Sandbox / Aetheral Space

Aetheral Space is an ongoing Science Fantasy Space Opera Web Serial Novel written by Tanhony.

Dragan Hadrien is a low-level administrator within the Supremacy, the galaxy's most powerful civilization and an empire where might makes right. He doesn't believe in the dogma and is only interested in getting a cushy job to take it easy. But when he's dragged out of that lifestyle by a band of rebels, Dragan unexpectedly leaps at the chance to escape it in favor of something new.

Now a part of the crew with Ruth Blaine, Bruno and Serena del Sed, and Skipper, Dragan must learn how to use the enigmatic power called Aether, which grants its wielders magic-like abilities, if he is to survive. He betrayed the Supremacy, but its Aether-using Special Officers aren't the only threats he'll face.

The series is updated Sundays and Wednesdays on Royal Road and audio readings of each chapter are posted on the Discovering SCP Youtube channel.

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Aetheral Space provides examples of:

• Abnormal Ammo: Skipper's Heartbeat Shotgun uses the sound of his heartbeat as a bullet. Simeon del Dranell makes arrows out of his own hair. The Fifth Dead takes the cake, however, using small swordfish for projectile attacks.
• Absent Aliens: In all the centuries humanity has been spreading throughout the universe, only non-sapient animal life has been found on other planets. The various Human Subspecies and other Gene Tyrant creations provide the variety aliens would. Arc 8 reveals the Panacea fungus is sapient, and it's implied to be naturally-occurring rather than created by a Gene Tyrant.
• Abusive Precursors: The Gene Tyrants considered the rest of humanity to be tools rather than people, and any who survived long enough past the beginning of the Thousand Revolutions came to view them as universal enemies or particularly vile vermin. A handful of Gene Tyrant creations still exist to threaten humanity in revenge, such as the Fell Beasts.
• After-Action Healing Drama: With the amount of injuries the main cast get during fights, this happens more often than not. The most severe case happens after the Battle of the Elysian Fields, when Ruth and Dragan are both bleeding out, their only nearby source of medical treatment has been destroyed, and enemies are still closing in, forcing Serena to improvise a way to keep them stable until she can find help.
• An Arm and a Leg: Common during fights, with varying levels of permanence.
  • Skipper loses his left arm during a fight on Caelus Breck and uses various prosthetics afterward. He loses the other arm escaping from Avaman, and eventually both arms and both legs fighting the Supreme.
  • Dragan also gets various limbs cut off, but between Aether recording and Panacea he avoids permanent injury.
  • Ruth's legs are cut off in the process of killing Avaman, forcing her to use clunky prosthetics afterward.
• Animesque
• Antagonistic Governor: Minister Goley and Lord Mayor Rikhail, from Caelus Breck. Both try to use Dragan, Skipper's crew, and Muzazi in their own political schemes, including falsely labeling Dragan a defector after he was kidnapped and attempting to manipulate Muzazi into service. The scheming doesn't end well for either of them.
• Anti-Magic: Gertrude Hearth's ability Silencio stifles all Aether near her by mimicking Neverwire's suppression.
• Artificial Limbs: Prosthetic replacements for lost limbs are common, as Panacea is only able to regrow them during a short "golden hour" after the initial injury.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: The Supremacy military functions like this, and the overall ruler of the Supremacy always acquires the title by being stronger than every other opponent.
• Asteroid Thicket: The first battle between Skipper's crew and Avaman takes place in one, with the Slipstream crew using the necessity of slowing down to maneuver to catch up to Avaman's normally-faster ship and taking cover behind closely-packed asteroids to defend against ranged attacks.
• Black-and-Grey Morality: Skipper's crew regularly kills their enemies and commit whatever other crimes they need to survive and succeed, but their most common enemies are agents of a fascist military empire or dangerous Asshole Victims. On the other side, Muzazi's sense of honor and belief that the strong need to protect the weak puts him a step above many of his fellow Special Officers, but he still believes in a variant of the strong-should-rule mindset of the Supremacy and is willing to kill others for wronging him.
• Boarding Pod: Used by Supremacy troops to board the Unite Regent after it's disabled by a bomb.
• Bodyguarding a Badass: The four Contenders are technically paid to protect the Supreme, despite being the people who tried and failed to kill him.
• Body Horror: When Panacea doesn't work right, the usual result is horrifically deformed conglomerates of body parts because the fungus got "confused" while attempting to regrow a missing part.
• Breather Episode: Compared to the much larger and bloodier Arcs 5 and 7, Arc 6 is a short investigation story with slightly lower stakes and a smaller cast.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Bullet-based weapons are called punchpoint weapons to distinguish them from plasma weapons. God is called Y, possibly a shortened form of YHWH.
• Calling Your Attacks: Extremely common for specific Aether techniques to be named out loud as a mnemonic to immediately enter the mindset to use them. Not needing to do this is considered a mark of skill or considerable practice.
• Cast from Hit Points: Aether burning amplifies a user's Aether but damages their entire body, eventually killing them if it goes too long.
• City Planet: Serendipity, capital of the United Alliance of Planets, is an omnicity with a population of one trillion people.
• Co-Dragons: The Contenders function as this to the Supreme, although since the Supreme doesn't get out much they mostly operate according to their own agendas rather than orders.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Averted by most people with cybernetics, commonly using them for slight augmentations or as prosthetics after unwillingly losing limbs. Played straight or justified by Abraham Oliphant and the Hellhound, who willingly turned themselves almost completely to machine and are both entirely cold-blooded characters with no empathy for others.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Aether Burning is when an Aether user channels much more than their body can handle, vastly increasing their power but rapidly causing internal damage and eventually liquefying them if it goes too long. While burns are survivable, Aether Awakening is essentially a suicide technique that ends the user's life in order to generate even more power in pursuit of their last conscious wish.
• Deuteragonist: Atoy Muzazi, the Special Officer who tries to rescue (and is subsequently betrayed by) Dragan on Caelus Breck. He gets similar levels of narrative focus, ends up getting two entire arcs in the limelight, and after character development he's arguably closer to being both the protagonist and the hero than Dragan is.
• Disc-One Final Boss: The Supreme. His and Skipper's deaths only mark the end of the prologue.
• Dismemberment Is Cheap: Played straight in some cases and subverted in others. Skipper loses an arm protecting Dragan six chapters in, considers it well-spent, and is none the worse for wear as soon as he gets a prosthetic replacement. On the other hand, when Rico Oliphant-Blanco and Ruth lose an arm and both legs, respectively, they react with more typical shock and grief even with prosthetics available.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Avaman is mentioned as the Third Contender during Arc One, but is later established as the First Contender, both chronologically and in title. He also has rot-green Aether in his first appearance, but all subsequent appearances give him violet. Additionally, Ruth mentions at first that she needs to physically repair her armor when damaged, but this is quietly dropped to have it self-repair while "on cooldown" in her Aether.
• Earth Is the Center of the Universe: Averted. While it was once humanity's birthplace, Earth as of the present is a barely-habitable backwater only known as "Home."
• Elites Are More Glamorous: Most of the Supremacy forces that show up are Aether-using Special Officers. Justified, however, as many of the enemies they face are also Aether-users who would be much harder for ordinary troops to deal with.
• Epic Battle Boredom: Displayed by the current Supreme, and discussed by both Skipper and Wu Ming: Once you're the strongest there is, all other aspects of life become irrelevant and nothing provides any challenge or stimulation.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Each Supreme is known only as "The Supreme" during their lifetime and they only become known by their names after someone else has taken the title from them.
• The Federation: The United Alliance of Planets is a democratically-governed alliance united primarily by mutual self-defense against the imperialist Supremacy.
• Fighting Down Memory Lane: The second half of Dragan's battle with Paradise Charon turns into this when the two combatants are at a physical impasse. Initially they try weaponizing their own memories, but it turns out weaponizing each other's is more effective.
• Fights Like a Normal: Ash Del Duran is technically an Aether user but his Aether tic will kill him if he uses it very much. Instead, he faces much more powerful Aether-using opponents with "normal" martial arts, to the extent that his catchphrase is "This is not an Aether ability."
• Full-Conversion Cyborg: Abraham Oliphant and the Hellhound are two slightly different variants; Abraham is a still-humanoid walking tank, but the Hellhound's very name comes from his quadrupedal robotic body.
• Gale-Force Sound: The basis of Skipper's Heartbeat Shotgun and Landmine techniques, amplifying the sound of his heartbeat until it produces enough physical force to mimic a gunshot or grenade. Taken to a literal gale-force level by the Supreme, who amplifies it to the point that it hits like the shockwave of a nuclear bomb.
• Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: The primacy of the ancient Gene Tyrants was due to their mastery of genetic engineering, particularly of humans. Even a thousand years after their fall, humanity at large is still so reluctant to risk any sort of new Gene Tyrants emerging that the only galactic government where genetic engineering isn't taboo is the Superbian sect of the Final Church.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: Gene Tyrants and the Panacea-infused Repurposed lack the durability of strong Aether infusion, but losing a limb or even being butchered is no particular trouble as long as a part larger than nine by nine inches retains their consciousness.
• Greater-Scope Villain: While the Supreme is the face and current ruler of the Supremacy, Arc 11 reveals the existence of "The Shepherdess", a mysterious figure who appears to guide and protect the Supremacy in crisis. Given that she's guiding and protecting a militarist empire, she's not a hero.
• Great Offscreen War: The Thousand Revolutions, when humanity at large overthrew the Gene Tyrants.
• Hammerspace: "Recording" allows people to store objects or even organisms as pure Aether, bringing them back out or recreating them at will. In practice, this mostly lets people store weapons but can be used on things as large as boulders.
• Heroic Resolve: Dragan's Aether core is self-determination, which gives him extreme resolve to keep fighting.
• Human Subspecies: The Gene Tyrants created many subspecies of humans during their reign. Vanilla humans are known as "Crownless".
  • Cogitants have Super-Intelligence and a Photographic Memory. They have bright blue eyes, and their highly complex brains make them prone to mental instability.
  • Pugnants have Super-Strength as well as being large and muscular. They have tusklike teeth, yellow irises with slit pupils, resistance to radiation and poisons, and a heightened body temperature.
  • Umbrants can change the sound of their voice and colour of their hair and eyes at will. By default, they have black sclerae and a doubling effect to their voice. They can also temporarily erase their own memories.
  • Subspecies outside of the main three are classed under the umbrella of Scurrants. Scurrants encountered by the main gang include Ansem del Day Away, who has a human head on a turtle-like body and Helga Malwarian, who has completely transparent flesh on her arms.
• Imagination-Based Superpower: Other than the basic rules of Aether and need for practice, the main limit on what Aether abilities can do is what a user thinks they can do. Taken to its logical extreme by the Contender Wu Ming, who can invent new abilities to do almost anything in a matter of seconds, up to and including teleportation or weaponizing a black hole.
• Last of His Kind:
  • Marie thinks she's the last Gene Tyrant. She’s wrong.
  • Ionir Yggdrasil is the last of the Fell Beasts, shapeshifting tree-like monsters created as a final attack against humanity by a Gene Tyrant once it became clear they weren't going to survive the Thousand Revolutions. Ionir is holding the memories of the other Beasts inside himself using Aether, in the hope of bringing them back one day.
• Layered Metropolis: The city of Taldan is divided colloquially into the rich and well-off Toptown, the poorer, exploited Pit below it, and nameless slums subsisting on scavenging below even that.
• Living Lie Detector: A skill of several Cogitants, letting them notice tiny differences in facial expression and tone of voice to figure out how truthful someone is. This was also possessed by their creators, the Gene Tyrants.
• Magic Enhancement: Aether is commonly used to alter, reinforce, or enhance objects, particularly in personal Aether abilities or to create Aether Armaments that anyone can use.
• Make Some Noise: Skipper attacks by turning the sound of his heartbeat into a sonic weapon. He can also use other sources of sound, even releasing the absorbed sound of his entire lifetime as a single massive attack.
• Mental World: Most Cogitants have some form of Memory Palace to store and sort information, but besides that have a representation of themselves inside their head to talk to in an imaginary location while thinking. In Arc 12, Dragan develops a technique to physically transport targets inside his Archive, where he is the Domain Holder and can either attack them while inside or leave them trapped while he deals with others in the real world.
• Might Makes Right: The overall worldview of the Supremacy is this, but in practice it doesn't matter who's actually more powerful, just who survives.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Because Aether is an Imagination-Based Superpower, most recurring characters invent new abilities over time as they grow and encounter new situations, but several have also invented new abilities on the fly. Wu Ming and Roy Oliphant-Dawkins are particularly notable in that they, respectively, invent new powers on the spot or "reroll" a new, different power every day.
• One-Man Army: Most Aether users above a certain skill or power level, including Skipper, all of the Contenders, and many Special Officers.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: As far as Skipper is concerned, "Skipper" is his real name and the only one he tells others.
• Orcus on His Throne: The Supreme hasn't left his flagship in years and is even covered by a layer of dust because of how little he's moved since his last activity. The Contenders are a bit more active, but Avaman in particular spends a lot of time there as well instead of traveling in the rest of the Supremacy.
• Panacea: A fungus that can take the place of almost any missing body part, taking the place of the lost tissue until it's biologically indistinguishable from regular flesh. However, it can only replace missing parts, not mangled ones, and it can only safely be used during a short period immediately after an injury or it's very likely to "misunderstand" what it's trying to replace.
• Person of Mass Destruction: When the Dranell system tried to secede from the Supremacy, the Supreme went there and personally cracked the rebelling planets open like eggs.
• Planet of Hats: Abra-Facade, "the Land of Precognition", is a planet that specializes in precognitive abilities and not much else.
• Posthumous Character: Nigen Rush, a legendary swordsman who played a pivotal role in Marie Hazzard's, Ionir Yggdrasil's, and Baltay Kojirough's backstories, died some time before the start of the series and repeatedly appears in flashbacks.
• Power Limiter: Neverwire, which interferes with Aether use.
• Power Makes Your Hair Grow: Simeon del Dranell's Aether tic is rapid hair growth, which he uses as ammunition for his bow.
• Private Military Contractors: Shooting Star Security Solutions, an interstellar mercenary corp that is paid to act as law enforcement on the planet of Taldan.
• Psychoactive Powers: Aether cores, the emotional state that unlocks a given person's Aether for the first time and is always their strongest connection to it. Each person's core is different, and they range from general emotions to such specific states of mind that someone might go their entire life without finding theirs.
• Sacrificial Lion: Marie Hazzard, the badass Creepy Good Gene Tyrant Special Officer, performs a Mutual Kill on Ranavalona at the end of Arc 8. Since Skipper reveals it's nearly time for the gang to kill the Supreme in the same chapter she dies, her death is almost definitely to give a sense of stakes to the story going forward.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: Bruno and Serena del Sed, with their shared Establishing Character Moment being Bruno handling Dragan roughly and preempting his attempts at sympathy while Serena squees about Dragan analyzing the situation.
• Shapeshifter Mode Lock: The Aether ability of the Blind Man, a legendary revolutionary who fought the Gene Tyrants, was to lock shape-changing things into a single form. This provided a crucial advantage against Gene Tyrants who would otherwise be too adaptive to reliably beat, even with Aether.
• Split Mind, Split Powers: Split-Personality Team Bruno and Serena del Sed each developed separate Aether techniques. Bruno can create solid shields from air pressure, while Serena can form materials she touches into swords. Having different powers is the reason the two of them exist — the technique of the original del Sed personality, Yakob, let him create new personalities to fulfil different roles, such as offence and defence.
• Split Personality: Bruno and Serena are separate personalities sharing the same body, analogous to Dissociative Identity Disorder. They're treated as and consider each other siblings, both separate from Yakob del Sed, the birth personality.
• Start of Darkness: A few chapters from the Supreme's perspective in Arc 11 show how he went from a Stock Shōnen Hero to Orcus on His Throne and the most feared man in the galaxy.
• Stock Shōnen Hero: The Supreme had many similarities when he was young. However, by the present day he is no longer motivated by protecting his friends and left deeply depressed.
• Superpower Lottery / Superpower Russian Roulette: While Aether users generally pick their active abilities, they have no control over their passive and involuntary Aether tics. Most are just cosmetic with little effect, but some work for or against their users. On the advantageous side, Simeon del Dranell exploits his rapid hair growth by using it as ammunition. On the disadvantageous side, Ash del Duran's Rapid Aging means that anything except the most sparing use of pinpoint Aether for a fraction of a second takes years off his life.
• Super-Speed: A staple of many fighters, particularly melee duelists.
• Super-Toughness: Aether increases the durability of anything it infuses, making Aether infusion a go-to means of defense.
• Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist: Atoy Muzazi. He's not obsessively pursuing Dragan across the galaxy to kill him or anything like that; he just wants to know why he shot him when he was only trying to help.
• Tears of Blood: Giovanni in Arc 9 has this as his aether tic.
• The Dark Times: The reign of the Gene Tyrants before the Thousand Revolutions, when the rest of humanity were slaves, playthings, and tools for their Gene Tyrant overlords.
• Training the Gift of Magic: Unlocking Aether is a matter of luck, but to get any real use out of it most people require training to master its basic principles and build up their stamina.
• Tyke Bomb: Skipper was trained in fighting from early childhood by one of the Supremacy's greatest warriors and became a member of the former Supreme Guard by his tweens.
• Villain No Longer Idle: The events of the Final Church's Truemeet inadvertently catch the attention of Avaman the Announcer, who comes to hunt down Skipper. Later invoked by Skipper when he releases a galaxywide message challenging the Supreme to a rematch, immediately prompting him to get off his throne and travel to meet Skipper again.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: The most obvious trait of Gene-Tyrants.
• War Is Hell: During Arc 11, Muzazi and Skipper comment on the incredible devastation wrought by the Supremacy's way of waging war. Muzazi is horrified at both the people doing the destruction and himself for having ever thought it glorious.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Rico Oliphant-Blanco's initial assessment of the Teacher's ability to identify a person's Aether Core with just a touch is that it's useless because it has no direct combat application.
• World's Best Warrior: While not at the power level of the Supreme, Master Swordsman Nigen Rush is described in the backstory as "the best there ever was" as far as swordsmen go, and his appearances in flashbacks live up to that title.
• World's Strongest Man: The Supreme, who is extremely difficult to even injure and able to destroy an entire planet when he tries.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: The position of Supreme can be attained by killing the previous one.