her adopted Polity, was involved in the fabrication, design, building, growing of the technology The Fendaril required to help survive the war.

In a fit of ultimate Frankensteinian hubris, Joassa developed a small, bleeding edge spaceship. Grown with all of the latest technology that could be found from all the races they had encountered, this ship, named Merlin, was Sentient, small and very, very powerful. Calling on a Favour owed her, she asked their Majesties to use the Sword of Rhiannon, as this is what started her transformation all those years ago, to "Battle Form" her new ship. The Queen turned up and transformed the ship for Joassa as requested, and the rest, as they say is history.