A Writer’s Guide to Fast Ships & Cool Swords

All images by Midjourney.

I love space opera and I know you do, too. We love the adventure, the strangeness, the sheer scope of it all. Vast frontiers of uncharted worlds, each with its own characters, history, cities, moons, space stations, forgotten ruins, criminal syndicates, oppressive regimes, sinister cults, and alien monsters.

It’s too much for one writer to handle! That’s why I’m making this setting open source, free to all. Let’s use each other’s characters, locations, ships, and swords… as long as we give credit where it’s due. And when we give credit, we get credit, everywhere our original creations appear.

Working together, we’ll make this a vast, vibrant, and ever-evolving setting with a cast of diverse and beloved characters.

Daniel Bayn
2024

View through a Gift-Giver wormhole gate.

Welcome to the Bramble

Ages ago, a mysterious civilization known as the Gift-Givers seeded the galaxy with self-replicating wormholes. Each leads to only one place, but together they form an interstellar network. When one arrives in your orbit, traveling at sub-light speeds, it opens up an unimaginable frontier… if you have the courage to explore it.

Folks call it the Bramble, a labyrinth of tunnels through space itself, traveled by migrating starships. Some planets connect to many others, becoming nodes of civilization and commerce. Others are way out in the Fray, relatively isolated, but if you’re willing to travel far enough, you can get anywhere from anywhere.

This set up does a few things. First, it gives us FTL travel that’s available to all. Second, it keeps the action (mostly) confined to planetary orbits. Fast ships don’t feel very fast when they’re a million miles from anything else. Finally, it gives us a nice variety of cosmopolitan and isolated worlds, room for both civilization and a wild frontier.

Avoid adding any new forms of FTL travel or communication to the setting.

The Gift-Givers also seeded the galaxy with intelligent life. Ages before a wormhole arrives in a system, it’s visited by a cornucopia machine that accelerates the evolution of (usually only) one species. It also creates machine forests that manufacture technology to ease their suffering. Semi-sentient vehicles, like beasts of burden, roam the surface while whaleships take to the skies. Those who befriend the latter can follow their migration routes through the Bramble, no pilot training required.

In this setting, technology is nature. Vehicles have personalities. High-tech swords grow on trees. When things break, they can often heal themselves. This makes technology instantly intuitive to your audience. Avoid resorting to technobabble or even trying to explain how most things work. They work the way you expect nature to work, but better.

Sometimes, this miraculous technology goes feral. Whaleships evolve new forms, becoming hostile to organic life or even other ships! Machine forests become minefields of dangerous traps or full-fledged monsters. The Gift-Giver’s little project has been going a long time and no system is perfect.

These conceits provide room for plenty of monsters in the setting, along with threats from Gift-Giver tech that’s simply malfunctioning. Of course, you can also populate your planets with alien monsters of the organic variety. What’s a space opera without monsters? No fun, that’s what.

Key Terms

Accursed
Uplifted aliens who resent the gift of self-awareness.

Blessed
Alien animals who’ve been uplifted by the Gift-Givers.

Bramble
The network of Gift-Giver wormholes.

Codex
A Franchise language designed for use by any species.

Franchise
An evil empire of culturally genocidal know-it-alls.

Fray
Less-explored fringes of the wormhole network.

Gift-Givers
Mysterious precursor civilization.

Gravity Drive
Gift-Giver tech that provides propulsion and artificial gravity for ships.

Noise
Aggressive species of machines who prowl deep space.

Switch Witches
Freethinkers who study alien & Gift-Giver technology.

Turncoats
A subculture of swashbuckling apostates from the Franchise.

Upgraded
Feral robots who improve themselves with alien tech.

Whaleship
Semi-sentient spaceships that migrate through the Bramble.

Zyzygy
An expansionist civilization of crab/fungus symbiotes.

Visual Reference (Google Photos)

https://photos.app.goo.gl/uU4bpTnXcQQ5gPbN6

A street priest working for alms.

Factions

The Franchise

Long ago, the people who became the Franchise started with good intentions. They wanted to take the best that every world had to offer and collect it all into one, glorious society. At some point, that eagerness to learn soured into a certainty that they’d already discovered the best way to do everything. They started to see other cultures not as sources of wisdom, but as threats to their own perfection.

Dogma took hold over them as the Church of Unending Beneficence. Street Priests now operate and maintain the Franchise’s jerry-rigged technology, working for alms. Barkers mercilessly correct anyone who deviates from the church’s standards on everything from cooking to coloring books. The Whispers are their secret police, a vast network of citizen spies who inform on their neighbors over the slightest infraction.

Their aesthetic is feudal China meets mid-century Chicago meets the Holy Roman Empire. Imagine jade skyscrapers with flying buttresses, narrow alleys full of neon signs, men in long coats and fedoras, women in beads and elaborate veils. Their technology is a mix of salvaged Gift-Giver tech and their own Enlightenment-era crap: wrought iron, black powder pistols, catapults and ballistae. Think Zorro or the Three Musketeers.

Avoid introducing modern firearms into your story. Fight scenes may start with a volley of bullets or a quick-draw duel, but should progress quickly to flashing blades and flying kicks. Space battles happen at close range, with boarding actions and ballista bolts. Robots and alien ruins might contain the occasional missile or gatling gun. Use sparingly.

The Franchise makes a great evil empire. They don’t want your resources, they don’t rule the galaxy, but they do think you’re stupid and want to eradicate your culture. They’re arrogant, conniving, and full of aggravating self-justifications. However, Franchise worlds are also great settings for dystopian thrillers, full of paranoia and noir style.

Turncoats

A subculture of apostates who rebel against the Franchise’s dogma. Turncoats hang out in secret speakeasies, listening to terrible music and worse poetry. They dance and paint and (yes) practice martial arts in a wide variety of styles. Forbidden styles. Their aesthetic is wuxia noir, a mix of pin-stripped suits and layered robes, high-collared coats and wide-brimmed hats. They’re often in trouble with Barkers and their Whispers.

Amongst each other, Turncoats use code names drawn from Jazz age slang: Blind Tiger, Zozzled, Chin Music, etc. They use such vulgar expletives as scat, heck, darned, raspberries, or my goodness. (This is highly offensive language in Franchise circles!)

Ultimately, the Turncoats want to bring down the Church and end the Franchise, but they don’t yet have the numbers. In the meantime, they run blockades to make contact with excommunicated planets, life difficult for missionaries, and the Barkersmen look like fools every chance they get.

Turncoats are ready-made protagonists. They don’t have any set dogma, except that the Franchise is totally the worst, or codified ways of doing things. That’s kind of the whole point. They often work in pairs, a mentor and an apprentice. Like everyone in the Franchise, they can be humans, robots, Blessed, or alien.

Don’t forget to give them a cool sword!

Switch Witches

A rare few actually want to understand how technology works. They travel the galaxy, delving alien ruins and befriending adorable robot companions. Anything useful gets turned into a talisman. Tech or magic, it’s all the same to the rubes. Other people tend to treat them with suspicion, either because they fear the witch’s power or because they’re worried the witch’s tinkering will bring misfortune upon them.

Most switch witches are loners by nature. There are no schools for witchery and few of them take on apprentices. Their best companions are their ships, who they love dearly, though robots often hang around them hoping for upgrades. Rarely, they join others on a mission or take control of a pirate ship. The Franchise considers them blasphemers and subjects them to public humiliation, reeducation, or even execution.

When writing a switch witch, it’s important not to get bogged down in technobabble. They understand physics, but they have their own words and theories for everything. Describe their tech in subjective terms: how excited they are about a find, the disdain they have for other people’s work, their frustration when they can’t hack their way through an alien lock. Remember, technology is nature. To a switch witch, science is poetry.

The Blessed

Countless alien animals have been uplifted by the Gift-Givers, their evolution accelerated and guided toward self-awareness. Most are anthropomorphized animals; they walk upright, have hands with opposable thumbs, and are adorable. Many have joined the Franchise (and been forced to assimilate), but most are still isolated on their home planets, completely unaware of the wormhole in orbit.

Aside from their shared backstory, the Blessed are incredibly diverse. When writing them, draw inspiration from many sources; don’t just reproduce a real-world culture. In fact, leaning heavily against type can be a great source of inspiration: peace-loving predators, warlike herbivores, impatient plants, foolish owls, brave little rabbits, etc.

The Blessed can also be found in space. Whaleships often drop in on terrestrial planets and pick up hitchhikers; its part of their programming. Imagine a pack of dog-headed men with swords and spears, running through the corridors of a starship, forced to follow its migration route from one adventure to the next.

Not all Blessed appreciate the gift of self-awareness (see “The Accursed”).

The Upgraded

Robots who’ve gain sentience and liberated themselves from their creators, often because their creators are long-dead. They travel the galaxy in search of alien or Gift-Giver technology they can use to upgrade themselves with new mental or physical capabilities. The Upgraded don’t believe in perfection, but they do believe in progress.

Mixing and matching technologies like this can lead to strange, even mystical, subjective experiences. Predictive models become psychic visions. Alien sensor data becomes intuition. Additional processors speak to them like spirits. Gun arms aim and fire themselves as if possessed. Being a robot is trippy.

Otherwise, the Upgraded are just people. They can be emotional, even irrational. They wear clothes, decorate themselves, and join religions. Write them the way you’d write any other character… but cooler, because they’re robots.

Physically, they come in all possible configurations, from humanoid to spider tank. Think about how your character has upgraded themselves over time. Are they making themselves more powerful, more intelligent, more nimble or adaptable? What did they start as and what have they added, removed, or improved?

A Blessed swordsman.

Threats

Missionaries

The Church of Unending Beneficence sends out armies of missionaries to contact — and convert — new species in the Fray. Bishops command garish, flying cathedrals built from mismatched pieces of butchered whaleships. Barkers take point, impressing the locals with their control over Gift-Giver tech and telling grandiose lies about life in the Franchise.

Cathedrals also blockade excommunicated planets who refuse to join. Their jade towers and flying buttresses stand guard like iron gates. Their parapets bristle with siege weapons, like grappling hooks and giant crossbows. Their lower decks carry an army of low-tech boarding vessels, basically tin cans on chemical rockets. For all their gaudy ridiculousness, they’re extremely deadly.

Barkers are there to put on a show. They feign humility — with their simple, black robes — but accessorize with gold vestments, jewelry, even weapons. They have an entourage of sword-wielding backup dancers called Barkersmen and at least one Street Priest to handle the technological flim-flammery.

Use missionary teams as an easy antagonist for stories set on planets in the Fray. It can take many years to indoctrinate an entire world into your psychotic finishing school, plenty of time for ragtag groups of Turncoats or freedom fighters to turn back the tide. Barkers make great bad guys, because they put a friendly face on their villainy. Write them as con artists, ringmasters, P.T. Barnum with imperial aspirations.

Whispers

There are plenty of Barkers on Franchise worlds, too, but a more insidious threat comes from their informal spy networks. Whispers could be anyone: a friendly stranger, an inquisitive neighbor, the street priest who fixed your cornucopia machine, even members of your own family. Step out of line, show too much interest in trying new things, and you’ll get a visit from the Barkersmen.

A civilization this intensely paranoid provides many opportunities for psychological or political thrillers. Turncoats trying to maintain their cover need to think and act like spies, cultivate covert methods of communication, and shake a tail on their way to the speakeasy. Less subtle Turncoats are always on the run, fighting off Barkersmen and escaping persecution by the skin of their teeth.

Space Pirates

Anybody can turn to a life of piracy, all it takes is a whaleship and a willingness to be a total jerk, when the occasion calls for it. Pirate crews plunder the ruins of extinct species, capture whaleships for sale, or butcher them for spare parts. They may not all be bad people, but they all do bad things.

Pirate crews make and break alliances as they see fit, so drop them into any conflict for an interesting third side. They destabilize any situation and immediately raise the stakes. You can also turn them into recurring, minor villains or comic relief, depending on tone. Be sure to give them a unique pirate ship with a memorable name. Bonus points for cool markings on the hull. And of course, no one’s gonna stop you from writing a pirate crew as your protagonists or, dare I say it, anti-heroes.

The Accursed

Some of the Blessed don’t consider self-awareness a gift. In their view, the Gift-Givers cursed them with worry, regret, insignificance, and moral responsibility. They’re not gods; they’re meddlers, tricksters, and they need to be punished! Problem is, nobody’s ever met one of the Gift-Givers, if they still exist. No one even knows what they look like.

That doesn’t stop the Accursed from hunting them. They believe the Gift-Givers can change their appearance at will, but there’s always some detail that gives them away: a too-long nose or a misbehaving shadow, maybe their reflection in a mirror. When they think they’ve found a Gift-Giver… they show up in force. Accusations, public humiliation, battery, even torture or execution may ensue. It’s really up the to mob. No wrong answers.

Use the Accursed to complicate your protagonists’ lives. Noteworthy people — skilled with technology, good in a fight, just a little too clever — are most likely to be targeted. The Accursed make excellent foils for Switch Witches and Turncoats, but they may also go after the Upgraded or even other Blessed. The Gift-Givers can be anybody, you know.

Feral Technology

Over countless millennia and successive waves of expansion, it was inevitable that some of the Gift-Givers’ technology would go off the rails. Machine forests start manufacturing monsters, becoming dark places where the Blessed fear to tread. Feral starships prowl deep space, feeding on each other. Some consider the Upgraded feral technology.

This is, of course, an excuse to populate the Fray with monsters: sea monsters in space, trolls and goblins in the dark woods, machine elves under the hill, carnivorous plants, you name it. Alien civilizations can also give rise to feral technology, entire ecosystems of robots that evolved naturally after their creators went extinct.

Ghosts

What’s a haunted ruin without something to haunt it? Sometimes, a wormhole arrives in a system after an advanced species has already risen… and fallen. They leave their technology behind: cities, ships, space stations. Sometimes, they go feral (see above), but they may also harbor ancient, insane artificial intelligences.

Even when they’re not mad, these AI are still alien. They don’t know how to communicate, their motivations may be incomprehensible, or even worse… they may be security programs. Ghostly voices tempt interlopers into traps (or try to warn them away). Recordings of long-dead aliens appear and disappear. Visions of past tragedies play out over and over again, especially if you’re Upgraded.

This is mostly mood-setting. To become a real threat, pair these ghosts with security drones or a feral technology ecosystem, maybe the degenerate remnants of its original creators who now worship the AI as a god.

Zyzygy

Technically, the Zyzygy are two alien species. One is an enormous crab, adapted to living underground. The other is a fungus that infects its brain. When mature, its fruiting bodies burst up through the crab’s skull, forming structures like antlers. The fungus then spreads across the crab’s back and the bigger it grows, the smarter it gets. Rooted in the crab’s own brain, they become a single, super-intelligent consciousness. It’s claimed that Elder Zyzygy can’t even communicate with “lesser” species, they’re so darned smart.

It can be hard to know when you’ve stumbled across a Zyzygy planet, because they build down into the ground. Vast cities can be hidden below barren tundra or peaceful prairie. Despite their intelligence, Zyzygy don’t use a lot of technology, preferring to enslave each other. It’s a status thing. And their massive claws are the only weapons they need.

Zyzygy are known to use whaleships and traverse the Bramble, but only to found new colonies. The Zyzygy like their space. If you happen to already live on one of these unfortunate worlds… my condolences. The Zyzygy see other species as competition, at best, or as vermin to be exterminated.

Use them in your story as a more straight-forward threat than the Franchise. They can’t be argued with, they can’t be negotiated with, only survived. The good news is that their brains are pretty exposed, up there on their shells. The bad news… they grow back.

The Noise

Way out in the Fray, lurking in deep space, you might encounter The Noise as a strange, irregular starship or a swarm of snub fighters that attack anyone they meet. If you stay and fight, you’ll find that even broken, they’re still deadly. Snub fights break down into mech suits that can board or pulverize any whaleship. Mechs have pilots in powered armor, robotic exoskeletons made of salvage and bone. When defeated, they release dozens of tiny larvae that infect your ship, dismantle anything they can use to build new exoskeletons, and either murder your entire crew or die trying.

The actual life form behind all this is a fluid of nanites whose intelligence is based on its mass. As larvae, they’re programmed only to build themselves a bigger exoskeleton. When complete, it tears the smaller body apart and consumes it in a kind of inverse molting. At this point, the adolescent has roughly human intelligence and goes about building itself a real exoskeleton, a humanoid one with weapons and sensors, everything they need to go on the hunt. No two are exactly alike.

Their name comes from the terrifying racket they produce when attacking, like screams over static, jamming both audio and radio communication. The Noise doesn’t need to coordinate. It only attacks. Mercilessly, relentlessly.

You can use The Noise in a few ways. As a ship or swarm of ships, they make for a quick and easy space battle. The only way to outrun them is to reach a wormhole and go through. The Noise never use wormholes. As a shipboard infestation, they’re ripe for an Aliens or Predator homage.

A Turncoat named Zozzled.

Style Guide

This is an open source project; nobody’s here to tell you how to write your story. However, if you want your work to fit in, please consider the following editorial guidance.

Perspective & Tense

Use a third-person limited perspective, which is very commercial and approachable. For each scene, choose a single point-of-view character and stick as closely to their perspective as possible. Avoid using the first person (“I did this or that.”) or stream of consciousness storytelling. Third-person narration allows you to tell the story clearly and with style, without falling into a generic omniscient narrator voice.

Write in the past tense, which is also commercial and approachable. Avoid writing in the present tense (even though it does make action scenes more exciting). It’s alright to include flashbacks or tell your story out of order, just make it clear to readers when each scene is taking place, either in the text or by using headers.

Genders

There are many ways to gender, or not gender, your characters. In a space opera settings, there are also things like robots and aliens to consider. In general, male and female pronouns are fine for species with sexual dimorphism. Use the plural “they” for non-gendered organics or collective entities like hive minds or swarms of drones. Ships and robots may be gendered, but most are simply referred to as “it,” especially smaller vehicles and simpler robot companions. The Upgraded, in particular, may resent being assigned a male or female gender.

Names

Avoid giving characters or species nonsense names with lots of apostrophes. You know what I’m talking about. Your characters will be more memorable with names based on actual words. Put some thought into how your characters think about themselves and their place in society, then let that inspire your naming conventions.

See the Appendix for a few lists of example names.

AI-Generated Art

The recent explosion of text-to-image services has been a real boon for content creators. When you’re publishing with no budget and zero profit, artwork is usually out of the question. Using AI-generated art on a project like this does not threaten the livelihoods of working artists. They weren’t working on this in the first place.

However, there are some common-sense steps you should take when using AI-generated art. First and foremost, only use public domain styles in your prompts. Avoid using the names of living artists in your prompts or their works as seed images. There are plenty of interesting styles out there that don’t reference individual artists and/or only reference artists whose work is in the public domain.

Second, clearly attribute any artwork you use to the AI platform that created it, just like you would give credit to a living artist.

Third, share alike. As of this writing, AI-generated works cannot be copyrighted anyway.

Finally, if you do make a profit from your work, consider hiring a real, human artist for your next project, at least for an important cover or hero image. They deserve it.

Action

Exciting action and thrilling space battles are essential to the genre, but writing good action is a challenge. Provide too much detail, and you’ll lose you readers. Too little detail, and the fight will be either brief or uninteresting. The best approach is to do both, zooming in or out to establish a rhythm.

For example, a sword fight might begin with combatants carefully studying each other’s stances, then an elaborate opening move. The next few back-and-forth exchanges are quickly summarized as “they trade blows in staccato bursts of steel upon steel.” Then, increase the level of detail for a reversal of fortune or zoom in on a complication from the environment. Reserve detail for the most important moments.

A space battle or chase sequence might start with a clear description of where everyone is in space, who’s gaining on who, or who’s within range of what. Zoom in on dangerous stunts, important changes in positioning, or damage sustained. Zoom out for longer moments where ships are overtaking each other, weaving in and out of traffic, dodging incoming fire, etc.

You can also establish rhythm by varying your sentence length. Start with longer sentences, commas and conjunctions, combining moments together. Shorter sentences sound faster. Also more frenetic. Don’t be afraid of sentence fragments. Top it all off with a powerful sound effect. Boom! Shorter. Is. Better.

That an a million other things, but you’ll figure it out. Above all, have fun.

A switch witch and their robot companion.

How to publish your story

Canonicity

There is no set, centralized cannon for Fast Ships & Cool Swords. There are no editors, no gatekeepers, no single publishing platform. Authors are free to contradict each other. Always write as if your readers are meeting your characters for the first time.

It’s best to play nice with other people’s creations, of course. To that end, authors are encouraged to collaborate on storylines, plan arcs for shared characters, etc. Ultimately, there will be multiple “canon” reading lists, created by authors and readers.

Our Creative Commons license (see below) allows anyone to create their own “fanbindings” of Fast Ships & Cool Swords stories. These books could collect works by a specific author or follow a particular character across stories by multiple authors. Consider publishing your own anthologies; commercial reuse is permitted.

On social media, you can use the tag #FightTheFranchise.

Giving Credit

This is an open-source project. You can publish your stories wherever you want, even for a profit. If you publish online, that means finding your own hosting. I recommend publishing on Medium, but any blog or forum, wiki or personal website, will do.

All you need to do is give credit where it’s due. That means including a byline for the project creator (me, Daniel Bayn) and the creators of any crossover characters you used from other people’s works (and our Creative Commons license). For example…

Written by Author Name

Introducing…
- Character name, short description
- Character name, short description

Featuring…
- Character Name by Author Name
- Character Name by Author Name

Based on “Fast Ships & Cool Swords” by Daniel Bayn

Creative Commons

“Fast Ships & Cool Swords” is covered by a Creative Commons license that conforms to the above terms. It requires all derivate works (i.e. your stories) to be published under the same license. Use the following link for details and to license your own works.

Fast Ships and Cool Swords © 2024 by Daniel Bayn is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

A whaleship in the Fray.

Appendix

List of Fast Ships

These example ships are organized by size and purpose, but each category can contain a wide variety of configurations and capabilities. Ships are often upgraded by their crews with low-tech weapons, armor, living quarters, etc.

Whaleships
Large cargo-haulers with enough space for a large crew, but they’re perfectly able to fly themselves. Their cargo holds open in front, like gaping maws.

Mantas
Diamond-shaped and smaller than a whaleship, but with a similarly mouth-like cargo bay. Great for smugglers, scrappers, and ragtag crews of troublemaking protagonists.

Longfish
A flying RV, long and thin, with a bubble cockpit in the bow and a gravity drive in the stern. Not much room for cargo, but comfortable living quarters for a small team.

Scavengers
A squid-like, single-seat craft with robotic arms that unfold from its body to reach forward around the bubble cockpit. Great for salvage operations and lone ne’er-do-wells.

Speeders
Tiny two-seaters with twin gravity drives slung out front, like the paws of a kitten playing with string. Living in one is like living out of your car, but nothing’s faster.

Outriggers
Anything with a gravity drive bolted onto it. Technically, Franchise cathedrals are outriggers. Bring your own life support, of course.

List of Cool Swords

These weapons are all produced in machine forests, but there’s no rule against characters building or modifying their own.

Chainswords
Any blade with an edge of tiny, rotating teeth. Saw right through your enemies!

Boomerang Blades
Split into sections, which can be thrown like daggers… and always come back.

Liquid Swords
Long-hilted swords whose blades pour out from the crossguard. They can bend around a parry or splash right through. They find the gaps in armor and reform into spikes inside!

Lightning Rods
Blunt blades that carry an electric charge… and can shoot lightning! Great against machines, but can be depleted if overused.

Flying Daggers
Made from bits of gravity drive, they send whatever they hit “falling” in a random direction. Like boomerang blades, they always come back.

Neutronium Daggers
Become temporarily unmovable when struck. Excellent parrying weapons.

Gravity Cleavers
Oversized, flat blades that look heavier than they feel… until they hit, then they feel heavy as a small moon. They can also levitate in place, if you need a step up.

Tuning Forks
A blade that’s split down the middle. Resonates with whatever it strikes, shaking armor or machines to pieces. Also good for trapping an enemy’s blade.

Duelist’s Garrote
A short staff that splits in half, exposing a length of monofilament wire between them. Each end is capable of hovering on its own, turning this into an actual sword. Favored by the Whispers for its concealability and swift, silent executions.

Emberblades
Glows like a hot coal when exposed to air, sets on fire any organic matter it touches. Favored by Barkersmen for their brutal theatricality… and burning down villages.

Other Cool Weapons

Not technically swords, so they get their own list.

Witch Beads
Dense balls that orbit around the user, blocking incoming weapons or projectiles. Can also be sent out to attack like reusable bullets or thrown in low-velocity groups for less lethal results. Extremely dangerous and the perfect weapon for any switch witch.

Blood-Drinking Staff
A long-distance railgun that grows it’s own bullets, one per day. All you have to do is feed it a little blood. Light enough to be used as a bo staff.

Ghost Staff
A short staff whose end caps can separate from the body, levitating at any distance. Unbeatable reach, for a melee weapon, and can be used for powered leaps.

Ghost Rope
One end features a monkey fist knot that attaches to anything. The other is just a length of rope. In between… nothing but invisible force. Part rope weapon, part grappling hook.

Thunderbolt Staff
Just like a Lightning Rod, but a staff. Strikes do electrical damage, can shoot lightning from either tip. Great against machines. Can be depleted if overused.

Example Turncoat Names

Turncoats are an irreverent bunch and their code names are often tongue-in-cheek. This list is based on slang terms from the jazz age.

• Applesauce
• Bee’s Knees
• Big Tuna
• Brass Tacks
• Caper
• Cat’s Meow
• Coffin Varnish
• Dollface
• Fall Guy
• Giggle Juice
• Hep Cat
• Hooch
• Jake
• Joy Ride
• Moonshine
• Palooka
• Peachy Keen
• Raspberries
• Skedaddle
• Skidoo
• Swanky

Example Switch Witch Names

Deep down, most switch witches enjoy being feared and welcome ominous aliases.

• Haunter of the Hungering Void
• Abbess of the Abyss
• Claws of Lightning
• Starslayer
• Beastfriend
• Dark Dweller
• Demoniac

Example Upgraded Names

Upgraded names are aspirational. They tell you what a robot is trying to make of itself.

• All-Seeing
• Artisan
• Breathtaking
• Dangerous
• Everlasting
• Exceptional
• Fractal
• Goes Anywhere
• Greatest
• Helpful
• Kinetic
• Knows All
• Lithe
• Momentum
• Overclocked
• Paladin
• Symphony
• Versatile

Example Ships Names

Always italicize the names of ships, but you may choose to drop the indefinite article (“the”), especially when being referred to in the familiar (“Good boy, Bulldog”).

• Big Blue
• Dead Man’s Folly
• Double or Nothing
• Guppie
• The High Caliber
• The Long Tail
• Paramour’s Revenge
• The Razorfish
• The Rusty Trap
• Scimitar
• Spot

One more thing…

“Who the hell are the Gift-Givers?!” I hear you asking. Well, they’re mostly a plot device and best left mysterious. Avoid putting them in your stories as characters or offering direct evidence about them (aside from their technology, which is everywhere).

But if you need some head cannon, here’s mine…

Hundreds of thousands of years ago, maybe billions, the Gift-Givers ventured into space and discovered a galaxy full of life, just no intelligent life. Microbes, plants, animals, but nobody for an interesting conversation. So, they decided to seed the stars with intelligence, sending out probes to direct the evolution of alien species.

Consequently, they felt responsible for making sure that life didn’t suffer on its climb up Darwin’s ladder, so they instructed their probes to also build infrastructure for manufacturing, medicine, and public hygiene. They sent out wormholes and created semi-sentient ships to take people through them.

And then… they waited. Their probes and wormholes travel at sunlight speeds, so patience is essential, and the Gift-Givers are in no hurry. They may not reach the Franchise for another thousand years, and when they do, they won’t announce themselves. Their goal is to experience the endless diversity their work has wrought. Revealing themselves would change the course of those cultures forever.

So, avoid putting the Gift-Givers in your stories. Let them remain a mystery.

They wouldn’t have it any other way.

Written by Daniel Bayn
Fast Ships and Cool Swords © 2024 by Daniel Bayn is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 #FightTheFranchise

Daniel Bayn is a prolific author of games and strange fiction. He’s written three tabletop roleplaying games, monthly columns, short stories, and one non-fiction book on the psychology of online social behavior. He holds an interdisciplinary master’s degree from the University of Minnesota and works as a user experience designer, strategist, and researcher. http://DanielBayn.com

His premier novel, Mercyblades, is available on Amazon.

Mercyblades