rally

(o˘◡˘o)

Posting short character vignettes and making a little starship universe.


Titan Garden standalone website (this will continue updating after the shutdown)
titan.garden/
All my other work (includes last-updated timestamps to make tracking stuff easy)
luckyraven.cc/
Bluesky (this is where I'll post more regularly, including art updates)
staging.bsky.app/profile/rally.luckyraven.cc

Krylg is a Caelian communications technology specialist lending their services to the Altair Electronics cause. If you need to talk to technology, or talk through technology, and that technology is broke, don't throw it out! Take it to Altair and ask for Krylg, they will get your hardware working good as new at a fraction of the cost of replacement. Having a spirited and youthful energy about them, Krylg thrives in the good-vibes atmosphere of the Altair workshop, although they can't help but push Bazrai's buttons sometimes- the Ganymedean can be a bit uptight and self-serious at times, so Krylg will often feign ignorance about a topic to get Bazrai all wound up about correcting their minor little details. Sometimes it's hard to step outside yourself and see if you're acting foolish, so Krylg will happily play the mirror, whether or not Bazrai realizes it. Given the nature of their respective specialties they tend to collaborate a lot on various projects, so Krylg gets a lot of opportunities to tease Bazrai. Roflfox thinks its funny and enjoys the little goofball performances whenever they bust out.

Where Bazrai works with inter-system communications, Krylg's specialty is User-to-Systems interfacing, or handling bits of technology that people will try to talk to, or talk through, to get what they want out of it. Anything from wearable speech-to-text computer systems to interplanetary comm-link telephones falls within Krylg's wheelhouse, but one of the most common pieces of tech people bring into Altair Electronics are their personal phones- it's expensive to keep upgrading these things, and new models don't always have the features someone likes on an older one, so a trip to Altair can help extend the life of a phone significantly. Voice tech can be particularly finnicky, especially across long distances and amidst the signal interference produced by basically everything in a crowded place like Titan Garden; it's easy to take it for granted but when it breaks you'll be glad to have a specialist on hand to repair it.

While Krylg likes working with personal communications technologies, the thing they love most of all is to tamper with relay satellites. Big and lonesome and in the middle of nowhere, a network of satellites connects a string of worlds that can at times be close together and at other times be very, very far away, on the opposite side of Sol. You don't always get to pick which satellites your calls relay through, and depending on who owns them you may have to pay a hefty fee to place an interplanetary call- Titan is a long way away from basically everywhere most of the time, you shouldn't have to get nickel-and-dimed because Quasar Galactic happens to own the relay satellites linking you into and out of the Inner Belt. Krylg hates this, so they opt to do something about it. Their work on comm satellites often intersects with Tia's work on public phone terminal payment bypasses- communication is important, they feel, it should be free to everyone.

A frequent collaborator with Timberwolf R&D, Krylg hires out rides on the Ermine to head up into deep space and make physical modifications to corporate-owned relay satellites, adding modules they created themselves to bypass signal flaggers and route directly to the central communications systems, essentially building a tunnel beneath the tollbooth and routing signals back onto the highway. Timberwolf is a favorite hire due to the Ermine's robotic arms being very useful to pluck them back up out of space when they're done working. When one of these modules is affixed to a satellite, Krylg can install a companion device to a comm-link telephone to handshake with the module and discretely bypass the relay toll systems on the satellites themselves as a call's signal bounces into space. Krylg installs this companion device on many personal commphones.

The trick of getting away with satellite vandalism is to pick when you choose to act. Occasionally reports of xenofauna moving into the Sol system will spread among starfarers who happen to spot the creatures early in their travels, before they invariably find a satellite with tasty ice or salt on it to come have a nibble on. It's not too frequent an occurrence but it happens often enough that Krylg can take advantage on short notice, keeping an ear out for xenofauna reports among Titan's travelers. If you know there's creatures around and you head up to tamper with a satellite, there's plausible deniability if network operators detect an interruption in satellite performance. Bryce and his Timberwolf crew are happy to remain on retainer in case another window to act comes up suddenly- they work pro bono, no fees required, although they have an arrangement to receive Krylg's handshaking companion devices as compensation for their services. As a crew of smugglers having backdoor access to interplanetary comm satellites is more useful than credits, especially to someone like Timberwolf's computer toucher, Kollori. With a little tampering of her own, Kollori can monitor Star Patrol communications and pick up fair warning when the heat is wise to one of their smuggling ops, then route their comms somewhere less useful than Star Patrol headquarters, buying the crew enough time to reroute their course and stay off the grid. Krylg doesn't ask questions of Bryce, they're just happy to bring toll-free phone calls to the good people of Titan. It is a humble but noble cause.


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