In a World…
An exploration of how the lore of Solar Purge came together.
When I joined Hitscan Games in September of 2018, Solar Purge had already been in development for several years, and had quite a lot in common with the game as it exists today. A team of mercenaries traveled to alien worlds, shooting up all the hostile wildlife that came their way. Their employer had ulterior motives (to crush Sol and destroy Humanity), and the player characters would come to realize this over the course of the game as they collected strange ancient artifacts after defeating bosses on each planet. Along the way they would be helped by a friendly scientist on a space station, which would act as a hub world between main story missions.
But if you looked at design documentation then versus now, that is where the similarities would end.
It’s best to start at the beginning though, so let’s examine the main game characters:
Player Characters:
Character Class: Engineer
Character Name: Kyode “Ky” Conagher
Date of Birth: January 03, 2212 (Age 31)
Homeworld: Luyten b, Luyten System
Ky was born on a well-developed computer manufacturing colony eight years after Contact, and was two years old when the Human-Aesrenan War began. However, the remote location of the Luyten system ensured he never felt the full ravages of war. One day the Earth Central Exchange was in power, the next the Aesrenan Crown was in control.
He lived a quiet life developing military hardware for a minor subsidiary of the Nazuna Group, but severe radiation exposure left him unable to have children. He became increasingly obsessed with artificial intelligence development, ultimately creating his “son“ GAR-1, a breakthrough AI in a mid-range military robot. Unfortunately for him, the Aesrena have a visceral fear and hatred of intelligent machines, and he ultimately became known as “the outlaw engineer of Teumesios.”
By analyzing GAR-1’s memories, Aesrenan security forces were able to track Ky down.
Character Class: Juggernaut
Character Name: GAR-1 “Gary” (Genetically Autonomous Retrofit 1)
Date of Activation: May 31, 2237 (Age 6; Personality 12)
Homeworld: Teumesios, Procyon System
Once Kyode Conagher found himself on the Aesrenan Security Forces’ wanted lists, he relocated to the nearby Procyon System to continue his work in secret. The result was the Genetically Autonomous Retrofit 1, who prefers to be called “Gary.”
Despite his imposing frame, Gary maintains the curiosity and personality of an adolescent boy. Much to his father’s chagrin, he utilizes his incredible information processing capability to simultaneously experience all known media. During a conversation with Gary, he is also listening to every known audio recording, reading every known book, and watching every known video. He promises he’s paying attention, but you might need to repeat what you just said…
Before the events of the game he has spent over a year in Aesrenan captivity, and is excited to be reunited with “Dad.”
Character Class: Stryker
Character Name: Madison Y
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Date of Birth: November 23, 2218 (Age 24)
Homeworld: Merope, Gliese 682 System
The planets of the Gliese 682 System were already in ruins when Madison was born. Her parents both served in the private military subsidiary of Olorun Systems, and were already active in the Human resistance movement before the official outbreak of the Human-Aesrenan War in 2214. When the war came to the planet Merope they organized the qualified survivors into a resistance militia, and Madison was raised on a battlefield.
When Merope finally fell in 2229, an eleven-year-old now orphaned Madison was evacuated with a small band of key personnel and raised by a senior resistance leader. She excelled as a guerilla fighter, and was a constant thorn in the side of Aesrenan invasion forces throughout Human space. When the Earth Central Exchange surrendered in 2234 she went underground, participating in the attempted coup the following year at the 180th anniversary celebrations on Mars, Sol System. She witnessed the destruction of Olympus Mons firsthand, and escaped with the shattered remnants of the rebel forces.
In early 2243 she was finally tracked down and arrested for “engagement in multiple terrorist actions,” but Madison is a born survivor. When the transport ship approaches Lockjaw Prison she is already plotting her escape…
Character Class: Assassin
Character Name: Ar’ril Sil
Date of Birth: August 01, 2178 (Human Age 64; Aesrenan equivalent 39)
Homeworld: Ar’ril Thun (Ar’ril I), Ar’ril System
One of the most ancient noble families in the Aesrenan Empire, House Ar’ril has loyally served the interests of The Crown for over 2000 years, tracing its roots back to terrestrial conquests on the Aesrenan Homeworld. Sil and his twin sister Tiv were born within minutes of one another, but Aesrenan inheritance law is very clear - only the eldest child is worthy to wear the mantle of leadership. As a result Sil was groomed from birth in the ways of the Pher’su, a House Assassin.
But the more he learned about how the Aesrena had conquered so much of the Milky Way Galaxy, and the cruelty with which they ruled “the lesser species,” the harder he trained. Not to eliminate his sister’s rivals at court, but to end the oppression of all the Houses and to break the Empire’s back.
At the Human equivalent of sixteen, he fled his family’s estate during his sister’s Mantle Ceremony and lived life on the run. Within a few years reports emerged of “The Chimera,” a rogue warrior destroying Aesrenan military installations and assassinating any Highborn he came across. For decades his sister attempted to keep his identity a secret, and was thrilled to learn in 2243 that he had finally been captured in “the Human Periphery.”
But The Chimera has himself on a certain prisoner transport for a very good reason; for the last 2 years he has been tracking a secret project known only as “Project Orpheus,” and all his leads point to one place: Lockjaw Prison in the Gwynedd System…
NPCs
Character Name: Dr. Hadley
Species: Aesrenan
Date of Birth: September 07, 2189 (Human Age 53, Aesrenan equivalent 33)
Homeworld: Aesrena, Aesrena System
Hadu Li was born in the Imperial capital, but no other records of her parents or early childhood remain; these were likely purged to avoid embarrassment for her educational institutions due to her incredible performance. The family name of “Hadu” literally refers to her being “houseless,” without even the distinction of a Lowborn family name. She experienced a hardscrabble existence as a small child, but her mandatory mental faculty testing fast-tracked her into elite educational institutions under a series of byzantine grants and patronages for intelligent youth of “minor background.” During the final years of her education at The Glass Palace (the elite Imperial science academy) the Aesrenan Empire made official contact with Humanity (although they had been aware of the existence of Humans for nearly three decades before Li was born). Fascinated by this new alien species, she specialized in xenobiology in the hope of gaining an appointment to “the Human Periphery.”
By her 26th birthday (the Aesrenan age of majority) the Human-Aesrenan war was just getting underway, and only those with elite family connections could hope to travel to the Frontier as anything other than a foot soldier or enlisted naval personnel. Despite her expertise in Human physiology and genius intelligence, she had few prospects available. Discouraged, she began to take on undocumented freelance research work for various unscrupulous organizations, which finally allowed her to gain passage to the Periphery in 2220. She restyled herself as “Dr. Hadley” and immersed herself as best she could in Human culture, despite the difficulties of wartime.
Two years later the banks holding her massive unpaid debts were suddenly purchased by the Tulon Syndicate, and Hadley found herself working on R&D projects on various Tulon research vessels. In 2225 she was summoned directly to the private offices of Lord Draven, the Empire’s wealthiest private citizen and head of the Tulon Syndicate. In 2231 she was officially declared “lost” along with the rest of the crew of the three colony ships which vanished in the “anomaly” at the Gwynedd Jumpgate. Since arriving at the Nova Genesis system, she has been hard at work for the last twelve years cataloguing the flora and fauna of the system’s four planets, as well as working on a top-secret neural-link holo-simulation project she calls the Holochamber…
Character Name: Commander (Lord) Draven
Species: Kulûn
Date of Birth: November 11, 2070 (Human Age 172, Kulûn equivalent late 60s)
Homeworld: N/A
Like all Kulûn, Draven was born into a nomadic life aboard the living ships his species have used to travel the Milky Way Galaxy since time immemorial. Fascinated by the ancient myths of his people from an early age, he devoured tales of how the Kulûn Homestar Naulica was “closed away” (a common Kulûn aphorism for death) through treachery from those the Kulûn most trusted. Unsatisfied with a nomadic life, he committed one of the great taboos of his species and settled permanently. He chose the Hyades Cluster, the core of Aesrenan power.
There he developed a vast business empire, ultimately becoming the Empire’s wealthiest private citizen and purchasing a noble title directly from The Crown itself. His alien background would make him a social pariah, but his immense wealth mitigates these difficulties.
During his continuing study of ancient galactic history, he becomes convinced that the legendary betrayers of myth are in fact a real species which could well still be in existence. When Humanity is proven to exist in 2162 he becomes obsessed, eventually making contact two years later with a mysterious figure from (in its own words) “beyond the Veil.” During the early days of the Human-Aesrenan War, Draven establishes the Tulon Syndicate to conduct business operations in Human space and begins to make strategic acquisitions of planets and Megacorporations. Unbelievable amounts of currency begin to disappear into an above-top-secret project known only as “Erebus”…
Below is some of the internal documentation regarding the game universe:
These are just a small sample of the mountains of notes and lore documentation I’ve created for Solar Purge.
My initial explanation of the game’s tone was “The Expanse meets Guardians of the Galaxy.” This is a challenging tone to nail, but I think that my love of genre fiction allows me to keep my tongue slightly in cheek even while writing about star-crushing doomsday weapons and monsters from beyond the void.
Plenty has changed over the last several years of work on the game.
Originally, the Aesrena didn’t exist in the Solar Purge universe. The main reason I wanted to get this extra layer involved in the story is that the player characters all needed a good reason to not be in any hurry to get back to the Milky Way. If they jumped out to the Nova Genesis System with no way of ever returning home, then the game has lost some of its lighthearted charm; it’s pretty dark to get spaceship-wrecked across the Laniakea Supercluster with no hope of ever returning home.
The Assassin character was always intended to be an alien, but before I came on board this was intended to be a late-game reveal. By introducing an alien star empire from the get-go, this allows him to interface with the other player characters without being a constant mystery box; the player can get to know him as easily as any of the other characters. Additionally, Dr. Hadley was originally a human scientist. In fact, her old character design still appears on the Steam store page in the screenshots! But by making her into an alien, one deeply fascinated with and very fond of the “alien” Humans she’s met the players now have a sympathetic mentor character who can help to explain away some of the more fantastical sci-fi aspects of the story, due to her species’ highly advanced technology while at the same time the player characters remain on the back foot, very nearly overwhelmed by this hostile new corner of the universe.
The Draven character was originally human, as well. But since the idea of an Ancient Humanity that existed in the Nova Genesis System was already in place, I found the story to be slightly contradicting itself. If Draven was himself a human, then what was his motivation for wanting to purge Sol? Was he just crazy? Not an easy sell when he’s masterminded a trip across the universe. He could have been turned into an Aesrena, but again this would put a much darker spin on their attack on Human space. This led to the creation of a third party alien species, one that could be assigned a deep but secret hatred of Humans. And what better in could interdimensional demonic forces hope for than somebody bent on revenge? As the horrors of purged stars started to take shape as a gateway into another (horrible) dimension and story meetings started to focus on the history of how the Artifacts hidden in the Nova Genesis System came to be, I remembered the story of the Kulullû in Mesopotamian myth and Draven’s grudge basically wrote itself. Sometimes it’s easy (usually it involves countless hours of research)!
The concept of the Megacorporations and Humanity being governed by an interstellar stock exchange was an invention partially out of logical extrapolation of how our present day society might exist in its fledgling steps into space, but partially out of necessity. Early on after joining the team, we traveled to PAX South in San Antonio to promote the game. While there several of us noticed something strange: our weapon drop name system was completely random, but players were quickly assigning meaning to specific names they happened to see two of in a row or across the same play session. This gave me the idea that we could lean into natural human pattern recognition - if we added another field to the existing data table being used for name generation, we could separate weapons by manufacturer, and even give each type a different pool of available random perks (this quickly ballooned past one data table, but the idea was popular with the whole team)! So for example, weapons made by the Nazuna Group with only basic perks but available across all weapon types would appear powerful to new players or in the early-game, but would quickly become outclassed later on as higher level weapons became available. However, this required a unique backstory for each weapons manufacturer. Ultimately I think this was one of the most useful lore contributions I’ve made to the game, as these different companies appear over and over throughout the story, creating a real sense of place.
Overall I think that I’ve been able to punch up the narrative design of the game in a way that makes the progression of dramatic beats make a little more sense, while simultaneously giving players a lot to take in when they travel the space station hub level to soak up game lore. The best sci-fi universes feel already lived in, and I think the multiple layers of intrigue add that without bogging players down in lore if they’d rather jump to the next planet and keep on shooting!